Afterward, he excused himself to finish up some work, and I carried the rest of the pizza to the kitchen to wrap it up and put it in the fridge.

“I can do that,” Barrett said, coming in and finding me wrestling with the plastic wrap.

“I can also do it,” I said. “Hence the doing of it that I . . . am.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply that you can’t,” he said.

“Just that I shouldn’t be oppressed by your parents’ insistence that I personally wrap all the leftover food.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Fight the power.”

“The power bought me dinner,” I said. “So I can put the dinner away.”

“Well, I can take the box to the trash,” he said, snatching it off the counter and disappearing. He seemed to be gone for a long time, and I grew uneasy. Finally, I’d given up and started back toward the nursery. I hadn’t shed the melancholy that had settled on me, and it made me sensitive to every detail of our interactions. I began to think his long absence was intentional.

“Margot, wait, please,” he said, jogging down the hall behind me. This time, unlike earlier, he caught up. “Sorry, the box didn’t fit in the normal trash. I had to take it over to the garage . . . I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Just around,” he said. “Not to any specific place to do any specific thing—”

“Oh, we can water the bulbs,” I said.

He laughed. “Or that.”

“I’ll go get the key,” I said.

WE EMERGED FROM the house into a world on the verge of nightfall. The sky was darkening swiftly, the last gasps of sunlight shooting into the clouds and painting them shades of rose pink and orange.

We were strangely quiet as we made our way out through the garden and into the graveyard. I think we were contemplating the absolute insanity that could ensue if we ever admitted that we wanted to be together in any way. I know I was.

After my conversation with Laura, the names on the gravestones suddenly made sense, which also made them supremely creepy. Abel? Yes, I remembered Abel. Well, here he is. Loretta, the old battle-ax. Here she is. Agatha (a.k.a. Maude), Matthew. Here they all were, arrayed in orderly, picturesque little graves, spread out among the trees yet still all part of the whole.

But not Lily. Her grave was one curve of the path too far from the others. Maybe they’d decided to start the new generation back here, spread things out a little. That made me imagine the current generation of Suttons lying still and silent underground someday, their bodies cold and their muscles melting away, bones fading to dust, and that turned my stomach.

“Are you okay?” Barrett asked.

“I really don’t like it in here,” I said.