“Ma’am, we’ve tried to contact your boat by shortwave and can’t seem to raise him. Have you any idea where the crew was going to shrimp?” The voice did not sound at all alarmed when she said that she didn’t know. It was a professional voice, frightening because it sounded schooled in calmness. “Could you give me the names of the crew so I can get in touch with their families on the chance that some of them might know?” She told him who was on board. “I’ll contact their homes,” the voice said. “When we locate the boat, I’ll let you know.”

She hung up, telling herself that everything would be all right now. She walked out on the porch and noticed that there was more lightning to the south, signaling another fiery batch of coastal thundershowers. If their engine finally died out in rough seas, they would be in for a terrible ride. She tried to remember if they had the new heavy life jackets on board. Running an inventory of the boat over and over through her mind, she became unnerved, so she sat back and listened for boat whistles. A wind came up, rattling the hackberry tree across the street in Mr. LeDoux’s yard, but there were no whistles, only the bass mourning of the Blanchard’s pet bloodhound alarmed by a wandering smell, and farther down the side street, in the next neighborhood, the yowl of a tomcat fanging his love.

At ten, she went in and turned on the news, half-listening to the accounts of political squabbles and assaults in New Orleans. The weatherman announced that a storm was stalled in the central Gulf, sending out one squall line after another. That explained the lack of Gulf-bound whistles. Outside, the wind mounted and the rain rattled on the cypress siding. Once in a while the house would crack like static as a gust shoved against it. Colette checked on the boy, then sat by the phone in the hall, staring at a scuffed area of the oak floor, thinking how the dark wood should be refinished some day, though she could not imagine how. She would have to ask Paul about it. A man’s raincoat hung from a hook near her, and she reached out to touch it, pulling her white hand back when she felt the empty sleeve.

Suddenly, a whopping roar built above the house, and she was startled out of her chair. She ran to the front door, fearing a tornado, and saw, above the trees across the road, the blinking lights and white bottom of a huge Coast Guard helicopter headed south. She telephoned Nerby down at the fish dock as fast as she could dial.

“Hallo.”

“Nerby, this is Colette. Please get your field glasses and look upriver to check if the cutter is still tied up.”