Mrs. Keller takes Suzy in her shallow lap. She says, “Soon I won’t be able to breathe anymore. I won’t be able to give you a bath. To read you a story. But my love will always be right here, with you.” She sings Sondheim’s “Maria,” replacing Maria’s name with “Susanna,” and places her hand on Suzy’s little heart. Suzy looks at her blankly, hugs her neck, nestles her head in the gaping, concave space that’s Mrs. Keller’s chest.

Suzy leaves Mrs. Keller and goes to Annie. She says, matter-of-factly, “Mama is going away.” Annie nods.

“But I’ll be here. Daddy will be here. I’ll be here to give you a bath, to read you a story. Mama wants to be a wild jungle cat like Tiger.” Suzy wrinkles up her face.

“Mama wants to go bye-bye?” Annie doesn’t say a word. She nods, an almost imperceptible movement, strokes Suzy’s hair.

There’s talk of a family therapist, a child therapist for Suzy. But there’s no action, no appointment made. Mrs. Keller doesn’t want anyone to see her like this. She’s had no visitors. She says she’ll call her friends when she knows she’s about to die.

She’s so sure she will know.

They keep ringing, though. Friends from Paris and Lisbon and Mallorca call international. Some yell, tell her she needs to let go of her pride, that she’s too loved to die behind a closed door like this. Others are gentle, almost delicate with their words, and Mrs. Keller scoffs at them, tells them if they were genuine friends, they’d treat her the same until the end.

The school still doesn’t know, and Annie relishes this fact. She relishes Mrs. Keller’s pride, because though she has stopped her own self-mutilation for now, she still gets the wayward glances of sympathy, the attention. She still has stories to tell, of nasty, abusive fights between the Kellers, of Suzy being forced to sleep in her own urine-soaked sheets throughout the night.

Annie can’t seem to stop. The dangling delicacy of even fleeting attention was enough to make her want more, want a twenty-course Marie Antoinette feast of it. At pickup, her mendacious words spew out of her like vomit, dripping between her teeth as she savors the reactions.

At night, the passages of books are so palpably alive in her now that as she reads Honey in the Horn, she is in Oregon with all that unmarred land, endless possibilities in front of her, all that deliciously dazzling wildlife. Even as she goes about her day, picking up toys, wiping cream cheese off Suzy’s face, she’s still there, touching the velveteen grass. It’s at the periphery of her vision, beckoning her forward. She’s suddenly desperately frenetic. She wants to move.