His face hot, his legs watery, Owen struggled away from the Mercedes and across a grassy ditch gouged by something, muddy marks, not deep, left by some passing weight. Another policeman, older and more solid than the one Ed had spoken to, stopped him as he floundered toward the blanket where it lay neatly tucked this side of a low bed of blueberry bushes turned dull scarlet, beyond knee-high stands of white asters.

The older cop told Owen, “It looks like she was speeding, hit a patch of wet leaves, skidded, hit the ditch, and flipped.”

It sounded like a reasonable, orderly process, not too violent. “So she’s all right?”

“No, son,” the policeman said, though he may not have been much older than Owen. “She’s not. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt and when the car flipped she came down hard and broke her neck. That’s the way it looks to us. The coroner will be here to confirm. There’s no breath, we tried the mirror. What we need now is definite identification.” He touched Owen above the elbow, as if to prevent him from floating away. “Sorry to put you through this, Mr. Mackenzie. Would you rather have Mr. Mervine look?” He knew Ed’s name and knew Owen’s name, though this was Upper Falls.

“No, I’ll do it.” He took the remaining steps gratefully, the blanket had seemed so lonely. It was as when you check on small children sleeping at night, so alone in the crib or bed that there is that catch of panic until you hear them breathing.

“Let me lift this here. Tell me when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.” His shoes and ankles were getting wet. The various grasses, the little shiny blueberry leaves, the gravel and grit of the roadside, with plastic flip-tops and cigarette filters slowly going back to nature: these data pressed on his retina as if to tell him that all was illusion, that the moment would be reversed and redeemed, that he was bending over and picking up his wet glasses case from the dew-soaked weeds.

The cop’s hand trembled, pulling back the blanket. Maybe he was older than Owen. Pale Phyllis slept, her sand-colored hair barely mussed and her head not noticeably awry. Her eyes were still open, which shocked him, but the face had already begun its transition to the inanimate, all those miraculously interwoven structures intact but lacking the spark, the current that gave them meaning and presence. The responsive skin along her cheekbones had lost its blush. She looked like a statue; but then she had been a statue in his mind for a long time.