A rumbling throb, very low, grew louder. Nils Larson's boat, Penobscot, which had almost hit the piling late the previous night, approached out of the drifting mist. The vessel disappeared like a wraith, then reappeared in ghostly black and white and finally took on colors of orange and yellow and rusty red.

At her bow was a froth of water. To Ellen she seemed to be grinning triumphantly, as if she knew more than Ellen or the men who worked her.

Ellen opened the car door silently. Every moment that Tiffany slept was a blessing.

Slowly she moved down the dock. Yellow-slickered men on Penobscot were looking back to sea, down at the water, at the masthead, anywhere they could but up at her.

Under a green tarpaulin on the foredeck lay a small mound much too small for a grown man. The men were as far from it as they could get.

Even Nils Larson, on the bridge, refused to meet her gaze. His younger son leapt ashore, took a spring line, and secured it, avoiding her eyes. She was suddenly scrambling over the rail, heading for the tarp.

Nils bellowed in Swedish from the bridge. His older son jumped forward and grabbed Ellen by the arms. His hands were like steel claws.

"No!" The boy's icy blue eyes drilled into hers but suddenly melted in tears. "No, Mrs. Brody. Yesus, no..."

No tears came from her, none at all, only dry-eyed shock. She was stony with it, rigid, could not think or speak.

The boy held her clumsily, and men mumbled in sympathy. Someone patted her shoulder, and she fainted, and that was all she knew.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

They arrived from the Bahamas at noon the next day, like tanned beings from another world.

Michael ran to the door first, letting Carla pay the taxi. He was tanned, stronger, and more taciturn than Sean, with an older brother's assurance. He had a fluid, easy way of moving that went with his way of life.

Carla was a well-known metal sculptress, tall, with tawny, sun-streaked hair, a quiet Radcliffe manner, and a wide, slow smile.

Thea was as brown as a nut, bundled like an Arctic explorer against the northern cold, in a kelly-green snowsuit, hastily borrowed from a winter tourist's child in Nassau. It clashed with her sky-blue eyes and light blond hair.

She had grown from a baby into a person since their last visit, two years ago. Today she was subdued. She had loved Sean. On the plane she had sensed Mike's sadness, and Carla's, and was the oldest five-year-old today that Ellen had ever seen.

The house was full of people trying to help: Polly, the dispatcher; neighbors cooking in the kitchen. As Ellen came to the door Mike took her into his arms.

"Mom, Mom, Mom... I'm so awful, awful sorry."