The salt air still clung to Clara’s skin as she
stepped off the bus at Port Lorne, the same town
that had tried to bury her father’s name. The
1970s had brought new roads and Holden Kings,
but the old wharf still creaked under the weight
of memories. Her father, a union rep, had been
killed in a strike gone wrong—officially by
accident, but Clara never believed it. She came
back not for closure, but for reckoning.
At the local pub, she found him: Jack Harrow,
the foreman who’d signed the report that sealed
her father’s fate. He hadn’t aged much, just
hardened. He didn’t flinch when she asked about
that night. “You think I wanted this?” he said,
voice low. “Your dad was a fool. Thought he
could outsmart the system.”
Clara took a job at the fishery, working nights
alongside migrant workers from Vietnam and
Greece. The pay was poor, the hours worse, but
she needed leverage. The town had changed—more
cars, more money—but the power still belonged to
men like Jack. She watched him closely, noting
the way he avoided the old dock where the strike
had turned violent.
One evening, while sorting crates, she found a
ledger hidden beneath a floorboard. It listed
payments made to officials in exchange for quiet
on the strike. Names were crossed out, but one
remained: Jack Harrow. She kept it, knowing it
would be her weapon.
On the night of the annual Regatta, she
confronted him at the docks. The moon hung low
over the water, casting long shadows. He didn’t
run. “You think you’re the first?” he said,
voice thick with bitterness. “Your dad? He
walked into that crane like a man who thought he
was right. I just signed the papers.”
She handed him the ledger. He stared at it, then
at her. For a moment, it seemed he might break.
But instead, he laughed—a dry, broken sound.
“You don’t get to decide what happens now,” he
said. “That’s not your fight anymore.”
She left the next morning, the ledger tucked in
her bag. The town still clung to its myths, to
its legends of mateship and hard work. But Clara
knew better. The system had always been rigged,
and the tides had always shifted in favour of
those who held the rope.
The saltwater account was never balanced.
