But what if she and Jonathan had been in the living room when . . . ?

He raced out the back door and into the street, thinking he would flag down an ambulance, a neighbor, anybody. But there was no help in sight. Many in the neighborhood worked across, and only a lone pickup truck roared past, the driver refusing to make eye contact.

What had happened? Was it, in fact, a hurricane? Did tornadoes hit the coast? He'd never asked. All his life, he had ignored weather as much as he could, for what could one do about it, anyway?

He would burrow through the furniture like a mole, through the chairs and tables and books and magazines. . . .

Somewhere at the bottom was the rug. If he got to the bottom and found the rug, he'd know she was nowhere in the house. . . .

He called her name unceasingly as he clawed his way through the detritus of their everyday life, terrified that he might find her.

But there was no one, nothing.

And how in heaven's name was he to crawl up the slick, polished floor, from the hole he'd lowered himself into?

"Father! You down there?"

White-faced, Junior Bryson squatted over the threshold of the living room and looked into the pit.

"I'm here, Junior. Have you seen my wife?"

"No, sir, I just drove up from th' Toe an' seen your porch was blowed off. I was goin' to Ernie's. I hear he took a bad hit."

"Can you pull me up?" He'd never been so glad to see a face. He was trembling with feeling and with cold.

"I'm pretty much out of shape, I don't know, but I'll lay down and hook my feet on either side of th' doorway. . . ."

Junior positioned himself and, huffing, reached toward Father Tim.

"OK, you hang on, now, just kind of climb up my arms or whatever."

"This room was built pretty high off the ground, so it's a stretch."

"But don't be pullin' me down in there with you," said Junior, "or we'll both be in a good bit of trouble."

"I can't seem to get any traction with these loafers," he said, breathing hard.

Blast loafers into the next century, he was over loafers.

"It just happened," Junior said, as Father Tim hurriedly changed into dry clothes and pulled warm socks onto his numb feet. "About thirty, forty minutes ago, looks like it tore up th' north end and blew on out to sea, th' rain an' wind just stopped all of a sudden. But we didn't have no damage at th' Toe, not a'tall. Far as I know, 'lectricity's down all over th' island, an' Mr. Bragg's phones went out. How's th' bridge?"

"Still working."

"That's a blessin'," said Junior.

On his way out the back door, he turned and did a final search for Violet, looking under the beds, and hoping she wasn't stranded under the study sofa, which he couldn't get to because of the collapsed living room.

They walked at a trot to the truck and the car.

"Good luck findin' your wife and th' boy. I'm sure they're fine, prob'ly at th' grocery store or post office when it hit."

"Thank you, buddy."

But his wife couldn't have been at the grocery store or the post office; she had no car. She was, he decided, at the church with Jonathan, where she'd gone to work on the Fall Fair. He felt so certain of it, he wanted to shout.

As he drove away from Dove Cottage, he wondered-where was her bicycle? She usually hauled it up the steps and left it on the front porch. Surely she wouldn't have been out on her bicycle. . . .

More cars were on the street now, people coming from across or from the Toe; there was a veritable snake of solid traffic along Hastings, and not a little horn-blowing.

He hated seeing Ernie's. The right wall had crumbled, leaving the framing and a pile of bricks. Glass from the front window was missing as well, and books lay scattered around the parking lot and into the street.

All that unrefrigerated bait, all those books open to the elements, they'd better get a tarp over it, and fast.

But he couldn't think about Ernie's right now.

A camera unit from a mainland TV station blew around him as he wheeled the Mustang into the empty parking lot next to Ernie's, and set off running to St. John's.

"She's leanin' to th' side of my politics, is what it is." Ray Gaskill, who lived in the house closest to St. John's, removed a toothpick from his mouth and surveyed the damage.

Roughly one-third of a live oak had split off and collapsed across the roof of the church, knocking the building askew.

"It's racked to the right," said Leonard Lamb, looking ashen.

"Who was in it?" asked Father Tim.

"Nobody. Sometime after you left for Dor'ster, the women packed up and went over to the Fieldwalkers' to work."

"The organ?"

"It's OK, if we can get a tarp on before it rains again. We can't find Sam, and the phones are down so we can't call Larry to bring a tarp from the ferry docks. Looks like I'll have to go across if th' bridge is working."

"No problem with the bridge."

"Or we could maybe get a tarp from up Dor'ster, maybe at the boat repair."

He felt ridiculously guilty that he hadn't picked up a tarp.

"Trouble is, the plaster's cracked pretty bad and when we set her straight, that'll crack it even worse."

"This ain't nothin' to the' Ash Wednesday storm," said Ray, chewing the toothpick. "Now, that was a storm. This wadn't but prob'ly seventy-five-, maybe eighty-mile-an-hour winds."

He thought St. John's neighbor seemed personally proud of the catastrophe that struck in '62. Though it spared lives, its fury had pretty much battered everything else along five hundred miles of shoreline.

"I've got to find Cynthia," he said. "Do you have any idea . . . ?"

"I don't," said Leonard. "Marjorie's at the Fieldwalkers'. She'd probably be able to say."

Come to think of it, why would Cynthia have taken Jonathan out in a terrible storm, when he was burning with fever and on medication? And she wouldn't have taken Barnabas and Violet to the soiree at the Fieldwalkers'. . . .

His heart was in his throat.

"Looks like some of th' sidin's popped off. That'll expose your studs to water," said Ray.

"What about the basement?" he asked Leonard.

"You don't want to know."

And he didn't. Not until he found Cynthia.

"I'll be back," he said.

When he picked up the Mustang, he spoke with a young police officer in the crowd milling around Ernie's.

"Why is the army in here?" he asked, afraid of the answer.

"They're not any army in here. We use army surplus trucks in storms 'cause saltwater eats up th' brake linin's on our patrol cars. These babies stand way up off th' road."

"Was anyone hurt at Ernie's?"

"No, sir. They think it was all that water in th' ground that did somethin' to part of his foundation, made his wall fall in. Then a big trash can blowed into his front window, an' the' wind scattered books from here to Hatt'ras."

"What about Mona's?"

"One of th' waitresses got her arm burned pretty bad, a deep fryer come off th' stove, fella in a pickup just ran 'er across to ER."

"I've lost my wife," he blurted.

The young man removed his hat. "Gosh," he said.

"I mean, I can't find her," he explained, feeling foolish. Why was he standing here?

Not knowing what else to do, he shook the officer's hand and ran to his car.

Close to tears, he turned the car around in the parking lot and headed onto Hastings, which was covered with water.

He suddenly recalled the time on the beach, only days ago, when she had reached up and stroked his cheek and said she wanted to remember him like this always. Had that been some terrible omen?

With the Whitecap police directing traffic, he made his way back the way he'd come.

The door was not only unlocked at the old Love Cottage, it had been blown open, and most of the furniture overturned. The wind had heaved a rocking chair through a front window; shattered glass was strewn on the sodden floor.

"Cynthia!" There was a basement here, Otis had said so; maybe when the porch had been ripped off their house, she'd come here, fearing worse.

Shaking as with palsy, he searched for the door to the basement, opening closets, finding the water heater, listening for the booming bark of his dog. . . .

"Cynthia! Please!"

There! Hidden in the bedroom they'd slept in all those eons ago . . .

He threw open the basement door and peered down into a dark void, unable to switch on a light.

"Cynthia!" he bawled.

Silence.

He turned from the mildewed odor that fumed up at him, and closed the door and put his head in his hands and did what he'd been doing all day.

"Lord," he entreated from the depths of his being, "hear my prayer...."

Maybe there was a note at Dove Cottage.

Maybe there was something on the kitchen counter telling him where they'd gone. If not, he'd drive to the Fieldwalkers' if there were no power lines across the roads. He'd heard that was a problem in some parts of the north end, but so what, he had two feet, and besides, they couldn't have just vanished off the face of the earth. They had to be somewhere. . . .

He parked at the side of Dove Cottage and sprinted across a yard that felt like marsh beneath the soles of his running shoes.

"Father!"

Morris Love . . .

He turned and looked across to the wall. Something odd over there, a blank spot in the sky where a tree had stood. . . .

"They're over here!"

Again, his cognition lapsed, and he wouldn't recall racing from his yard and across the street and through the iron gate, which Morris Love had unlocked and swung back as he dashed onto the familiar turf of Nouvelle Chanson.

"Timothy!"

There had been times of absolute, unfettered joy in his life-his ordination, his wedding, and the day he and Walter stood on a hill in Ireland and looked across to the site of the Kavanagh family castle.

With his wife in his arms, his dog jumping up to lick his face, and Jonathan tugging on his pants leg, he experienced a moment of supreme joy that he felt he may never know again.

"Violet?" he said.

"In the kitchen, having a tin of Mr. Love's sardines."

He regretted that both he and his wife were tearful with happiness, but what could he do?

They saw Morris turn from the reunion in the foyer and stand by the window. There was suffering on his face in profile, something that snatched away the joy in their hearts.

"A nail," said his wife, explaining the bandage on her hand. "Right in the palm."

They sat in the cavernous kitchen lighted by candles in a silver stand, and waited for the teakettle to boil over a can of Sterno. Not seeming to know his kitchen, Morris had been unable to provide anything more than the Sterno and a kettle already filled with water. Cynthia had helped herself to his cabinets and found tea, along with a bag of Fig Newtons, which Morris said belonged to Mamie, but urged them to help themselves. Seeing their reluctance, he ate one himself, out of courtesy.

They all fell to.

"Milk!" said Jonathan. "My mommy, she gives me milk and cookies."

"No milk, dear," said Cynthia, hauling the boy onto her lap with one hand. "And no water in the taps, just what we have in the kettle."