The islanders of Lúnasa whisper about the tidal curse how twice a year, the sea retreats, exposing wrecks and the sins of those who drowned them. They say the ocean remembers what the land forgets, and when the tide vanishes, secrets rise like driftwood.

May Ó Ceallaigh is born during such a tide, her first breath drowned by the lighthouse bell, as if the island itself warns her: This place will break your heart.

May meets Love Quinn at ten, knee-deep in briny pools, hunting sea glass. Love laughs like bells tied to a kite neither boy nor girl, just a storm in tangled chestnut hair and mismatched boots. Their father mans the lighthouse; May’s mother stares at the wall where her dead husband’s fishing nets still hang.

“You’re sad,” Love says, pressing cobalt glass into May’s palm. “Sad people notice things. Help me find the Siren’s Gold.”

A wrecked schooner rumored to surface during the curse tide, the Siren’s Gold supposedly holds letters from drowned sailors whose final words unread.

“Why?” May asks

“secrets rot if you don’t air them out.”

They find the ship’s skeleton by moonlight. Inside a rusted lockbox, they discover not gold, but a child’s seashell necklace and a photograph of two women kissing on the shore. Love tucks the shell into their pocket.

“Proof.”

“Of what?”

“That the sea lies worse than priests.”

By sixteen, they are two bodies with a single heartbeat. Love teaches May to chart stars; May teaches Love to read silences. They build a raft, The Unforgotten , and hide a tin box beneath the lighthouse stairs a trove of their own secrets: A cigarette stub from Love’s first kiss ,lock of May’s hair and a note in Love’s hand: When I leave, take me with you.

Love’s father drinks more after the lighthouse is automated. “I’ll apply to a maritime school,” they tell May. “You’ll study botany. We’ll live in a city where no one knows about tides.”

May kisses them then, salt and Merlot sharp on her tongue. Love freezes.

“You’re my best friend.”

“I know,” May lies.

Love leaves. May stays, tending the lighthouse and her mother’s grave. Letters come monthly Galway is rain and strangers; I miss the ache of your silence until they stop. Rumor says Love marries a musician, someone who doesn’t smell of fish and regret.

The curse tide returns on a Tuesday. May is scrubbing lens glass when the bell clangs. Downstairs, Love stands dripping, suitcase in hand, a bruise blooming on their jaw.

“He didn’t like my pronouns.”

May bandages their knuckles, voice colder than the Atlantic. “You don’t get to leave and come back.”

Love’s eyes flick to the tin box under the stairs. “You kept it.”

“I kept me .”

Love moves into the lighthouse, and the island holds its breath. At dawn, when the tide retreats, the Siren’s Gold resurfaces. Love runs to it, barefoot and fevered. May follows, chest a cage of wasps.

Inside the ship’s belly, Love finds a box. Inside it: a letter from May’s mother, dated weeks before her death.

I saw you kissing Love. You’ll end up like the Quinnsbroken, drowned. Leave, or I’ll tell their father.

May’s lungs burn. “You knew.”

Love stares at the horizon. “She gave me money to disappear. I took it.”

“You would’ve chosen me over her. I couldn’t let you.”

May’s slap echoes off the rocks.

Hate, May learns, is love folded too many times.

On the last night of the tide, a storm swallows the island. The lighthouse falters. May climbs the tower, wind clawing her hair. Love is already there, wrestling the frozen lens.

At the next curse tide, May rows into the vanished sea, carrying nothing but the necklace and a heart full of ghosts.