“Daniel is already down at the river access road,” he said.
“He did not sleep,” I said.
“None of us are going to sleep for a while, Ruth,” he said, rising from his chair to reach for his tan sheriff’s jacket.
He took a gray woolen hat from the peg behind the door and pulled it low over his ears.
“We have six volunteers walking the low-water crossing now,” he said, holding the door open for me. “We should get down there before the wind picks up.”
The sound of gravel under tires was the first thing I heard as we pulled up to the muddy turnaround by the boat ramp.
The passenger door of Daniel’s truck was open, and the smell of damp cedar was heavy in the air, rising from the thicket of trees that lined the bank where the county road ended.
Daniel stood twenty feet from the water, his arms crossed over his chest, his canvas jacket dark with mist.
His boots were buried two inches in the gray clay, but he did not seem to notice.
