Kevin hung up the phone, a little dazed, and staggered outside through the screen door. The day had turned golden; oak leaves crisped in the salted air. The lawn needed mowing. Oscar snoozed beside the office door, flies buzzing about his head. Normally Kevin would spend an afternoon like this in the garden, harvesting tomatoes, turning over beds, weeding. He still had fall lettuces to plant. Escarole, arugula, some Asian greens. There were the potatoes to harvest as well. But standing on the lawn just then, the inn completely empty, the voice of the Red Cross woman still ringing in his ears, he wondered if he’d ever be able to enter the garden again. “For closure,” she’d said; but it seemed to Kevin as if nothing would ever close, that it was all just opening, a wound barely begun. Out on the water, a dozen ships moved several miles offshore, a smudge of smoke hovering above. The sea itself had a distinct acrid odor. Douglas had told him earlier what it was: JP-4 jet fuel.

The rest of the day, Kevin busied himself about the house. Douglas slept. The sound of helicopters came and went above the inn. If the families of those who’d been on the plane were coming, he needed to make the place spotless, homey, as comfortable as possible. He needed to start thinking about food. What would they want to eat? What could they possibly put inside themselves after so much was taken out?

For the next few days Kevin preoccupied himself with this question. He prepared food: soups and pies and pasta salads, not only for the anticipated guests but for the rescue workers and volunteers that swarmed the island the very next day. Overnight, Trachis Island had become one of the staging grounds for the search and rescue. The army set up tent camps for ground searchers. Press vans crammed the roadsides; emergency vehicles crowded Government Dock. Each morning, Douglas drove a vanload of Kevin’s cooking there to feed the volunteers. He remained for the rest of the day, helping load boxes into waiting trucks. Douglas had always toyed with the idea of joining Trachis’s small volunteer fire department but felt—not without reason—that he wouldn’t quite fit in. Yet those first few days at Government Dock, working alongside Trachis’s men, Douglas felt something he didn’t recognize and hadn’t even realized was missing from his life: He was needed. He was relied upon. He was useful. The work was not complicated, some heavy lifting and helping to direct traffic occasionally with a lighted baton. But the rescue workers came from all around the province; and because in the chaos of those first few days no one seemed to notice or care who he was, he found himself blending in, more easeful, more at home with the island’s famously laconic men than he ever would have thought possible.