“My wife and I have explained to her that she’s going to school to learn. And that it’ll be fun. She’ll have all sorts of new toys to share with her classmates, different activities each day. New books to look at in your library. Again, she seemed excited.” Annie heard him shift his legs, his shoes squeaking on the floor.

Another pause. “She’s under the impression she will be taken away, Mr. Keller. That she’s leaving you and her mother, leaving this house. She started to cry when we introduced ourselves. Do you have any idea how she got that idea?”

Mr. Keller didn’t.

Now, on the dawn of her first day away, Annie’s body screams, her fingers tingling, needing, yearning to do something. It’s like her physical form is preparing itself for those hours of the day when Suzy will be gone, when Annie will have to find new ways to use her frenetic energy. She has thought about deliberately spilling wine on the living room rug, of baking without grease, so she’ll have to spend the time scrubbing the rug, the pots and pans.

She decides to make an elaborate breakfast, a feast that no almost-three-year-old could ever finish, but one that will take time, that will create a festive atmosphere around this day, this day Annie has been overlooking, eyes moving past it on the calendar.

A million things could happen to Suzy at preschool, she tells herself. Who knows if those teachers are to be trusted?

That morning, Annie makes coffee cake with caramel drizzle, stacks of bacon, fresh-squeezed orange juice, scrambled eggs and another plate of just egg whites, cupping the yolks out of the clear liquid like newborn suns in faraway galaxies. When Mrs. Keller shuffles down in her robe, not used to waking so early, she gapes at the splendor, at the pink tablecloth carefully selected from the drawer next to the dishwasher, at the glass bowl full of mangos and watermelon.

“Are we hosting a brunch I forgot about or something?” She slices the coffee cake, a murmur of ecstasy escaping her lips as she drops a crumb on her tongue. She pinches off another with two long red nails. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Annie. Maybe we should hire you as a cook. Forget the babysitting duties.”

Annie smiles and goes up to wake Sue. Mrs. Keller has laid out a denim dress with a little collar for Suzy, little Mary Janes with rubber soles. Downstairs, Annie can hear Mrs. Keller having her coffee on the front porch, her deep phlegmy smoker’s cough ricocheting up to the second floor.

Annie hadn’t told Suzy she would be taken away. She hadn’t. So when she was confronted by the Kellers later, after the teachers had left, she wasn’t lying when she said she had no idea where Suzy had gotten that idea.