Aunt Mara’s kitchen table is the marsh’s other boardwalk: flat, honest, meant for putting things down.

You lay out the night in pieces that are yours. Whatever you actually saw goes on the table: a light, a scream, a knock, a glow, a dog-shaped shadow—or only the ones that happened to you. You do not invent the rest just to make the page look full.

The power holds. The thermos sweats. Jonah, if he made it this far, steals a cookie and admits the science column is “annoyingly good.”

Your phone finds Aunt Mara in snatches. Almost home. Sandbags done. Tell me you stayed kind to yourself.

You have enough to write the true night: a field log of your evidence, wonder still attached, names getting accurate.

You also still want the storm, the dike, the live show, because knowing a mechanism does not make lightning boring. It makes it louder in a better way.

Headlamps will find the drive either way. The choice is whether your last page is ink or weather.