Behind and to the left, the scattered bays, the painted houses by the water. The land was green, the rocks pink, the water a deep northern blue.

On islets near the shore you could see wood stacked neatly in vast piles, ready for the evening’s bonfires. Farther out, birds dive-bombed shoals of herring fry, and ahead, though it was partly hidden by the headland, you could see the sweep of the Oslo waterline, the cruise ships and the grain towers and the monstrous industrial cranes.

“We could buy a little boat back home,” said Elsa. “Be good for the girls.”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe we could.”

The smoke. We saw it as we rounded the headland. It rose in a vertical plume from the middle of the C-shaped bay. Elsa eased off the throttle; the boat dropped down onto the surface of the fjord. Vee sat up, instantly awake.

The bay was divided in two between light and dark. In the center of town the buildings lay shrouded in a gray pall. The twin towers of the town hall vanished into the smoke. News helicopters dipped in and out, rotors shifting the edges of the swirling gray column above, ruffling the water below.

Elsa’s eyes scanned the shoreline.

“We can turn around,” I said.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said Elsa. “The ferries are running.”

To our right were the islands. The smoke from the mainland had not reached them. They stood there, jewel-green in the sunlight.

“Still,” I said. “We really don’t have to go.”

“No, Dad,” said Vee firmly. “That way the bad guys win.”

The engine ticked quietly. Elsa eased us past the boatyard and into the shallow channel in front of the restaurant. A single-story building, its wooden cladding painted green, with a fleet of small boats moored to the pontoons outside. Ahead, on the outermost pontoon, our friend Jo stood waiting, a bottle of beer in each hand, looking blond and fresh. On his T-shirt an inverted swoosh, and the words mate, just don’t.

As we drew level with him, he passed a bottle to Elsa, took from her the rope she carried in her left hand, pulled the boat gently toward the pontoon, and tied it off at the front.

“Hey, Cal!”

“Hey, Jo.”

He handed me the other beer. I leaned across, put an arm around him, felt the scrape of his stubble on mine.

Jo turned toward Elsa. “Hey, nice dress, darling,” he said, in his practiced London English. “Seriously frodig, darling.”

Elsa took Jo’s hand, stepped easily onto the pontoon. She embraced him, cheek against cheek. Jo turned toward me. “Don’t you think?”

“What’s frodig?” I said.

“Yeah, Jo, don’t be dirty!” said Vee.

“Sorry, Vee. Didn’t see you there.”

Vee smiled. “You so did. Stop laughing, Mum. And Jo, don’t say that stuff.”