第2章 第8節 缶詰工場
The Cannery
They dried the tape carefully in the lamplight of the station.
Gabriel handled it as if it were made of glass.
"Before you listen," he said, "you must understand this town's ."
He spoke of the that had once fed all of Saltmere.
It was the where half the town had earned its living.
Twenty years ago, a fire had destroyed it in a single night.
The flames had risen so high they lit the clouds red.
"One man died in that fire," Gabriel said, "a named Peer."
He was a man whom everyone had loved and quickly forgotten.
After the fire, the town had sealed its lips and moved on.
No one had ever been blamed, and no questions had been allowed.
"They said it was an ," Gabriel murmured, "and buried it."
Nora looked at the tape that had waited so long in the sea.
"And you think my mother knew the truth?" she asked.
"I think she recorded it," he said, "which is why she had to vanish."
He threaded the tape into the patient machine.
The reel that held the drowned box began slowly to turn.
filled the room, then settled into her mother's voice.
It was now, the voice of a woman who had decided to speak.
"If you have found this," Marion said, "then you reached the bells."
Nora leaned closer, hardly daring to breathe at all.
"There is something this town has hidden for twenty years."
The old machine hissed, and the past pressed against the room.
"That fire," her mother said clearly, "was not an ."
The words fell like stones into the silence of the station.
Nora felt the whole story finally beginning to break open.