A Bridge Through the Storm

Pre-dawn fog pressed against Jonah Bellamy’s bedroom window, turning the glass into a gray mirror. He woke to the echo of Eli’s voice—that last shout swallowed by thunder—and lay very still, counting his breaths until the hammering of his heart eased. The house settled around him with the soft creak of old timbers; somewhere, a gull cried once and fell silent. He reached for the lamp and watched his own hand tremble in the pool of light. The tremor made the room look unsteady—as if the walls were a hull flexing in heavy seas—and he pulled his hand back, ashamed that something so small could reveal a sorrow so large. On the shelf beside the clock lay Eli’s fishing knife, the handle nicked from a hundred boyhood adventures. Jonah had put it there years ago and never moved it. He told himself he kept it for memory. Some mornings it felt like judgment. He brewed coffee by habit, letting the battered radio murmur weather updates while he packed his boat bag. A gentle southerly, light chop, watch for a weak front late in the day. He folded a rain jacket on top of the spare rope anyway. Grief taught its own forecasts—storms arrive without warning. The coffee steamed in the quiet kitchen; he took one sip, then another, and set the mug down before the ache in his chest could turn to words. Outside, the air smelled of salt and damp rope. Dawn bled a pale stripe along the horizon, pink trying to break the gray. Brightshore woke slowly: porch lights clicked off, a screen door thumped, a dog barked twice and quit. Jonah locked the cottage and started toward the docks. On a telephone line, two swallows faced east like parishioners waiting for the first hymn. Ahead, the silhouette of the old wooden bridge cut a dark seam across the inlet. Even from this distance he could hear the boards answer the tide with a tired creak. His boots found their old rhythm on sand-packed streets. Mrs. Callahan from the corner cottage raised a hand, and he nodded, managing a half-smile he did not feel. He wished he could be the kind of man who stopped and talked about gardens and grandkids. Instead, he measured words like he measured weather—what might turn, where the gusts hid. At the last bend before the pier, the view opened. Boats rocked in easy swells, masts ticking the air. Nets hung from railings like tired laundry. Jonah paused and let the sound of water steady him. He had learned to pass for a man at peace while the old storm still rolled inside. Some mornings it was only a distant growl; others it was a black horizon. Today, the line between calm and weather seemed thin as the fog. He touched the worn handle of Eli’s knife through the canvas of his bag—a ritual he pretended not to notice. “You ever going to stop being a fool?” he asked himself, not unkindly. Then he stepped onto the boards of the pier and breathed the salt as if it could baptize him into a quieter day.