“As requested,” Liz calls back, and I turn to see that she’s holding a violin. She teaches music here on the island and seems to know every instrument, but it’s the fiddle that comes out at Christmas.

Without preamble, she begins to play—old dancing songs, cheerful and bouncy. No one goes so far as dancing, but I notice cheeks lifting, toes tapping.

“I need a drink,” Marit says.

“Yes.” I grip her shoulder. “My God. You do. I’m sorry, you should have been the first.”

“You lost people also.” Her voice is flat. “Your friend with the truck. And the girl. Why do you do this?”

Her tone has sharpened, and her eyes are more alert than I’ve seen them, like she’s only now fully woken up.

“Are you drunk?” she asks me.

I laugh. “No. I don’t think so. Why, am I acting drunk?”

“No,” she says. “Just different. You seem different.”

I motion to Ian. “Could she get a pint? Shall I open a tab?”

He laughs, waves me off. “Everything’s gratis on the Day.”

“If this is real, why don’t you go?” Marit shrugs in the direction of Sunnan, tearing her eyes away from scrutinizing me. “I see people out there, on the … by the water. Are they dying there too or only here?”

“Only here, on Lute,” I explain falteringly. “Sunnan’s safe. The island’s children are over there and, I don’t know, a handful of adults who are looking after them. There was a vote, and they—we—um, decided that the children should be excused today.”

Excused. Like they finished dinner early and didn’t want to sit through adult conversation.

Ian hands Marit a beer.

She thanks him and chugs it back with a wince.

“We had heard there was a midsummer festival here. And that you … there was no army or navy, which was the big thing for us, but we thought that it might be like home a little.”

Oh God. “Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t know; it was Nils’s idea. He was the one who was in trouble, and I guess he did the most of our deciding. It was a little like that with us.”

I can relate.

“Trouble?” I already know, but I sense she wants to confess it.