On the second day, Tessa found the freezer in a small porch they hadn’t seen at first, just off the kitchen. She opened it a little nervously, expecting, well, what? Chaos? A puddle of stinky water with floating bloody packages? Instead, she found riches. Prawns in clear bags, marked with numbers that were mysterious at first but that Marsh figured out were GPS coordinates, the place of their origins. Wrapped fillets of fish, marked “ling cod” or “spring salmon”, again with the coordinates. 10 loaves of bread. Yogourt containers with soup descriptions written in marker that almost made her swoon: coconut squash (add a handful of chopped cilantro and a drizzle of chili oil), roasted tomato with basil, chowder from old Easthope clam beds (she hoped she would learn where that was), oyster stew from December cocktails. Cocktails? she wondered, but then Marsh reminded her those would be the smaller oysters, the ones graded for raw sales.
Later that day, exploring further, Marsh found the boat.
...Theresa Kishkan 