I know she doesn’t mean it like that, like I’ve become such a husk of my former self and that no one wants to handle a corpse, a hardened body that used to be a person. But I want to feel angry. I haven’t felt the high of it in so long, that heady feeling, the buzz of strong emotion, and I want to sustain it. I want that moment of suspended tension when one person has said something so awful it just hangs in the air, bending time for a split second before the involved parties swallow the gravity of betrayal.

Which is why I say what I say next. Even if I don’t fully believe it myself.

“You’re just jealous, Beth. We both know you like how horrible this last year has been for me. It lets you control me. Lets you be superior. Now that I’m finding my way back to myself, you’re just upset that my time isn’t taken up entirely by you, that I have someone else. That maybe, even, I could be a better version of you, like I was in college. Like I was all our lives before my dad died.” And I turn away from her and march up the stairs to the front door, dopamine rushing to my head, adrenaline pumping through my bloodstream. I hear her sharp intake of breath. But I’m already in the vestibule, locking the front door behind me, taking the coward’s way out.

10

August 1996

One day Mr. Keller stops Annie and asks her to make up the guest bedroom because Claudette isn’t working that day. “My niece, Georgia, is coming tomorrow. Actually, I think she’s about your age. Maybe you could take her out. Show her the hip spots?” He wriggles his eyebrows, and Annie smiles primly without a response.

The next morning, Mrs. Keller sets out early to pick up Georgia from the train station. She has taken the day off work, and as Annie and Suzy finish up breakfast, Annie feels a sense of impending doom, a horrid tickle of anticipation about what is to come. She’s distracted. Suzy has hit her head on an open cabinet door and is crying, clinging to Annie’s leg. How long has she been crying? Seconds? Minutes? Annie bends down and covers her with kisses, giving her a long, hard hug. They’re embracing like that, Annie on her knees, when she hears a car pull into the driveway.

“So the house isn’t exactly ready for Architectural Digest yet, but we’re trying! Of course, your mother would probably have a million things to say about it, but that’s why I invited you and not her,” Mrs. Keller says, and Annie hears laughter, her boss’s deep throaty one and another lighter tinkle.