Behind him, Emma and Scarlett were carrying woven baskets filled with root vegetables, their laughter light and unbothered. It was the kind of normalcy that once would have settled his heart. Now, it unsettled him. There was something forced about the brightness in their eyes, the way they clung to their tasks like lifelines. He caught Emma glancing at him once, a second too long, her gaze unreadable, and when he turned to meet her eyes, she quickly looked away and started humming a tune under her breath, one he hadn't heard since last year, something her grandmother used to sing in dreams. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.