As we approach, one of the sailors hails the trawler. I don’t think it’s necessary. A rope ladder already hangs down the side, and a man stands there as though he’s prepared to dive in at the slightest signal. For an instant I imagine it’s Sumner Fox, by some extraordinary miracle on a night of miracles. I can almost see his big shoulders—his rough face soaked in sunrise. But as we draw nearer, my imagination dies away. These shoulders are no more than sturdy; the face is not as broad or as coarse; one side is marked with terrible scars, where he hasn’t got much of an ear left. He leans forward to catch the rope tossed up by the sailor, and his hair catches the light—pink and gold as the dawn itself.

One by one, the children go up the ladder and into the man’s arms. The boys seem to recognize him—Jack makes a squeal. Marina climbs carefully and doesn’t say a word of thanks. Then Claire goes up. He catches her tenderly and says something to her that makes her laugh. Her feet hit the deck and she scampers out of sight.

Now it’s my turn. I clamber forward on the rocking boat and hand up the baby to this man. He scoops Gregory like a man who’s held a newborn in his time—one hand supporting the head, the other under the bottom—and comforts him while I climb the rope ladder and stagger to the deck.

“You must be Ruth,” the scarred man says.

Without the scars, he might be handsome—you can’t tell. Without the white hair, he might be a young man—again, there’s no telling. He has the eyes of someone who has lived too much and too long, but the trim, taut figure of someone who lives ferociously in the present. The sunlight makes a nimbus around him and the baby in his arms. All this I gather in an instant, because there is not an instant to lose. I hold out my hands for Gregory. “I am.”

You know, I don’t think he even sees me, really. He puts the baby in my arms and says hastily, “Philip Beauchamp. You’ll excuse me.”

I step away from the opening on the rail. From below, one sailor supports Iris around the waist while she puts her hands and feet on the rungs of rope. The man named Beauchamp goes down on his knees and then his belly and reaches down to take my sister in his arms. He hauls her carefully to the deck and cradles her as you might cradle a child. The new sunshine coats them both. He pushes away some hair from her forehead and shouts out for the medical kit.

Iris looks for me. “The bag!” she gasps out. “Gregory’s bag.”