He nodded at the men in the police cars. “You don’t bring them ashore somewhere crowded. Things could have got out of hand. No one’s following protocol.”

“So those men . . . ?” Again I couldn’t finish the thought.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “This is bad, Cal.”

I swallowed down my fear.

I nodded. “Wait . . .” I reached into my pocket, pulled from my wallet a strip of passport photos that Licia had taken and never used, folded at the middle. I had rescued them from the trash, carried them with me without her knowing. I held out the strip of pictures to Edvard.

“These will help,” he said. He took a paper clip and attached them to our form, added the form to the top of the pile in his hand.

“You’ll tell me?” I said. “When you know something?”

His look told me not to expect too much.

Another boat, closing fast.

Behind, around, voices murmured, then fell silent. Paramedics opened ambulance doors, unloaded equipment onto the slipway, waited. The boat was closer. I searched for Licia’s face, but Licia was not there.

Elsa knew it too.

Licia is not here.

Parents stepped forward, reached out, held to them their boys, their girls as they stumbled forward from the boat. Some drew their children gently from the scene and away. Others knelt beside gurneys, ruffled hair, kissed foreheads and backs of hands. Beside them, nimble fingers found veins, attached cannulas, fitted monitors. These sons, these daughters: among us again now, but changed.

Water lapped. Wood strained against wood. Gurneys slid into ambulances, doors slammed, motors started. Around us, among us, newspeople spoke hushed words into shielded microphones. Ambulances began drifting up the rise, silent, blue lights flashing. We forced ourselves to turn to face the island. Too early for despair, too late for hope.

Down by the slipway children were standing in small groups, confused, waiting for parents who had not yet arrived.

A hand pressed gently against my back, another placed a coffee cup into my hand. I could not see Elsa.

“Here.” An arm in a gray sleeve, steadying me, so that I might not spill the coffee.

“Thank you,” I murmured. That small unbearable kindness: I looked only at the hand that offered it, afraid that I would give myself away if my eye met the eye of this stranger.

“Be assured that all will be well.” Words spoken softly, in accented English, the man’s mouth by my ear.

I glanced upward, saw a shock of black hair, a gray vestment.

You can’t know that all will be well, I thought. But there was kindness in the man’s eyes. I nodded and thanked him for the coffee.

Farther down the slipway I saw Elsa, staring out across the fjord. A new boat was crossing the mirror-flat water. A fresh wave of ambulances was approaching from the rise. All else was silence.

When I looked around again the priest was gone.