The Husqvarna sounds sexier, Kevin remarked.

Douglas rolled his eyes.

It’s not about the name.

What is it, Russian?

Swedish.

And the Stihl?

German.

Can you get the Husqvarna, Kevin asked, for a Stihl?

Douglas peered over the top of the magazine with an exasperated expression. Kevin picked the basket off the counter and started toward the kitchen.

Well, it’s all the same to me, he said and waved one hand in the air.

Halfway through the door, he stopped. Oscar was barking madly now outside.

What’s wrong with the dog? Douglas asked, but Kevin didn’t answer.

They heard the plane then at the same time: louder and more thunderous than usual. The windows trembled. The lights flickered. And then there was a high deafening shriek as if the aircraft was heading straight into the house. The chandelier shook. A puff of plaster ghosted from the ceiling. In seconds, the roar receded.

Fucking navy, Douglas shouted and threw down the magazine. Why do they need to come in so close?

Kevin, who hadn’t moved from the door, who was still gripping the basket of dill, his heart thumping, said: That didn’t sound like the navy. He hurried back the way he’d come, through the screen door, out into the night, up the hill, and back to the garden for a better view. Oscar shivered beside him, tail between his legs. The fog had nosed onshore. The groan of the aircraft was faint now, somewhere out at sea.

Years afterward, Kevin wished he’d gone somewhere else, to the bluff or the parking lot, or out to the Peninsular Road—anywhere but inside the garden. For whenever he opened the gate in autumn again, whenever he caught the scent of ripe salt hay or dill or the ginny odor of juniper berries, he’d remember what he saw that night, two, three miles offshore: the bottom of a fuselage lit up in a ghastly red glow, enormous, groaning, something not meant to be there, that low, in that place. To have seen it, by himself, alone, a single witness, and then see it no longer—all from inside the garden gate (and hear the terrifying explosion moments later)—seemed almost a personal failure, monumental in scope. The garden, of all places, where he’d always felt protected, enclosed, engirded among his Brussels sprouts and cabbage, his moonflowers; where the world could never enter, where the guests and even Oscar were not allowed.

Lights flashed on in the cottages. Guests ran out to their decks. Douglas appeared in the lighted panel of the office door and shouted for Oscar (Oscar! why not for him?). Sheila Quinn, the kitchen help, ran outside as well, wiping hands on a dish towel.

What happened after was a blur. Sirens wailed sometime later on the Peninsular Road. The retiree with the red cheeks paced the bluff holding a shortwave radio, trying to raise a police scan.