All shipwrecks begin with a ship. David assessed the other passengers. Who would be saved and who lost? His father still went to the Y most mornings to swim laps, could save himself, but David was sturdy and without children and was certain that Robby would deputize him in case of catastrophe. He decided he would rise to the occasion.

A group of tall Swedes carried their lunches in waist packs and would not sit down, a hale septuagenarian English couple wore matching sensible shoes that looked like baked potatoes. The largest group came from some Eastern European country. It was hard to pick out how they were all related, easy to find their darling, a beautiful ten-year-old girl with Down syndrome. She had dark brown hair and prodigiously thick eyelashes, slate blue eyes, salmon cheeks. A selkie, a very selkie: at any moment she might assume her seal form and dive into the water. She scanned the horizon with binoculars and then, laughing, trained them on the faces of her family. David looked at his father, whose brother Sidney had had Down syndrome, too—Sidney, like all the brothers, had worked at the store until he died.

But Louis: Louis had forgotten where he was again. This was his secret. These days, when he daydreamed (dreamy Louis, all the time), he lost himself. His brain went along its track and when coming around did not recognize the station. Still, a station: you could make sense of it, you could navigate any train station in the world, despite the language, the local customs. Train stations obeyed. Keep tight till you know where you are, you’ll be all right. Outside the boat, the water flashed, bent, bulged, and fish—fish! He said it to his son, “Fish!”

“Dolphins!” said David. “Look!”

Blue sky and dolphins, the wind battering their ears, a laughing girl, a picnic at their feet: a triumph.

“Will there definitely be puffins?” a tall Swedish woman asked.

“Were yesterday,” said Robby.

“Is it guaranteed?”

“Puffins yesterday, most likely puffins today,” Robby said. “Sir!”

Louis was leaning over the side of the boat, kneeling on the bench and staring at the water. The Swedish woman grabbed him by the collar of his coat. “Upla,” she said, gentling Louis back on his seat.

“Hey,” said Robby to David. “Look after your father.”

“He’s—”

“Look after him,” said Robby.

“All right, folks,” said the voice of God. “We’re going to go take a closer look at our friends on that rock.”

The rocks in a line on the larger rock lifted their heads and revealed themselves to be seals.

“Oh, the sweet things,” said Louis, and the laughing girl gasped, went silent, laughed again. “Puffin,” Louis said suddenly; he thrust his finger skyward at a flying bird—“Puffin, puffin.”

“Puffin,” the girl agreed.

“Puffins can’t fly,” said David.

“Yes, they can,” said several voices in several accents.

“You’re thinking of penguins,” said Robby.

“I thought—”