Just after the crash, Mark Fallon had called Kevin Gearns from Montreal. Kevin lived just up the road on Trachis. He asked if Kevin would walk over and check on the place, throw away the food in the fridge (and take whatever he wanted). And did he know someone who could drain the pipes, turn off the hot water heater, the fridge, and board the windows for winter? Kevin suggested Sheila Quinn’s brother Rupert (he certainly could use the money). Mark Fallon took the number and thanked him. Kevin said he’d give Rupert the key.

That was last September, and though Mark had asked Rupert Quinn to put a bill in the mail, no bill had arrived all winter; and Mark and Laura worried if Kevin had even given him the key, if the windows had been boarded and the gas turned off, the pipes drained. And what of the lawn and the garden and the beach? Was the little blue rowboat still left outside? Had Rupert Quinn seen to that too?

On any normal year, the Fallons would have gone to Trachis for the Christmas holiday (cold walks on the beach, fires in the Waterford stove). But not this year. The island was still in turmoil. They stayed in Montreal instead, skied the Laurentians. Yet with the first hint of warm weather, the girls began anew: When will we go to the island? When can we get to the beach? Soon, soon, said Mark Fallon, but he had his TV show to attend to, scripts to keep up with, new ones to write. Couldn’t they go for just a few days? Laura pleaded.

Finally, Laura decided: She’d go on her own with the girls. She’d never done the twelve-hour drive without her husband, but the girls were old enough now; Olivia could take care of Isabel. They’d spend a night at a motel along the way. Mark could stay in town with his scripts. It was already May besides. Surely the island was safe to return to. God knew Laura could use a break as well. From Mark. From Montreal. From the same six rooms.

Olivia stood beside the wooden rail, her braid between her teeth (a habit she’d just started). Isabel held a potato chip in the air to feed the jockeying gulls. Buoys moaned in the bay. Laura put an arm around both girls.

Smell that air, she said and inhaled deeply the familiar salt air, the diesel, the North Atlantic breeze.