The crowd outside is larger now, but still doesn’t include everyone. Our neighbors have brought offerings of their own—bottles of wine, even some South American ones from before the war, biscuits, cake, bottles of Pimm’s, and salads picked from gardens. I find them laying their offerings out on the grass in a long row. It feels ceremonial, like the duties paid to the lord in the olden days, when the vassals would come and pay their tithe. Or maybe that was only to the church.

We’re paying today, all of us. Whether it’s to gods or nature, something rules over us, and we’re paying.

I scan the group, thanking islanders here and there, all the while looking for my children.

They’re not out here. Jo’s gone, they’re gone.

Something’s happened.

I take Mrs. Morris by the arm, gently; she’s so frail these days. “Have you seen—?”

“Inside, sweetheart. It’s all right. They’ve only gone to the kitchen.” She pats my own arm just as carefully.

I sink with relief. “Okay. Thank you.”

She takes my hand and kisses it. “You’re doing so well. We’re proud.”

“Oh. God. Thank you.” Tears spring to my eyes. I shake my head and start toward the side entrance, careful on the steps down into the kitchen.

There they are, perched at the counter, just like it was any other day.

“That’s true, Charlie, yes, very much so.”

I hear Sally’s voice through the glass and back up a step, curious. I’ve so often wondered what they talk about down here when I’m not around. She sounds like a teacher, and I don’t want to interrupt her lesson by barging in, especially not while I’m in this state, anger and terror still toxic in my veins.

“But you know…” I hear the clang of a metal spoon against a dish. “I don’t think it’s just about taking. I have my own little theory. Would you like to hear it?”

“Which theory is this now?”

My ears perk. Jo’s in there too, closer to the door. She sounds dubious.

I press my lips together to keep from bursting out laughing. From rage to fear to church giggles. What a lunatic I am today. Another second, then I’ll go in.

“Oh, you know the one,” Sally teases. “I just think that today, the Day, is a chance for the island to rearrange things just exactly the way they’re meant to be.”

My teeth cut into my lips. I feel the doorframe paint peeling against my fingertips. This is what Matthew was talking about—“A reason for it, like Sally says”—but hearing her say this, now, in the thick of things, to my child, is more than jarring.

“So there’s the sad today, the very, very sad, but there’s also the good.”