“I couldn’t face being here on the Day, and I couldn’t face having left.” He waves his gun feebly in the direction of the lighthouse. “He’s right, you know. I am a coward. I’m a goddamned coward to have thought of killing myself, of running from it that way. Not this time. I’m going to live. Fuck the island!”

He screams it, wild, and it echoes off the house.

He’s crying harder now. My eyes are dry.

“This has to end!” he cries. “I have to stop the tithe!”

“Yes,” I say, approaching slowly. “Let’s stop now. All done, okay?”

He lowers the gun an inch. Then another.

“Only a few minutes to go,” I say. “Come and watch the sunset.”

He laughs in defeat. The gun slips slack in his hand. He crouches to lay it gently in the grass.

He steps away. I breathe out.

And something above us shatters.

The shriek that follows is high. A child.

I spin, wrenching my neck to see her in the day’s dying light.

Emma’s tiny body dangles from the outside ledge of our bedroom window, a fairy that’s lost its wings. Her fingers scrabble for purchase, her legs kicking, her mouth screaming and screaming and screaming and—

The crack from this morning, Emma must have pushed at the window while watching us, and it spread and opened wide and flung her out. It was a trap this whole time. For her. For my little girl.

“Hang on, Emma! Do not let go!” I scream. “I’m coming!”

Hugh snatches at my shoulder, turning me around. “There isn’t time.”

9:36 P.M.

He’s right. I won’t reach her in time.

Not by running.

Hugh lurches for the gun on the grass, but I’m faster. I snatch it from the tips of his sweaty fingers and hoist it. I don’t know what I’m doing yet, apart from taking it away from him, but he backs up, hands hovering.

“Were you going to jump off the ocean liner?” he asks abruptly.

I swallow. It tastes like blood. I’ve bitten my tongue.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

“When I saw you there, I felt there was a reason for all of it. I was meant to be there, to stop you, to save you.” He laughs, desperate. “But it was you who saved me. Do you see that?”

My eyes dart to Emma and back.