Every year, the tourists come to Bellmare — a quiet New England town hugging the edge of the Atlantic — and every year, they leave just before the salt air turns sharp and the sea turns mean. Locals call it “the salt season,” when everything slows, the wind howls, and secrets begin to stir.
This year, a body washes up on the beach. No name, no ID, just a lighthouse key in their pocket.
For Mara, a restless waitress with dreams of leaving, and Cal, a retired cop who drinks too early and remembers too much, the stranger’s arrival reopens wounds that never healed. The town, already worn thin by loss and time, tightens its grip. Everyone knows something, but no one wants to speak — not the woman who watches the shore every morning, not the mayor’s son who vanished for a week last winter, and certainly not the lighthouse keeper who swears the light’s been flickering on by itself.
As Mara and Cal dig deeper — reluctantly at first, then with quiet obsession — they begin to unravel not just what happened, but what’s been happening. The past doesn’t stay buried in Bellmare. The tide always brings it back.
