There are expectations of me, of Hugh, and I still don’t feel like I’ve got a handle on them. They seem to be all tied up in the Day, whatever the Day even is. Maybe I’m imagining it, putting pressure on myself where there is none. Maybe not.

I walk unseeing now, wound tight as a trigger by the time I hit the edge of the grove. John Ashford’s truck isn’t parked here. With the island practically deserted this week, I won’t have to be so ridiculously furtive. I slink among the oaks, let them welcome me with their summer whispers, and find my spot tucked just far enough away from the footpath to be inconspicuous. One held breath and a quick glance back, listening, and I pull my lighter from its hiding place in the hollow of my low-bent oak. The trees are so familiar that on days like this, it’s easy to imagine some sort of consciousness for them, a sense that they’re waiting. Watching. Forming opinions.

The hole in the tree is full of stubs. It’s time for me to clear it out again. I sink onto my haunches, thighs burning, light up, and drag slowly on my single precious cigarette.

It’s asinine. That’s the only word for it. I hardly smoked before I got married. Just socially, and that was rare, because, let’s face it, I hardly ever socialized. I wasn’t addicted. But something about getting married, having children, deciding never to smoke, ever again, ate at me.

This feels like a little pocket of time that doesn’t belong to my family. It’s just mine, and if I want to kill myself a little for five minutes every day, it’s my goddamn right.

I think of the stone.

It’s a natural segue. All those people volunteering to die only a few steps from here. If they wanted to kill themselves, the people of Lute were only too willing to help.

My mouth goes mossy, the taste of the cigarette hitting me wrong today. I find myself quickly stubbing it out and wandering north through the wood to the center of the grove, the place I found Charlie just yesterday.