Sally meets my eye for a quick blink, and all that approval is gone. I sense that fog of disappointment rolling back in.

I don’t give a single shit. They’ve heard just about enough out of her for one day. They can listen to their mother now.

I kiss her again. “Today is strange, I know, but tomorrow, your friends will be back, and it’s school again on Thursday. And we’re having the whole island over tonight. Won’t that be fun?”

“For dinner,” Emma says, sniffing back to liveliness. “And we helped.”

“You did help, darling,” Sally says dotingly.

Out in the hall, the downstairs clock begins to chime.

I suck in a breath, fingers curled around the back of Emma’s chair as if the next sound might knock a leg loose.

We all hold the silence until it finishes.

4:00 P.M.

Jo limps back into the kitchen with Band-Aids for Charlie—she’s on it enough to have picked out the ones with superheroes on them instead of dinosaurs, last year’s obsession now deemed “babyish.”

Charlie stays slack and quiet while I put it on him and dab away the rest of the blood with a wet paper towel.

He doesn’t even blink. It starts to rattle me.

“What are you thinking, sweetie?” I run my fingers through the sweat-damp hair on the sides of his head. “You don’t need to worry, you know.”

“I’m not worried,” he says. “Everyone dies. And everything. And we die when we’re asleep. I die all the time; it isn’t scary.”

We three women in the room go very still. Even Sally appears at a loss as to how to respond to that.

Jo is the one to break the tension. “Little philosopher you’ve got here.”

“I’m a phisser too!” Emma’s face twists and reddens. “I like what Charlie likes.”

At that, Charlie lets out one of his trademark groans, and oh God, it makes my heart beat steadily again, hearing him act like a beleaguered big brother instead of some ascetic monk.

“You both get it from your mummy.” Jo strokes Emma’s plait. “She’s Lute’s resident academic, don’t you know.”

There’s a mischievous gleam in her eye. She hasn’t teased me about my degree in ages, so I guess I’m overdue.

“You’re what now?” Sally whirls around, gawping.

A laugh bursts out of me at her expression. “Don’t sound so shocked! Anyway, I’m hardly an academic.”

“You’ve got your master’s.” Jo shrugs.

“Master’s schmasters. I left before I got my Ph.D.” I turn to Sally to explain. “I studied philosophy at a tiny liberal arts college a million years ago.”

“You’ve never said a word about it!” Two red fluster circles appear on her cheeks.