There is no way the Day is real. It’s a stupid, toxic joke. It’s like Santa, but ghoulish. I’ll get to the end of the Day, and they’ll say, “All right, Nina, you’re in on it now,” and I’ll be one of them, and that’s that.

Hugh heads for Charlie’s room. He turns the handle, and I can’t breathe. Then I hear my child sit up and murmur a good morning, and my body restarts.

Two hours in, Hugh had said, and the corridor feels twice as narrow.

I close my eyes tightly and open them wide and call over my shoulder, “I’m gonna let the dog out!”

When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I see Sally standing on the foyer rug wearing boots and an overcoat, patting Max’s upraised head. She sucks in a slow gasp when she sees me, then shakes her head, embarrassed. Well, she’s certainly on edge.

“Just back from the village,” she says.

“Okay.” Our eyes stay locked longer than usual. I blink first. “Everyone doing all right?”

“No one yet,” she says.

This is not a normal conversation. This is no longer a normal place.

I smile. What the hell else can I do? “Well, that’s good.”

Sally doesn’t exactly look like she agrees. “What shall I fix for breakfast, then?”

“Ask Hugh, if you don’t mind?” I turn away, leading Max by the collar toward the side door, into the high-fenced part of the garden. His little prison yard. “I might pop out and see how Jo’s doing. Didn’t catch her yesterday.”

“No, I think milord would rather you stay put today, Nina.”

It takes me a second to turn and look at her.

She stares back, unwavering.

This is the first time in seven years I’ve minded being called by my own name. He’s milord, but today I’m just Nina. If he’s got the title, he calls the shots. He can order me into house arrest, like Max, who begs to be let out the front seventeen times a day, only to be led again and again to the fenced back garden, never the heath.

Sally must see red rising in me. She blinks, softening. “It’s just the one day. You’ll understand when—”

“When the Day is done. Yep.”

My tone is sharp, but Sally seems pacified. As she clomps down into the kitchen, I stare into Max’s eyes, wide as ever with misplaced hope. I know what he wants. He wants to tear out of here straight to that rocky beach and terrorize a protected colony of puffins, just like every other time he’s gotten loose since we brought him here as a puppy.

“Shhh,” I whisper, and pad silently back to the front door, to freedom. “Don’t tell.”