The converted gillnetter left them with two plastic totes, one cooler, a chainsaw case, a box of dry goods wrapped in enough tape to survive a sinking, six full diesel cans and one half full.

The skipper kept the engine in reverse while Steve and Jessica carried the last of it across the dock.

The inlet was calm enough that the boat barely worked against the lines, but the water outside the pilings was black and deep and held no reflection except a broken strip of November sky.

Aries came off last.

Jessica stepped onto the dock, pointed beside the cooler and said, "Stay."

The black-and-tan dog sat immediately, eyes moving from the departing boat to the trees above the lodge. He had been Jessica's since he was a puppy and had learned enough tricks over the years that Steve had stopped being surprised by what she could ask him to do. Sit. Stay. Roll over. Play dead.

Bring something back by name if he knew the word for it.

"Six weeks," the skipper said.

Steve looked at him.

"Weather permitting."

"That part you said quieter."

"That part matters more."

The skipper grinned, released the line and backed away from the dock. Ten minutes later the gillnetter was a white stern light moving between two walls of cedar. Then it was gone.

Jessica stood beside Steve with her hands in the pockets of her rain jacket.

"Well."

"Yep."

"You have anything more useful?"

"Not yet."

The lodge had been built when fishing camps were built for men who expected discomfort and considered it proof they were doing something worthwhile. Cedar shakes grey with age. Plywood over most of the windows. A main hall with a stone fireplace large enough to heat forty people if somebody fed it all day. Propane range. Old propane refrigerator. Upstairs dormitory with twenty bunks. Caretaker room behind the kitchen, ten by twelve, one window facing the inlet.

The generator shed sat twenty feet north of the side door. Diesel generator, battery bank, workbench, transfer panel, spare filters, oil, belts and a red mushroom emergency stop mounted beside the outside door under a cloudy plastic cover. Steve tested it before he unloaded his clothes. Engine stopped hard.

Work lamp died with it. He reset it and wrote the date in the maintenance binder.

"You tested the thing that shuts off the thing before you tested whether the thing works," Jessica said.

"It worked when it shut off."

"That is such a Steve answer."

They spent the first week making the lodge smaller.

Aries learned it with them. Kitchen meant food but not permission. Generator shed meant wait at the threshold. Dock meant stay until one of them stepped onto it first.

On the fourth day Steve dropped a work glove somewhere between the woodshed and the side door.

Jessica looked at Aries and said, "Get Steve's glove."

He disappeared around the corner and came back carrying it by two fingers of leather, tail moving as though the entire lodge had been built for that job.

Steve took it from him. "Show-off."

Aries sat and waited for the praise anyway.

Water lines drained from unused washrooms. Dormitory doors closed. Three upstairs circuits shut down. Window plywood checked. Chimney cleaned. Generator serviced. Battery bank watered. Exterior fuel line inspected. Heat tape in the crawl space tested.

The crawl space had two ways in. A floor hatch in the mechanical room and a square plywood panel in the north skirting, left from the original plumbing work. The outside panel was held by two rotating catches and sat far enough beneath the overhang that rain rarely reached it. Steve opened it, checked the framing for rot, followed the water line with a flashlight between his teeth and closed it again.

It was not a door in the way he thought of doors.

It was access for tools, pipe and a man willing to crawl.

He tested every smoke detector. Fresh batteries in all of them. Each one chirped. He wrote the dates down.

Jessica counted everything they might eat.

Eighteen tins of peaches. Fourteen tomato soup. Twelve emergency ration bars. Six one-litre bottles of water in a sealed case. Flour. Rice. Coffee. Tea. Powdered milk. Canned ham. Beans. Oatmeal. Two jars of peanut butter. One jar of strawberry jam Steve said would outlive both of them.

She counted medical supplies too.

Gauze. Tape. Antiseptic. Triangular bandages. Scissors. Tweezers. Elastic wraps. A few ancient IV￾start supplies left sealed in the bottom of the kit.

"No lidocaine," she said.

"Planning something?"

"Planning to complain before I need it."

In the storeroom were fifty pounds of lime, bleach, contractor garbage bags thick enough to hold wet carpet, spare propane bottles, mouse poison and three cases of toilet paper.

"Romantic," Jessica said.

"You wanted quiet."

They needed money too.

That part did not get discussed.

By Day Twenty-Two they had stopped hearing the lodge as a new place.

Steve knew the generator's healthy rhythm and the half-second change before it took load. He knew the foot valve on the water system was failing because the pump lost prime after sitting too long. He knew the office outlet would not hold Jessica's lamp plug unless he bent the contacts back. He knew which dormitory bunk squeaked when the building cooled and which section of kitchen floor sounded hollow because old ductwork crossed beneath it.

Jessica knew where Steve put tools he claimed he had not moved. She knew the lodge smelled different before rain. She knew he slept badly when the wind came from the southwest and worse when something in the building did not make the sound he expected.

On Day Twenty-Two the barometer dropped hard.

By evening the inlet had disappeared behind rain.

Steve added two lines to the lodge skiff, a sixteen-foot aluminum boat with a fifteen-horse outboard.

Bow line. Stern line. Spring line. He tied them himself, pulled each knot and stood on the dock long enough to watch the boat rise and fall against the fenders.

Jessica watched from the kitchen window.

"It still there?"

"No. Fish took it."

"Good. Less work."

The storm lasted three days.

On the first, rain went nearly horizontal and the generator began hunting between high and low RPM until Steve shut it down and cleaned the fuel bowl. On the second, the freezing level dropped and sleet stuck to the north wall. The VHF in the office became mostly static. The satellite phone had been dead since they arrived, a charging fault the owner had promised would be fixed with the next supply run.

On the third night Jessica woke to knocking.

Aries was already awake.

He stood beside the caretaker-room door with his head low and ears forward.

He did not bark.

That was what made Jessica sit up.

Three beats.

A pause.

Three more.

She lay still.

The wind struck the plywood over the dormitory windows.

Three knocks.

Pause.

Three.

"Steve."

He was already awake.

"I heard it."

"Door?"

"Don't know."

They dressed without turning on the main lights. Steve took the black rubber flashlight from the nail inside the generator shed door where he kept it for failures. Jessica followed him through the mudroom.

The side door opened against wind hard enough to take both hands.

The dock was empty.

Their skiff was gone.

Steve stopped beneath the overhang.

The bow cleat was still there. Spring cleat too. Lines were not.

"Steve."

Jessica pointed beyond the dock.

Something moved against the rocks.

A different skiff.

Fourteen feet. Riveted aluminum. Faded blue stripe. Upside down at the edge of the fixed dock, stern grinding against rock.

A man's upper body lay across the wet boards beneath one side of it.

His legs were still in the water.

For half a second neither of them moved.

Then Jessica ran.

Steve followed.

They rolled the skiff enough to free him. He was heavy with water and completely limp. Jessica found a pulse at the neck.

Aries had followed as far as the top of the dock and stopped when Steve told him to stay. Wind flattened the fur along his back. He watched without making a sound.

"Alive."

"Barely?"

"Move."

They got him inside on a blanket.

Severe hypothermia changed the rules. Jessica kept Steve from rubbing his arms or trying to heat him fast. Wet clothes cut away. Dry layers. Blankets. Warm bottles around the trunk, not against frozen hands and feet. Slow movement.

The man's right fingernails were torn. Knuckles split. Left forearm carried a cut almost four inches long.

Jessica cleaned it with boiled water and iodine while Steve held the flashlight.

The flesh was cold and pale, the bleeding slowed almost to nothing. There was no anaesthetic in the first aid kit, and even if there had been, Jessica would not have pushed a needle into skin that cold unless she had to.

She put in seven stitches.

Her fingers were stiff. The nylon thread shook each time the wind struck the building.

If the man felt the needle, he gave no sign.

He never woke.

Near four in the morning, his core temperature had come up enough that Jessica stopped looking at the clock every thirty seconds.

Steve sat beside the fire with wet socks steaming near the hearth.

"Our boat didn't come untied."

Jessica did not look up.

"You haven't checked."

"I tied it."

"Storm tore things off roofs tonight."

"I tied it."

She looked at him then.

There was a tone Steve had when a machine failed. Irritation first. Curiosity beneath it.

There was another tone when he thought somebody had made the machine fail.

She knew that one too.

"Not tonight," she said.

His hand went briefly to his chest, to an empty place where something had once been carried.

Then he lowered it.

"Not tonight."

Outside, the storm covered everything that had happened on the dock.

Inside, a stranger breathed beside their fire.

The next supply boat was due in just under three weeks, longer if the weather held it back.

Even if the radio worked, nobody was coming in that storm.