Ana Gathreaux woke in the dark, thinking she was back with her birds in her lab. When she heard the ocean through the screens, she realized otherwise and tried to fall asleep again—but couldn’t. An hour later the dawn still hadn’t come; yet finally, after six, she stumbled outside to the deck. The sky was slate, a slash of burnt orange in the east. Northwest winds. Another excellent night for migration, Ana thought ruefully. Some dark specks hurried across the water, birds heading back to land. Often they got wind-drifted twenty, thirty miles out to sea during a night of migration. In the morning, when the sun rose, they corrected their course and flew swiftly back to the coast.

Mornings had become the worst for Ana. For six days she’d woken with a racing heart, remembering what she’d forgotten in the night: that Russell wasn’t beside her in bed, that he was missing, somewhere out in the water, probably—definitely—not coming back. Each morning a blade sank into her heart and she buried herself beneath blankets, chest pumping, teeth grinding, until she felt as if she’d explode. The only thing was to force herself up, walk around, brew a lot of coffee with a lot of milk and a lot of sugar in it—not the usual English breakfast tea she always drank with Russell.

At eight, she dragged herself to the main house for breakfast. She wasn’t hungry. She was too anxious about the trip that morning to the crash site yet thought she should consume something. She picked an apple from a bowl, a croissant. She probably wouldn’t eat either; at least she’d have something for the gulls. Some of the others—the Italian couple, the Brooklyn family—were sitting in the dining room. She didn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone. The Brooklyn family were eating eggs and bacon. They waved her over, but she gestured toward the door, that she had to go. She’d talked to one of the adult sons in Halifax. Their father had been on the flight. He was an entertainment lawyer. He’d worked just three blocks from her lab at NYU.

At nine, two minibuses pulled into the drive. Ana found a seat beside a window halfway toward the rear. She recognized some of the passengers: a Hasidic boy and his mother. The large Bulgarian in the overcoat. Others had come from the mainland for the day. The bus was filling up. Diesel gurgled; the windows were tinted bronze. The man in the tweed coat asked if the place beside her was occupied. No. She picked up her knapsack and stowed it beneath her legs. He thanked her and slipped into the seat.