Annie fumbles, almost squishing a star’s point. This is one of the more personal questions either of the Kellers has asked her. “I like the detailing that goes into decorating baked goods. It’s kind of an art form. My mom always made these themed cakes for our birthdays, so I just watched her.” She stands back, admiring her work.

Mr. Keller shakes his head in bewilderment. “God, we got lucky with you.” And then Mrs. Keller comes stalking into the kitchen and grabs him by the shirttail, pulling him outside. “I need your help. You’re done in here.”

They go out to the lawn to speak to the magician, who has just arrived, polyester suit stretched over a small potbelly, scraggly hair tied at the nape of his neck, premature gray speckling his beard. Annie recognizes him. He was two years ahead of her in school, a shadow of a student who sold her sister bad ecstasy when she was thirteen. His fingernails gleam as if he diligently spent time scraping the dirt under them, cutting his cuticles, buffing the edges. Something about this makes Annie smile. He’s trying! For Suzy.

Annie leaves the cake in the kitchen and sets out the snacks she’s prepared on the folding tables placed out on the lawn. Pigs in a blanket, mini grilled cheeses, frozen grapes. Scalloped glass bowls full of M&M’s. “We can hire a caterer. You’re already doing the cake,” Mr. Keller had said when Annie bustled in with the grocery bags, four in total, making multiple trips out to the car.

“She likes doing it, Nicholas. Let her have her fun,” Mrs. Keller had said breezily, eyes flitting over puffy bags of sugar, the fresh cheddar, so moist that Annie wanted to claw at it, bite it and study her teeth marks. She didn’t, of course. The cheese was for the sandwiches.

Mrs. Keller was right. She did like doing it. She loved rolling out the dough, pressing it tenderly around the sausages, watching it rise to that rich golden-brown. She liked making fruit platters, arranging the watermelon and the strawberries and kiwi in kaleidoscopic patterns, complementary colors sitting side by side.

All that languid action stopped the thumping in her heart, the droning hum in her head. And the sticky smiles Suzy would bestow upon her after—well, that was worth crouching by an oven on a late summer day.

“No, you stand over there.” Mrs. Keller summons the pony and its master to the edge of the lawn, creating a semicircle of infantile entertainment, the toddler bounce house flanked by the magician and now the pony, who grunts softly as Mrs. Keller’s cigarette smoke gets near his nose.