Passage: When the river finally rose past its banks that April, the townspeople of Harlow did not panic. They had watched the water climb for three days, and in that span an odd calm settled over the place. Neighbors who had not spoken in years stood together on the levee, passing sandbags hand to hand, trading the small jokes that fear sometimes loosens in people. Old Mr. Caddick, who had complained about the Pruitts' fence for a decade, carried Mrs. Pruitt's heirloom clock to higher ground without a word about it. By nightfall the flood had taken three houses, but the town, oddly, felt less broken than it had in years.