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“For a reason?” I repeat.

“A normal reason.”

Luke coughs into his water.

“Bo,” Dottie says.

“I didn’t say anything!” Bo says, with the wild eyes of a boy who’s been holding a secret since roughly Tuesday and can feel it killing him. “I just think the backyard is nice at night. That’s a normal thing to think.”

“It is a normal thing to think,” I agree.

“There’s nothing out there,” he adds, unprompted, which is the exact sentence a person says when there is, in fact, something out there. “It’s just grass. Regular grass. Don’t even look at it.”

“I wasn’t going to look at the grass.”

“Good. Because there’s nothing to see.”

Luke has put his face in his hand. Dottie is pressing her napkin to her mouth. And I, a trained professional in the reading of human behavior, a woman who can diagnose an anxiety disorder across a crowded room, am sitting here confused.

Bo exhales like I’ve let him off a hook, looks at his dad, gets a small nod he doesn’t know I caught, and goes back to his food.

I look around the table instead.

Six months ago I ate dinner alone at a table for one with a candle in the dead center, and I called it peace.

I didn’t know anything.

I know now. I know that this is the thing I built a wall to keep out because I was so sure it would cost more than I could pay.

It costs everything. That’s the part nobody tells you. You hand it everything.

And it is worth everything.

“Okay,” Bo says, standing so fast his chair scrapes. “Everybody’s done. Time for the backyard.”

“I’m not done,” Dottie says mildly.

“Grandma.”

“I’m teasing, baby.” She stands, and squeezes my shoulder one more time on her way up, and this time I feel her hand shaking, just slightly, and I look up, and her eyes are wet.

“Dottie, are you okay?” I ask.

“Onions.” She waves me off, which is a lie, because I chopped the onions an hour ago.

Bo pulls me toward the back door.

Luke opens the door.

And the backyard has lights in it.

Not many. A single strand, run along the fence line and up into the one big oak, the kind of soft warm bulbs that make an ordinary yard look like it’s holding its breath. They weren’t here last week.

The yard is still, the hum somewhere far off. It’s cool and clear and the sky’s that deep blue right before it goes black, and the lights are gold against it, and I stop on the back step and just look, because it’s beautiful.

Bo lets go of my hand and walks out into the middle of the yard, under the oak, and turns around to face me.

And he’s stopped vibrating.