She was quiet, Bella. None of us knew what to say to her. When Hannah said, ‘Will we bring him in, Bella?’ she just nodded. She looked small like a child and I felt huge and big-knuckled and ugly the way all of us always do in the presence of Bella High. When we brought him in on the door Mary said, ‘Where will we put him?’ and Bella said, ‘On the bed,’ and until that moment when we rolled him off the door onto the bed in a big squidgy lump, dripping slime and water onto the counterpane and the wide clean boards of Bella High’s floor, she had not shed a tear but when she saw him lying on their bed she started shaking and gulping and none of us knew what to do and it seemed like it would go on forever, her weeping and us standing there like a row of posts but in the end Hannah stepped over to her and put her arms around her and said, ‘Hush. You must get him ready,’ and when at last Bella was quiet again she went to the dresser and opened a drawer and pulled out a cloth and a comb and began to wash and dry him. She rubbed his long hair with the cloth and pulled the teeth of the comb through it, pushing the water up and out, tugging gently when it caught on a shell or a snail or a frill of slimy weed. She made a kind of top-knot behind his head, which was how he used to wear it and when she was done we watched as she kissed the bony hollow with its lost eye and took the blotched pumpkin face between her hands and held it, cupping it close, like a piece of treasure.

I tried to picture myself in my own home, holding a cloth and a comb, fetching a folded suit and a white laundered shirt from the dresser and saying, as she was now, to Annie and Mary and Hannah and me, Pass me that neck-tie will you, those socks and shoes? Help me, will you please, while I get my husband into these?

A little while later, Elizabeth Lesh came, and Fran Hodge, and the Cragg sisters. The news had spread quickly and by nightfall there was no one who hadn’t come to witness it, this offering from the sea.