She mindlessly cleans up the house while Suzy is in school. She decides, as she’s changing the towels in the guest bathroom, that she’ll just pick up Suzy straight from school, pack her a lunch. That way, they should beat any rush hour traffic.

She makes her own bed one final time, in that room that once seemed so lavish, that now looks so ordinary and bare compared to the rest of the house. Her things took only moments to pack, thrown into the duffel she’d taken from her own home a year ago.

Her brain is buzzing, the world so keyed up it’s like she’s at the movies, watching the lights dim and brighten. She feels so in control that if she were to blink and think about it, the sky could turn green. The lake could overflow and sanitize her and the house. She could rewind time and watch it move backward, like a VHS tape, everyone in her life walking backward, Suzy tugged back into the womb. Her womb.

But there’s no time to think about that, to think hard enough to make all those magic possibilities occur. She needs to flick off every light in the house, make Suzy’s lunch, and go. It’s nearing time.

Before she leaves, she places a note artfully by the salt-and-pepper shakers, folded horizontally into an envelope on which she writes Mr. Keller’s name in elaborate cursive, almost calligraphy. She doesn’t lick it, but stands back, admiring her handiwork, the envelope lolling its tongue just so. She’s so proud of that note she wishes she could keep a copy. Two years of college weren’t wasted on her.

She locks the front door behind her, and doesn’t look back. No time for lingering glances. The haze of almost-summer is upon her, and as she glides into the front seat, she rolls down the windows and breathes deeply. So long, lake. So long, fields. She is in a picture book and turning the page to her new chapter.

The traffic is pretty bad, but thankfully Suzy falls asleep in her car seat instantly after finishing her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and most of her halved grapes.

Annie switches on the radio at a low volume, sings along to Biggie and Jewel. She remembers, fleetingly, middle school, wearing her dead mother’s dowdy hand-me-down dress to a school dance, her hair shorn off while she was sleeping by one of her brothers, just little kids playing with scissors. The sneers and jeers as she tried to dance to the music. The music she hardly knew because her dad didn’t like it played in the car.