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oilcloth. An enormous red pine had toppled in the storm and cleaved the roof, causing much of the back wall to tumble. It had come to rest on the top cross log of the front wall.
    She’d seen such structures before, old trapper cabins or abandoned hunting camps in the woods of Tamarack County, north of Aurora. She walked to the door, lifted the latch, and entered.
    It was a single room. The huge, fallen pine had invaded much of the area inside, creating a kind of labyrinth of sharply needled branches. The logs of the toppled back wall also cramped the room, and what open space was left felt tiny. Against the wall to her right, clear of the wreckage of the back wall and untouched by the pine boughs, was a bunk with bedding. Except for fallout from the damaged roof and the wetness from the rain that had come through, the bedding looked relatively clean. Toward the back, crushed under a couple of tumbled logs, was a rough-hewn table, with two broken chairs. In the center of the room stood a cast-iron potbellied stove. A long section of stovepipe had come down when the pine hit the roof, and it lay on the floor amid a shadowy splash of soot.
    She ducked under the trunk of the protruding pine, and the far side of the cabin was revealed to her.
    “Well, well,” she said, pleased. “At least I won’t starve.”
    Against the wall of the cabin, cardboard boxes stood stacked waist high. On the side of each box was printed the contents, which included canned peaches, canned lima beans, canned peas, canned Hormel chili, canned Spam, and half a dozen other edibles. A long, slender table had been shoved against the cabin wall next to the boxes. The tabletop was maple, planed smooth and cleanly varnished. On it sat a Coleman propane stove, open and ready for business. A little way down the table were neatly stacked cooking pots and two cigar boxes, one filled with utensils and the other with candles. There were kitchen matches in a sealed Ball jar. Near the end of the table lay a stack of folded towels. Arranged against the wall beneath the table were a dozen plastic, two-gallon jugs of distilled water.
    At first, she considered that maybe this was a seasonal camp, but it looked as if someone had been there for a while and was planning to be there for a while longer. A semipermanent residence. There was only one bunk, and unless a couple of toothpicks slept in it, it was only large enough for a single body.
    “Where did he go?” she said to herself and decided the cabin’s resident had fled before the storm.
    She spotted a cardboard box that was not stacked with the others but had been placed specially under the long maple table. The name on the box was familiar to her, and surprising. Similac.
    “Baby formula?” she said to herself.
    In the quiet of the moment that followed, from somewhere outside the cabin, came the whimper of what sounded very much like an infant.

FIVE
     
    T he wind was gentle, but the houseboat was large. Its broad side acted as a sail. Despite Rose’s best and desperate efforts, the boat drifted farther and farther beyond her ability and her endurance. For what felt like hours, she swam through the debris the storm had littered on the surface of the water. She finally stopped, exhausted, and watched the boat scoot out of the little bay and into the great expanse of open water.
    She kicked and pivoted so that she could see the shoreline where she’d been forced to abandon Mal. He sat against one of the big rocks. He appeared small and vulnerable, a consequence of the distance and his situation and Rose’s love for him. She looked across the bay toward the beach where the kids had been. Still abysmally empty. She was exhausted. But for the life vest she wore, she would have had trouble staying afloat.
    She laid her head back against the collar of the vest and stared up at the lie that was blue sky. It had promised calm that morning, promised heaven. It had delivered hell. Rose, who never swore, swore