Imogen stared at Jo for a minute. Jo was staring at her hands. Imogen looked away, looking for anyone else in the room to register how absurd this was. Daniella raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Imogen looked to Rinn, who was wide-eyed with disbelief.

Then Rinn said what they had all been thinking. “But you do hit people with your knuckles wrapped?” The incredulity in her tone was pretty noticeable.

Or maybe it was irony. Imogen couldn’t be sure. Rinn had this undercutting sense of humor. It wasn’t like Daniella’s sarcasm. There was no scorn in Rinn’s humor. Just a level of self-awareness that made Imogen’s lips twitch nearly into a smile.

Jo shrugged. “Sure. I box on Monday nights. I’m used to hitting and getting hit. Never realized the wraps were for my own protection as much as the other person’s.”

“Of course you wouldn’t realize that. Of course you think that wrapping your knuckles was for the protection of other people.” Daniella shook her head and did her best to stifle her laughter, but it was one of those impossible-to-control, sputtering things—under wraps for now, but capable of exploding at any minute.

“Hey, people get seriously hurt bare-knuckle boxing,” said Jo in her most grown-up, most adult of tones.

Rinn, Imogen, and Daniella all busted out laughing then. Riotous laughter. It was at Jo’s expense, that was true. But it was also at the day they were having. Imogen, at least, was laughing about creepy men and unsecured weapons, and the fact that Eli had tried to save the place they all loved by stealing from it. There was a power in laughing. It had been so difficult to find recently. But she felt it now. That she had taken back some sense of herself by laughing at everything that threatened to blow her over.

Imogen’s face hurt, she was so unused to laughter, so unused to smiling. The pain of it on her face slowed down her laughter, but not her amusement. She recovered first. “You really aren’t a proper adult, Jo.”

Jo moved her hand like she was going to make a stern gesture but ended up wincing instead. She’d forgotten her knuckles were sore. Forgotten, for a moment, that she’d just punched out a famous author in the break room of their dying bookstore. “I don’t think a proper adult could look after you hooligans. You’re like those kids in all those movies that drive the nannies and the governesses crazy.”

Rinn was the first to step in again. “Are you comparing us to the Von Trapp kids from The Sound of Music, Jo?”

They all started laughing again. This was one of the last moments they would spend with Jo, and they were going to spend them laughing, not crying.