Pars went back to his room on the second floor. If he’d planned on leaving that day, he’d changed his mind. He couldn’t depart in the middle of the crisis over Mrs. Liang. Besides, he was concerned about Ana. She seemed so alone, so vulnerable. Suffering seemed so new to her—as it did, he often thought, to most Americans. Sometimes he saw spasms of anger flicker across her face followed by looks of utter anguish. While the death of his niece was a terrible shock, he hadn’t actually seen the girl in sixteen years; yet for Ana he felt a great encompassing sympathy for the loss of her husband, and he wanted to make sure she’d be all right.

Diana Olmstead helped Mr. Liang back to his cottage and brewed him a cup of valerian tea for his nerves. She sat with him in the light of the open deck door, steam swirling from their cups. Mr. Liang chewed on his lower lip while Diana Olmstead fingered her prayer beads. Even before that morning she’d planned on staying at Trachis Inn. She felt it her duty, not just for her sister—whose body was one of the first to be identified—but for the souls of all the dead who still lingered over the water. For forty-nine days, they’d remain close, in the liminal state, the bardo state—confused and agitated; and it was her duty as a Buddhist (converted, yes) to help guide them through this terrifying time. The dead needed comfort, as did the living. They needed prayer. They needed to be read the Sutra for the Intermediate State. So each morning, Diana Olmstead caned her way to the beach and perched on a boulder with her prayer beads and the tiny rice-paper book with Tibetan script inside. She could understand only bits of the writing from her yearlong retreat in Dharamsala, but the words themselves didn’t matter so much as the sound of them. So what if she mispronounced a few sentences and forgot whole parts? It was the act that mattered most, and the practice of Né Dren, guiding the souls of the dead through their transmigration. She believed it all helped, her prayers, her presence, the beads. A sutra was a thread, a cord, and a prayer as well. She liked the word “sutra” and the idea of threading something together that had been ripped apart. A torn fabric. Suturing the souls of the dead back into the cloth of their new bodies.