Dead Reckoning
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 8
I knew in September.
Not suspicion. Not concern. Knowledge, the specific kind that arrives when enough separate pieces of information assemble themselves into a single unambiguous conclusion. The shipping patterns had changed. The news from port had a new quality to it. The Navy was not patrolling anymore. It was hunting.
I told Jack.
He listened with the complete sincerity he brought to everything I said and then poured another rum and told me we were fine. He said it the way men say things they need to be true. I recognized the tone. I had heard it from commanding officers in Flanders standing in fields that were about to become catastrophic.
I did not argue. I had learned long ago that arguing with a man who needs something to be true is not an argument. It is weather. You wait for it to pass and then you deal with what it has left behind.
I went back on deck and watched the horizon.
The choice was made at dawn on a morning I could not name for you now. Not because I have forgotten it but because it did not feel like a choice that required naming. I stood at the rail and looked at a small island to the west and understood that I could be on it before anyone woke. I understood the sequence that would follow with complete clarity. The island. A fishing vessel. Another name. Another life.
I had done it before.
I stood there for perhaps two minutes.
Then I turned away from the island and went below and that was that.
Thomas was awake. He looked at me from his hammock with the navigator’s eyes that read everything as position and bearing and said nothing. I said nothing. We understood each other without the inconvenience of language, which was one of the things I valued most about him.
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