It’s not just the light. Everything feels ten degrees off this morning. My routine’s been slipping all week, like a record slowing once the player is shut off, the music sinking lower and lower.

Hugh might have gone up to see Matthew about fixing the mobile mast.

My feet scuff up a wall of dust the second they hit the dirt track to the village. It’s been weirdly dry this past week. We’ll have to water some of the plants on the back veranda.

But Avery said Hugh’s at the church. He wouldn’t be meeting Matthew at a church. Even so, the very idea of the two of them having a conversation has set my nerves on edge. Yeah, it’s a small island. We all see each other almost every day, and if we don’t see someone around, we wonder if they’re sick. But Hugh and Matthew Clare are very good at not speaking to each other. It’s like they’ve had a contract drawn up and both observe the terms of it to the letter.

The last time I remember them interacting one-on-one was nearly seven years ago, two weeks after the Day, right after Hugh’s dad’s funeral. We were walking back to the house from the churchyard, and Hugh’s older sister, Jessica, was introducing me around. I was so cowed by her sporty elegance, hyper-focused on the impression I was making myself, that I didn’t notice the fight break out until people started shouting. By the time I turned, they’d pulled Hugh and Matthew apart. Hugh’s lip was bleeding, but Matthew Clare was a car wreck. The pain in his eyes, the hollowness of him. He’d dressed in his best suit for the funeral, I’m sure, but he looked ragged. Like he wanted to sink into the earth and take Hugh with him.

By all accounts, they’d been best friends until that day. It’s still impossible to understand. Men can be so stubborn.

Not just men. My mother was even worse. Is worse. She’s alive. Why do I always refer to her as if she were dead?

Wishful thinking.

What a shitty thought. Mom’s right, I am awful. A killer, if only in my head. It would have been so much easier if she’d gone ahead and nailed the door shut on our relationship, instead of opening it and slamming it over and over again. That last message she sent by mail, the bracelet Gran left me with a Post-it stuck on top: “Call me when you get a chance,” and her number, as if I didn’t already have it.

Still haven’t called her. I doubt she’s waiting by the phone.