The Night Heron watch­es from a dis­tance as dawn creeps over Barkley Cove’s grave­yard, where grave­stones stand like silent sen­tinels beneath the droop­ing Span­ish moss. The morn­ing air is heavy with mist, car­ry­ing the scent of salt and earth, as if the sea itself has come to mourn along­side those who have gath­ered. Tate moves through the wind­ing paths, his foot­steps slow, delib­er­ate, each step echo­ing the weight of emo­tions that press down on him. The grave­yard, a place that has long housed the his­to­ry of the town, now holds a piece of his own—his father, Scup­per, now rest­ing among those who once sailed the waters and built their lives along the marshy coast.

The real­iza­tion of loss strikes him in waves, bring­ing with it a tide of sor­row that can­not be undone. Yet grief alone is not what grips him—it is the sharp sting of regret, the unspo­ken words that now feel like lost oppor­tu­ni­ties, and the painful aware­ness of moments he can nev­er reclaim. His love for Kya had con­sumed much of his atten­tion, pulling him away from the father who had guid­ed him through boy­hood, shap­ing him into the man he had become. He had spent his time fight­ing for Kya, sup­port­ing her through the scruti­ny of the town and the tri­als she faced, but now, in the still­ness of the grave­yard, he won­ders how much of that time came at the cost of tru­ly know­ing his father in his final years.

Tate kneels beside the fresh mound of earth, the cool morn­ing breeze rustling through the near­by trees, car­ry­ing echoes of the past. In his hands, he holds a small brown case—unremarkable to any­one else, but to him, it car­ries the weight of shared moments and qui­et lessons learned. A bat­tery-oper­at­ed record play­er, a rel­ic of the past, sits beside the head­stone as a final trib­ute, a tan­gi­ble bridge between what was and what will nev­er be again. The song that begins to play—Miliza Korjus’s del­i­cate melody—drifts into the still air, thread­ing itself between the graves, wrap­ping around him like a whis­per of remem­brance. It is a song his father once played for him, a song that now serves as both a farewell and a con­nec­tion across time.

As the melody unfolds, mem­o­ries sur­face, vivid and unre­lent­ing. His father’s voice echoes in his mind, not just in words but in ges­tures, in the way he saw the world, in the qui­et lessons he tried to pass down. Scup­per had nev­er been the kind of man who mea­sured strength in phys­i­cal might alone; he believed in the pow­er of emo­tion, in the abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate beau­ty, to express rather than sup­press. Music had been one of his ways of teach­ing Tate that life was not just about sur­viv­ing, but about feeling—about embrac­ing the moments that made exis­tence mean­ing­ful. Now, as Tate lis­tens to the song play­ing in the morn­ing light, he final­ly under­stands the depth of his father’s wis­dom.

Tate’s gaze drifts toward the sea, its pres­ence con­stant, unchanged, a reminder of the way life moves for­ward no mat­ter how much we wish to hold onto the past. His father had once told him that the sea nev­er stops teach­ing, that if one lis­tens close­ly, the waves have sto­ries to tell. He won­ders if, in some way, his father’s pres­ence lingers in the water, in the shift­ing tides, in the gen­tle wind that car­ries the song toward the marsh. He takes a deep breath, allow­ing the still­ness to set­tle inside him, under­stand­ing now that grief does not have a clear end—it becomes a part of a per­son, shap­ing them just as love once did.

As the Night Heron perch­es near­by, its head tilt­ing slight­ly as if observ­ing his moment of reflec­tion, Tate feels a qui­et sense of closure—not an end, but an accep­tance of what has been and what will always remain. The record play­er hums soft­ly as the song fades, but the feel­ing it evokes lingers, much like his father’s teach­ings, much like the love that nev­er tru­ly dis­ap­pears. The grave­yard, though a place of end­ings, becomes in this moment a space for under­stand­ing, for car­ry­ing for­ward the lessons left behind. Tate ris­es, the weight of loss still present but no longer as heavy, know­ing that in every wave that crash­es against the shore, in every song that plays through the wind, his father’s spir­it will always be there.