“I’m sorry.” My skin prickles as I register what I’ve said. I forget sometimes that Jo’s a widow. Her husband died from a stroke long before I got here; that doesn’t mean her grief is dead too. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No, you’re probably right. You can talk to Charlie about it after the Day—he’s bound to have questions—and of course Emma doesn’t need to know until she’s older. She’ll hear about it from the other children anyway.”

I let out a desperate laugh. “Not to be puritanical, but I have to say, it doesn’t really seem like an appropriate custom to celebrate with children!”

Jo turns away, mouth open. She bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Nina. You know I love you, but you’ve got to stop saying celebrate.”

She stops talking, abruptly, breathes, and I can see her reeling emotion back in like a fish on a line. It’s rage, actual rage, at me. I don’t know what to say that won’t make this worse.

This is the closest I’ve come to a fight in years, and Christ, my heart is thudding.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. It takes me a second to catch my breath. “This has been the hardest adjustment.”

“Because you don’t believe in it.” She turns, busying herself with rearranging her stores of tinned fruit and beans. “But why would you? I have to keep reminding myself that I didn’t believe in it either when I moved here. I was so angry with Peter when I realized it was true. My God, that he’d married me, brought me here, made me fall in love with the place only to…” She shakes her head. “You’ll understand it soon, and when you’re one of us, you’ll come to value it as we do. It’s a fair trade.”

When I’m one of them.

“A fair trade.” I dare echo Jo’s words because her expression has, thankfully, lightened.

“Look around!” She beams, glad as I am for the slight change in topic. “Look at the weather, for starters. Gorgeous, isn’t it? Rain just before dawn, more sunny days than the UK average.”

“It’s a lucky fluke of geography,” I argue, smiling back. “That’s what John Ashford says.”

“He still believes that?” Jo muses, then she leans on the counter, her expression shifting. “You know about the Graveyard.”