The crew boat cut through a light chop in its wide-open run, the waves running under the bow like stones, and when Colette could make out the flat top of the marsh, she pointed and Emile pulled back on the throttle lever. The bow nosed into the water and they went ahead slowly, Emile leaving the wheel and coming out of the cabin holding a navigation chart and a wad of twine with an eight-inch crescent wrench tied to the end of it. He sounded the water, and Colette watched him haul back only eight feet of line. From there they checked every few yards until she sensed the boat wandering into a slow turn to the east, parallel to the shore, which now showed boldly a half mile off. They came to an inlet and Emile swung the boat toward it, slowing. He came out of the cabin and watched the wheel wash until it turned black, then went in to reverse the engine and head back east. There was no use in stranding the boat on a falling tide. Colette watched the plain of marching grassland with her field glasses, praying. A mile back in the maze, a cloud of egrets rose, an explosion of thin crescents, and she wondered what had startled them. She felt the hollowness of despair float up through her shoulders as the marsh wobbled in her lenses, undeniable and heartless, not to be walked on. She felt ignorant because she had lived close to it all her life without learning about it. Turning her gaze, she caught sight of a white object flying toward them in the distance, an apparition that could only be the Larousse twins. In ten minutes, they were charging across the crew boat’s bow, looping around to come alongside.

“Hey, you found anything yet?” Vincent yelled, throwing an empty beer can over the side. He was so drunk that he was standing steadily in the pitching boat. Colette narrowed her eyes, studying the ice chest and Victor’s bent smile.

“You have field glasses?” she asked

Vincent whirled left, then right, leaning over to pick up a seat cushion. “Yeah. They right here somewhere.”

She leaned out and grabbed his shirt, pulling him halfway out of the boat and close to her face, her sour breath. “How can you search for anything if you don’t use your damned glasses, Victor?”

“This is Vincent.”

She shoved him hard and he fell on his butt. “We don’t need your help if you’re going to spin around like a couple of asshole kids playing rescue boat.” She stood on the rail, jumped into the Unsinkabelle, and kicked the ice chest open. She plucked out four linked six-packs and threw them overboard.

“Colette, baby, what the hell?”