“I said, we got one.” Uncle Lester was on the radio. “LeBlanc and Mark are on the back deck with him.”

“Who is it?” she yelled, her voice rattling the window glass next to her.

“… was sitting on a strut about three feet over the water.”

“Who did they find?”

Again the radio went quiet, and she closed her eyes, squeezing the microphone between her knees. Now her brother’s voice cut across the water. “Colette, we found Raymond. He’s real weak and we’re giving him some fluids. Kind of scuffed up.”

“And the others?” She imagined she could see the words fly south across the water like thin birds.

“No sign,” the radio said.

“What did Raymond tell you?”

“We just got him in the boat.”

“What?”

“The light’s no good now for looking for anything. You all come in and tie up alongside us,” her brother told her.

“Bullshit. I can still see for miles. What did he say? You tell me this minute,” she said, her older-sister voice welling out of her, bossing him.

“They ran head-on into the rig in the worst part of the storm and broke the back on the trawler. Etienne was knocked out, and about a mile closer to land, the boat came all apart. Paul and his daddy went into the water, holding Etienne up. Raymond thought he was following them, but he wound up back at the rig they hit. That’s all he knows.”

She tried to pick up the microphone, but her arm was lead. Emile came down and took it from her. “Hey, did they have jackets on?”

“What?”

“Did they wear life jackets?”

Dead air followed. A horsefly entered the cabin and Emile smashed it against a window with his hand. The set came alive. “Raymond says Paul and his daddy were wearing them, but not Etienne.”

“Over,” he said, hanging the mike in its cradle and holding his hand there a moment. “That boy never would put on a life jacket. You could almost count on him doing the one thing that would most likely get him killed.” He pulled off his hat, holding it with a fist in his lap. “The times that boy scared me to death—the wrecked cars, the fistfights. One night some dumb local cop was shootin’ at him in front the house and he was hiding behind the Mary throne. I had to go out and stop that mess in my bare feet. I never been so scared.”

“Etienne’s a good man,” she heard herself saying.

“Yas, but not a good one to have to raise.” He put his hat on the back of his head and turned for the door. “We going to the tug?”

“No,” she said, her mouth set. “Flag in the twins.”

“But why?” He looked at her and saw her dark eyes rocking back and forth but looking at nothing. “What you thinking so hard for?”