Don't Save Me by Leaving

A seamstress and a harbor mechanic save for a wedding in their seaside town, stitching her dress after midnight and keeping their rings in a chipped blue sugar bowl. When her mother needs daily care, he takes a yearlong job aboard a cargo ship to pay for it; she mistakes his packed suitcase for an escape, and he mistakes her empty place on the pier for goodbye. He returns to find her selling the dress outside her shuttered shop, then discovers that she has spent their wedding savings keeping his injured father housed while he was away. They will marry in the repaired shop and make a home above it, but first he must stop treating departure as the only gift he can offer her. With another paid passage waiting at the harbor, he sets his suitcase beside her sewing machine: will she help him unpack, or help him leave again?