I went hiking on the only flat land, the beach, followed it almost to the fork to Hampham. I saw a lot of damage. The boat shack above the Coast Guard station had blown down. The Boston ferry boat had crashed away a huge part of Nathan’s Pier.

Far out, the sea was dark, but jade closer in, in the icy shallows. Waves were frozen, as in some monumental sculpture: scalloped white glazed lace.

There were no people, no black bus, only birds picking around the remains of the campsite. And more snow sifting down.

When I was near to the inn, I saw a man in a thin jacket balanced up on a dune. He was shouting at me with his bare hands propped around his mouth for projection.

“Hey, Nanook!” I heard. “Hey! I can’t believe it!”

The context was so wrong and weird that it took me six long seconds before I recognized Raymond.

He jogged down the dune and grabbed me, lifted me, twirled me half around. In this pale landscape, he looked Technicolor, with his still-brown face and rope-blond hair. His eyes too seemed different—sapphire blue—out here in the white and gray.

“You look wonderful!” I blurted.

“Well, thank you, Paige. But I never been so fuckin’ cold ever. Ever. I am dying.”

I dragged him at a trot toward the path up the bluffs to the Seahorse.

“Pru sort of reverted in little ways and big ones to who she was before, and I did too, after you escaped, and I just one night was loco and she says to me, ‘We got real problems, Ray,’ and I said, ‘No we don’t, none,’ and put myself in the beaner-mobile and hit the road.”

He ate a chunk of corn bread and swallowed some espresso Dottie had brewed for us.

“Me and the car made it to Newington, Mass., it’s called, where the car caught a flu bug and died.”

Dottie, who was listening with me, said, “Oh . . .”

“So I was stuck there five hours, in a doughnut place, when this black bus pulls on in with this rock band.”

“You know, I was . . .” I said.

Raymond said, “So’s I asked the driver where they were bound and he says, ‘Boston,’ and I say, ‘Where?’ and he says, ‘Where you going?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, in fact, Cape Head,’ so he tells me, ‘Fine. That’s where we’ll go!’ ”

Raymond tossed up his hands. “And then I’m thinkin’ this is not the world’s most successful rock band.”

I said, “You know, I was . . .”