At the Halifax airport, Ana had handed the brush to one of the Red Cross volunteers and he’d taken it so gently, so reverentially, she almost, inexplicably, laughed. They’d given the brush back to her earlier that day; and now in the cottage on Trachis Island, she brought the soft boar hair bristles to her face. They smelled faintly of Russell’s aftershave: Penhaligon’s. Blenheim Bouquet; it had probably rubbed off from his toilet bag.

She left the brush on the bed and went to the sliding glass doors again. The rain had stopped outside. The ocean roared. Wind chimes tinkled somewhere in the dusk. For a moment, a bit of clear sky broke overhead, and the room filled with a muted amber light. The ocean turned molten. It seemed to Ana just then, standing before the glass, that she’d been waiting her whole life to be in that room, at that hour, alone, beside the roiling sea.

The room fell flat again. The light disappeared. She felt so empty, so drained; she’d cried so much in the past few days there were not even tears left inside. She slid open the glass door. The air smelled of low tide. She heard the hoarse chatter of a kingfisher overhead; it sounded, as it always did, like a bird who’d lost its voice and was left with only a rattle, an unlovely staccato, harsh and insistent. It called again from a nearby tree, paused, and rattled once more. Had Ana looked above the cedar deck, into the spruce, she might have seen it there. A Belted Kingfisher. Megaceryle alcyon. What was the story Russell told her once about the kingfishers? She couldn’t recall just then, but her breath quickened anyhow. The hairs on her arms stood on end. She opened the door wider and stepped outside. She was going down to the beach.

Six