“Why?” I hear Charlie ask. “No, I mean, how?”

“Oh, in little ways.” Sally sighs. “And very big ways. It’s like Lute looks at all of us over seven years and then decides how to move us around. I’ll admit it’s sometimes hard to see how it’s better, but when you’re old like I am…”

I hear Emma giggle. Oh God, yep, my three-year-old is in there too, listening to this bullshit. I need to interrupt but I cannot move.

“—you look back and can’t imagine it having been any other way. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of,” Charlie says. He does sound comforted.

“Not so bad, eh?” Sally’s voice rings out louder.

“It wasn’t the theory I was thinking of. Even so.” Jo sniffs. I hear her turn. “Little ones?”

Charlie murmurs vaguely as Emma shouts, “I not little!”

“Enormous children?” Despite the teasing, Jo’s voice is somber. “I wouldn’t go around sharing this theory of Sally’s with anybody else.”

There’s a pause before Charlie asks, “Why not?”

“Well, it might make some people feel better, but it would probably make other people feel even sadder.”

Silence again. My hand fumbles for the kitchen doorknob.

“It’s not better that Avery’s gone,” Charlie says.

“No,” says Jo. “It isn’t.”

As I open the door, the kids turn on their stools at the kitchen counter, letting out happy squawks at the sight of me.

“Mummy!” Emma puts her arms out for a hug. Her fingers are grimy from potato peelings, but I let her press into my bare back, squeeze and squeeze. Oh, my girl.

“We’re helping,” Charlie says quietly, and lets me ruffle his hair.

I catch Sally shooting Jo a quick apologetic look before her expression washes into the neutral cheeriness I’m used to seeing on her face.

“I’m not letting them chop,” Sally calls to me brightly. “Knives are well away.”

“No harm in a peeler,” Jo says, with a wink in my direction. “Cup of tea?”

They’re changing the subject now that I’m here. I’d assumed they would, but it still makes my stomach turn. I can’t keep going on like this, like a hotel guest. This is my house, my family, my life. I’ll talk to them, both of them tomorrow, if we get to tomorrow. Not in front of the kids, no matter how much I’m seething.

I smile tightly. “Tea. Yes.”

Sally lights the burner for the stove-top kettle, then tosses handfuls of minced carrot into the gargantuan stockpot she’s been stirring.

“How many are you cooking for?” I ask, reaching to help Emma angle the potato peeler the right way. “Will we have enough?”

“Plenty, plenty.” Sally salts the pot. “Even if everybody left on Lute came, which they won’t—some people prefer to shelter all day, and there’s no changing that—it’d be what?”