Treatment
Runtime: ~18 minutes. Tone: intimate, wind-scraped, funny in the wrong places. Visual language: bleached docks, radio static, close-ups of hands that know rope better than each other.
ELLIE (31) arrives first — practical, clipboard energy, already negotiating with the marina. NOAH (27) arrives late with a duffel and the wrong weather for goodbye.
Their mother’s boat, The Meridian, sits like a held breath. Selling it is supposed to be simple. It isn’t.
The boat doesn’t care who was the favorite. It only cares who shows up with a wrench.
Key scene
EXT. DOCK — LATE AFTERNOON
Wind. Gulls. Ellie checks listings on her phone. Noah sits on the edge, feet dangling above black water.
NOAH
He left you the house voice. He left me the jokes. Neither of those float.
ELLIE
We’re not keeping it so you can feel poetic on a Tuesday.
NOAH
Then tell me what we’re keeping. Because if it’s just money, say money.
Ellie doesn’t. The silence is saltier than the air.
Ending beat
They don’t reverse the sale. They do something smaller and harder: they take the boat out once more, argue halfway to the buoy, and come back quieter — not healed, but finally in the same weather.
