Mrs. Liang, who’d flown with her husband from Taipei, wandered the lawn above the bluffs. She wore a white nightgown, a piece of white crepe around her arm, a pair of cotton slippers. She carried a framed portrait of her daughter, Tien. Mrs. Liang had never left Taipei before, and she found herself halfway around the world, on this strange island, so empty, so devoid of people, with only the sound of waves orchestrating in the night. She climbed the steep cedar steps down to the strand. Where was her daughter? she wondered. Was she out there? In the water? In the air?

Parviz Mansoor, whose young niece had been on the plane, left the front door of the inn and walked up the lawn to the garden. Claartija deJong, the Dutch girl, slipped outside the dining room onto the stone terrace and sat in a chair with her knees tucked under her chin. All of them were drawn into the night like metal filings attracted to a much larger magnet. They passed one another in the dark, each in his or her own orbit but unaware of the others. Mrs. Liang with the portrait of Tien felt the icy water on her toes. Had someone stood near enough, they’d have heard her whispering to herself. Yet even if they’d understood Mandarin, what she said would have made little sense. For ever since the night she and her husband had gotten the call, ever since she’d fainted on the floor of their apartment on the Keelung Road—the two of them clutching each other on the carpet—Mrs. Liang had been inconsolable. She blamed herself. If only she’d flown to New Jersey to see Tien, instead of always insisting her daughter come home to Taipei, Tien would still be alive. For days, Mrs. Liang raved. She pulled her hair. It was all her fault. In the last five days, she’d talked nonstop about Tien coming home, about ghosts and ancestors and crossing water in boats.

The moon climbed higher. Foam pearled at her feet. She held the picture frame before her, as if by raising the image into the air, she might pull her daughter’s soul from the night.