They pulled onto the Peninsular Road. Spiderwebs glistened in fields. All of the passengers sat with cardboard coffee cups steaming in the laddered light, staring out the windows, lost in their own thoughts. Like Ana, they’d arrived the evening before in the dark and the rain and had seen little of the island. But now, in the daylight, they stared at the ocean sparkling on the right. Milkweed floated across the road. Some late monarch butterflies lifted over meadows. The man in the tweed coat sighed beside Ana.

It’s almost offensive, he uttered.

Ana turned from the window.

What is?

How pretty the place is.

He shook his head. He wore a mustache, elegant wire-rimmed glasses; his eyes behind them were greenish. Ana smiled dolefully.

Yes, she nodded, isn’t it?

The man took off his glasses and dabbed the corner of his eye with a sleeve. His hair was frosted at the sides, as if he’d stood in front of a Frigidaire too long Who had he lost? Ana wondered but didn’t ask. Did the specifics matter? Hadn’t they all lost the same? She turned back to the window. A green heron rose across the road. The man was right about the beauty: she hadn’t expected that either.

They rode in silence. Music piped over the bus stereo, low and indistinct. Pink and blue houses huddled beside the sea, laundry flapping in front yards, and more ribbons tied around trees and handwritten signs Ana refused to read.

In another twenty minutes, Mrs. McIntyre rose in the front of the bus. They’d spend a few hours at Caginish Point she announced. They were free to wander the site but should keep away from the rocky shore (the surf was quite dangerous, she explained). There’d be a short ceremony at noon under a tent. The prime minister would be there. She said more, but Ana wasn’t listening any longer, and neither were most of the others. They pressed faces to glass, clutched hands, shifted legs in their seats. They were nearing the place; they all could feel it. Outside, the provincial police directed traffic. The road grew thick with emergency vehicles. Army trucks. Police vans. Satellite dishes bloomed from the back of uplink trucks. Cameramen ran into position. A nun and a priest knelt by the side of the road, each holding a wooden cross in the air.

Ana steeled herself. She stuffed her knapsack beneath the seat, put on her beret; she wished she’d brought a pair of sunglasses. Pars Mansoor offered her a blue windbreaker, but she declined. Outside, they couldn’t see the ocean yet, but the wind snapped around her, surprisingly cold. People were shouting questions, angling booms overhead.

Keep together! Mrs. McIntyre yelled.