The bus rocked lightly. The windows steamed. The Chinese couple sat across the aisle, hands interlaced like twigs. Ana’s eyes slowly closed, then her head drooped sideways. Pars was staring out the window when he felt her hair on his arm, then the weight of her skull drop onto his shoulder. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to disturb the woman despite the awkward pressure, and the smell of her damp beret.

Outside, a field of salt hay blurred by. A mudflat veined in red. A lagoon. A blue-and-white bird flew up from the reeds and raced alongside the bus. A large beak. A Mohawk. A flash of white wings. Pars saw it—the name in Farsi on the tip of his tongue—and then just as quickly, it was gone.

Eight

At Trachis Inn, Kevin arranged fruit in a porcelain bowl. Two apples, a Bosc pear, a banana. The fruit was for Mr. Liang. He’d asked that morning in broken English if he might “inquire” a bowl of fruit for his wife. Not for her to eat, not for him to eat, but for their daughter, Tien. They needed to feed her fruit. Food for the dead. Yes, Kevin said, he’d put a bowl in their cottage before they returned. Mr. Liang, bowing up and down, thanked him profusely. He was a small man with thick-framed eyeglasses and liver spots on his forehead. He removed a wallet from his back pocket—he was only being polite—but Kevin blushed and forced him to put it away. Fruit was the least Kevin could afford the dead.

Midmorning, he filled the bowl in the kitchen and set it on the ledge above the sink. The sun brightened through the screens, the green porcelain glowed. A perfect little still life, he thought, with the milky blue sky behind, yet he wished he’d had a pomegranate—only partially for the color. He set aside a peach and an Anjou pear. He’d take those up to the garden himself. His own meager offering to the dead or the yellow jackets, whichever got there first.

He waited until Douglas left for the morning; he didn’t want him knowing about the fruit (no doubt he’d have something derisive to say). The bay sparkled outside, the water a glazed blue. The guests were all gone to Caginish; only Sheila Quinn remained down at the cottages, cleaning, changing sheets; her laundry cart sat parked in a patch of sun under the spruces.