[She watches him carefully, attentively, ready to correct him if he does something wrong. Her smile is thin, not because she isn't happy but because that's as big as she can smile right now. His understanding is correct. It's hollow. It's normal. One or the other, or both.]

It's something that people in the United States do at Hallowe'en. It's something my family did. So it's . . . [She worries her lip and then settles on:] Common.

[But nothing her family did could really be classified as normal, even if it appeared normal on the surface.]

It's expected.

[That seems closer to the truth. It was a thing they were supposed to do, so they did it. For most of her life, they even wanted to.]

You're doing it right, anyway.