Lena thought of her mother’s apartment, where water had reached the front steps but not the living room. She thought of Thomas Dillard’s photograph, rescued in the middle of the night because an old man could not bear to leave his wife behind.

“I can wait for the evidence,” she said. “The people whose homes got wet shouldn’t have to wait for help.”

“They’re not the same process,” Sloane agreed. “But they shouldn’t be allowed to disappear into each other.”

Outside the window, a convoy of sanitation trucks headed toward the lower district. The work of cleaning up had already begun.

Chapter Twelve: The Things Water Takes

Loretta’s apartment smelled of river mud for three weeks.

The water had not reached her living room, but it had entered the ground-floor hallway, ruined the storage lockers, and soaked the building’s electrical equipment. The property manager could not guarantee when residents would be allowed back into all the apartments. Loretta spent the first two nights at the high-school shelter, sleeping on a folding cot with a blanket that scratched her neck.

On the third day, Lena took her home.

“Only until the power is safe,” Lena said as she carried a shopping bag into her apartment.

“How many rules do you have about staying at your own daughter’s house?”

“Just one. You’re welcome.”

“That’s a good rule. You should put it on a plaque.”

Nia came down the stairs, threw her arms around her grandmother, and announced that the guest room had been cleaned.

“We changed the sheets,” she said. “Twice, because Mom said the first ones smelled like the closet.”

Loretta looked at Lena. “This is how you became an engineer. Couldn’t leave a thing alone.”

For one evening, they ate baked chicken and rice at the kitchen table as though the river were a small inconvenience somebody else had dealt with. Nia talked about school. Loretta complained about the shelter coffee. Lena laughed at the right places, feeling a painful gratitude for the ordinary sound of her family arguing over whether the rice had enough salt.

Then her phone buzzed.