It was all gone now, evaporated, a summer’s dew. Even the island fishermen, who’d gone out that first night in the fog and risked their lives among the sharp fragments of the plane—even they grew embittered; for since the crash they couldn’t launch their boats, and the waters remained off limits. They’d hosted families from New York City, from Amsterdam, but what had they gotten in return? When could they fish again? When could they have their island back?

Some afternoons when the main house was full, Kevin escaped to the frozen garden. He sat on the bench in the cold among the bolted lettuces, the split cabbage, the dead cucumber vines. Tomatoes hung frozen on their stalks. Pumpkins sagged and rotted in the center. A fringe of isinglass glistened on the walkway. When would all of this stop? he wondered. When would life return as before? He kept thinking of the Auden poem about the Brueghel painting, the boy dropping into the sea. It was Icarus, he remembered now, falling into the water (he finally found the book). If only he could be like the plowman or the ship, ignoring the splash. It was not an important failure; the sun shone as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green. That was how it went…and the expensive delicate ship…sailed calmly on.

Eighteen

Ana Gathreaux’s first days back on Ninth Street passed like a silent film: the sun rose and fell, traffic inched up the avenue—yet nothing seemed to make any noise. The afternoons were chilled, bright, the mornings unassailably blue. There was so much for her to do: agree to some kind of memorial, a service, a funeral; people kept asking, volunteering to arrange one—but surely she couldn’t have a memorial if Russell hadn’t yet been found. There was Russell’s mother to visit in England; she called every other day and left long, woeful messages on Ana’s machine—as if she were the one most bereft. There was the lab to contend with. Russell’s office at the museum. Friends came to the loft and left food. Cakes. Lasagna. Cookies. After they went, Ana threw their baking in the trash, or put it on the roof for the pigeons. She couldn’t possibly be expected to eat cake.

In her lab, the Savannah Sparrows fluttered in their cages, twitched their wings when they saw her, begged the way they would as chicks when a parent approached. Her lab assistant looked on, delighted, clasping hands.

They missed you! Connie exclaimed, but Ana turned away.

Please, she said, I can’t…

She locked herself in the bathroom and wept.