Kevin entered the garden. The tomato vines hung with heirlooms, some already rotted on their stalks. The lettuces had just about all bolted. He hadn’t had a chance to harvest anything, let alone put up the San Marzanos for winter. He set the fruit on a marble bench at the end of the garden. For the first time in what seemed like weeks, he had a moment to himself. Crows barked in the trees. Hornets buzzed. A yellow butterfly landed on the bench and opened its wings. In the distance, down by the water’s edge, three figures in fluorescent blaze vests made a slow sweep along the beach. They were there each midmorning, ground searchers, scouring the shore-line for bits of the plane. Each high tide brought a fresh harvest of shoes and handbags and Styrofoam insulation, and officially all the island beaches were off limits. On the second morning, Kevin had gone with the dog for his morning walk on the strand, only to discover among the eelgrass a windrow of plastic airline cups and drenched clothing. Two gulls were fighting over a bit of something; when he saw a bone attached, his stomach flipped. He grabbed Oscar by the collar and ran back to the house. When the ground searchers arrived later, they sealed whatever it was in an evidence bag. Kevin hadn’t been down to the beach since.

He sat now and watched the searchers pick their way along the shore. From up in the garden they looked like figures in an old Flemish painting, gleaners, or sowers of seed, with their walking sticks and nylon sacks slung over shoulders. What was the line of poetry he’d been trying to recall since that night? Something about a painting. Icarus dropping into the sea. The Old Masters. About suffering they were never wrong…It was Auden, he recalled, but what was the name of the poem?