Paul brought the Saxon out and trawled off Point au Fer and came back the same day with a moderate catch. As he was approaching the dock, he saw Colette standing next to the red diesel pump, wearing a housedress and balancing the baby on her hip. As soon as the boat shouldered into the old tires hanging against the dock, he jumped off.

“What’s the matter?”

Her face was hard to read, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye. Matt yelled and pointed at a gull. “I’m still having a hard time, you know?” He could see that she was trying not to be specific in front of Matthew.

Paul touched her elbow and she shifted the boy to that arm. He put his hand in his pocket. “Like you were the other night?”

“Yeah. Like that.” Her eyes were wide and full of ghosts.

“Okay,” he said, looking at the roofline of the fish dock. “Here’s what we gonna do tomorrow.”

*   *   *

Colette and Matthew slept at her brother’s, and the next morning at first light she met Paul at the steps to her father’s house. Deliberately, like hired movers, they went inside, intent on not stopping to look at things, for Paul knew that if they did that, they would wind up sitting on spindle-back chairs in the hall, staring at a photograph or a package of letters. Colette headed straight for the kitchen and threw out her father’s tins of sardines, mason jars of blackberries he had put up himself, a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of strong, bitter mints. Paul went upstairs to Mr. Jeansomme’s bedroom. First, he put the old man’s underwear and handkerchiefs in paper bags, then he dumped his shirts, pants, and few coats and ties in suitcases he found in a closet. He piled up shoes, socks, and hats, then stripped the bed, bundling the bedclothes to wash the smell of memory out. When Paul looked for the next job, he realized that he was working away from the old man’s body, dealing first with the things closest to the skin. He went through drawers for belts and pocket change, prayer books, broken wristwatches, scratched eyeglasses, a few bottles of pills, unframed black-and-white photographs of Colette and her brother, a half box of corroded .22-caliber bullets.