The sun was dropping through trees outside. She walked through the empty lobby. The rooms seemed desolate now with so many guests gone. The housecleaner was vacuuming the hallway. There was a noticeable chill in the air. Perhaps it was time, Ana thought, to return home. But what was there for her back in New York City? An empty loft, her lab, her life—what used to be her life. However awful things were on the island, it couldn’t be as bad as returning home with nothing to show for herself, or Russell’s self. As long as she stayed on Trachis Island, her life remained suspended in a kind of solution, where there seemed to her an illogical glimmer of hope—for what or whom, she wasn’t quite sure. At the very least, she wanted a piece of Russell, some evidence, a patch of clothing or a positive ID. A tube of deoxyribonucleic acid that would at least confirm he’d been on the plane.

She entered the library. The last of the day lingered in the windows. How long had she been on the island? Three days? Four? Was it more? It seemed she’d endured there for weeks.

She stood among the books and the dust motes in the empty room. What was it about the library that gave her the smallest drop of comfort? She kept returning there each evening. The room reminded her somehow of Russell; at least he would’ve appreciated the library, the crowd of armchairs, the green glass shades, the fake Tiffany lamps. The books on papyrology, Norse gods, salt mining. An entire shelf housed Greek literature in translation: Herodotus, Pythagoras, the Epicureans (each book dog-eared and Kevin Gearns’s name penned on the inside cover). Russell would have liked that too, and the oak shelves which smelled of lemon furniture wax.

She picked out an old volume of Jean-Henri Fabre’s Life of the Caterpillar. The pages looked as if they’d been steeped in tea. The book was one of Russell’s favorites—he’d grown up with it in England—and seeing the title, taking it off the shelf, brushing dust from the leather cover, Ana felt a peculiar tingle, as she had the night before with the Chopin. Why, of all books, should she find that here?

The first time she’d met Russell was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Ana was a new intern in the Ornithology Department, Russell the assistant to the collections manager. In the main lobby, Ana waited anxiously on a bench under the enormous barasaurus, and Russell was the one who came down to fetch her. On the elevator, he gently quizzed her about her work. He had a slight Oxbridge accent, a supercilious grin. He wore brown loafers—Weejuns, of course—and no socks.