She takes the paper from the envelope with some care and Harry feels a sense of responsibility as the wind tugs against the letter in his hands. He tries to read it through twice, wanting for her sake to understand, but only the date and Rachel’s own name are decipherable. There are the shapes of words, strokes and scrolls, which must have had meaning and importance to their maker, but Harry cannot untangle them. It might as well be in Greek.

“Can you read it?”

“I’m sorry. The writing is very difficult to make out, isn’t it?”

“He used to write poems. Would you believe it? Verses full of the landscapes of his childhood, and such clever rhymes.”

Harry looks back down at the page, which seems to have neither rhyme nor reason.

“It was his last,” she says. “The next thing was a typed note saying that David was missing. When I look at this letter I think that part of him was already missing.”

“Yes. I can see that.” Harry thinks about flinging this sad letter into the wind, pictures it floating away, a white speck retreating into the water, but he hands it to her instead and watches as she folds the paper.

“It’s the third time that I’ve been back,” she says. “It’s not enough: ‘Missing.’”

“No,” Harry replies.

THE BOAT IS full of Rachels—women who touch their lockets when they speak, traveling to gravesides and searching. It is a ship full of hope and fear. Hers is the fifth portrait that he will draw on the boat and they are all much obliged. He is curious to see these walls full of the seeking and the missing, all of these faces that require pairing together again. He imagines their photograph faces, Edie and Francis, side by side on a wall, coupled and completed again. He recalls twin portraits, his and hers, painted by his own hand, intended for the walls of their house. He remembers the day that he painted Edie’s portrait, how he had watched as she curled her fringe around wetted fingers. He can see it still. The silvering was flaking from the reverse of the mirror, so that sections of her reflected face were cracks and absences.

“There. I’m ready for you now,” she had said, her mirror smile focusing in on his own face.