At 8:00, Ned slumped up the sidewalk with Vinnie Susak, Drake Aasgard, and Harry. They were sunburnt, with bloodshot eyes, exhausted and quiet and mostly fatalistic, sliding into beer, trying to keep their heads in the beauty and rhythm of the river. After they finished off the chili, Merle opened a bottle of tequila and they had shots, though there was nothing to toast. Ned showed Polly the muscle on his forearm that had been twitching for an hour; when the current was this strong, you had to sometimes stand at the oars. They hadn’t seen the downed tree Graham had described, but then no one who went through this sort of experience would probably have a straight memory. They talked about what was different about the river this year, after high water, about deeper holes and stronger currents and what the pylons on a new bridge east of town might have done to the flow.

Throughout the conversation, Drake watched Jane, and as she slid out of the room, he pursued her toward the back door. He said he was reading Jane’s most recent book, Ages of Rage, and loved her chapter on Irish mercenaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, more at home in Venezuela or Mexico than Dublin. Had she thought of how cinematic some of these stories were?

The sheer physical blast of Drake was often too much. He was just more, all the time, a loud, fast, golden thing of beauty. At some point Jane might come around, but for now, he frazzled and annoyed her, and she snubbed him consistently. Now, when she fled, he stared out the window, settling back into sadness. He left a stack of files for Polly by the door; lately he’d accepted that he wasn’t the center of her world, and tonight, anyway, he looked almost as rough as Harry and Ned, though he was only thirty-two. Drake had spent hours every week with Ariel, and offered to pay for her graduate school, even though he thought she should go to Hollywood instead of becoming an archaeologist. Now he was offering to pay for extra days of the helicopter search.

Vinnie, who was drunk, made up for Drake’s silence. Would people blame him for lending the kayak? Blame him for bringing Graham to town, or blame Graham?

No one answered.

“Why did he leave Seattle?” asked Polly. “What happened?”