“I’m a mess. I’ve been off my medications for a while. I’m supposed to be back up here getting help. They didn’t press charges. Gabby offered to help pay for treatment instead, just like your daddy all those years ago. He was so kind to me back then. He said that since I’d been so amazing at caring for you, I obviously needed therapy more than a criminal record. That it would be easier on him, on you, not to take legal action. He said he just wanted me to get help and disappear from your lives. Gabby wanted the same thing.

“I did that, Sue. I got treatment again. But they discharged me months ago, after seventy-two hours, and I’m back here now. And I don’t know what to do. I’m staying with Alice, my other sister. But I can’t stop thinking about you. I knew you were coming up this weekend for your Dad’s birthday. And I’ve been good. I’ve given you space. And I feel like it was just yesterday we were here, don’t you? Don’t you, Suzy?” She sniffles.

“You know what I was doing all those days you thought I was applying for jobs? I was just walking aimlessly around the city. I couldn’t commit to anything. I wanted so badly to make my brain stop. But all I could do was physically move forward.” She covers her face with her hands, tears spurting out through the cracks in her fingers.

“Before I came to the city, I stayed with Alice, too. She and her friends helped me falsify my credentials from the last few years, pretended to be old employers. Then I saw in the news that your daddy had died, and I wanted to comfort you.” She is babbling, crying full-on guttural sobs now, her small shoulders shaking with the effort, her face crimson and puffy and streaked. “I wanted so badly for you to love me, and I was so embarrassed by how broken I was. You were hurting and I was hurting and I wanted us to help each other. And I could tell that you were addicted to being doted on, loved being the center of someone else’s world.” She looks up then, her eyes shiny and bright, roving across the room manically.

“You know, I was good for a while? Not everything I said was a lie. After your daddy helped me all those years ago, I really tried to take care of myself. I took my meds. I worked as a teacher’s aide in Massachusetts for a few years. I nannied. The kids always loved me. I really did love working with them.”