For the rest of the morning, he cleaned and chopped vegetables, cooked and stewed: a mushroom risotto. A pork shoulder (slathered with garlic, oregano, and salt), an escarole pie (with olives and capers—and anchovies snuck in—for flavor). By one o’clock, the afternoon grew overcast. By two it looked like rain. At three, one of the minibuses gurgled in the driveway. The dog shot out of the house and stood beside the bus, tongue out, tail wagging. Kevin went to greet the guests too. They were climbing off the bus, some with roses in plastic tubes, others with bottles of seawater. The Dutch girl carried a small teddy bear. Everyone’s hair looked windswept, disheveled, yet there seemed something slightly different about them now, something that Kevin couldn’t put his finger on but noticed nonetheless. They hesitated on the front lawn in clusters and pairs—the Brooklyn family, the woman with the cane—not willing, right away, to return to their rooms. They stretched and lingered. The Italians lit cigarettes. The Dutch girl let Oscar sniff her teddy bear, then tossed it on the lawn and ran after him and played tug-of-war. Mr. and Mrs. Liang headed slowly toward the bluffs.

Some of them would be leaving that evening, returning to the mainland; others had chosen to stay another night—or perhaps longer. Most of their loved ones had not been found yet. Only eleven bodies out of the hundreds thus far had been positively identified. The process was gruelingly slow, given the condition of the bodies they’d recovered (none, actually, intact). Ana Gathreaux, for one, wanted to stay on the island until her husband had been found or at the very least, identified—until she knew he’d actually been on the plane. She had no intention of leaving right away; for what had she to return to? The empty loft, the lab, her Savannah Sparrows? No, she’d stay a few more days. Besides, she hadn’t yet visited the hangar at the naval yard at the end of the island. All recovered personal items were being collected and sorted there, and the families had been invited to look among the things.