“I don’t know, Miss Dee.”

“Lord. You could have burned the place down.”

“Somebody could have,” Ronny said. She looked up at him.

A moment later she came back to herself, walked to the bowl of cookie batter, and stirred it at little. “Is that you, Jamal?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Taste this cookie batter, let me know what you think.”

“You want to bake some cookies?”

“I thought I would. I’m in the mood for something sweet. You want to help me?”

Jamal looked at Ronny, who shrugged.

“Sure thing,” Jamal said.

“Look around for my cookie sheet,” she said. “I know it’s in here somewhere.”

“That cookie batter is really good.”

“It’s for sugar cookies,” she said. “My grandma’s recipe. You know. She gave it to me.” She turned and looked at Ronny. The cookie sheet had cooled enough that it wasn’t smoking anymore; he was scraping the remains of char off it into the garbage, and carried it to the sink. He started to wash it, as Jamal stood next to Miss Dee, hands on her shoulders.

“Ronny found the cookie sheet, he’s washing it.”

“Oh, that’s good! I haven’t used it in so long, it probably needs it.” She was peering toward the sink, wooden spoon in shaky hand, blinking. “You said Ronny was washing it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, I remember him. Ronny upstairs. He lives in that little room that used to be a closet.”

She remembered Jamal more consistently than anybody else. No one understood why. Some of the other boys from upstairs were looking in the doorway. No one spoke. She had gotten feebler in the past few weeks, and there were spells when her memory came and went—followed by spells when she was herself, and everything was fine. They were all trying to take care of her—well, most of them were. A couple of the guys were asses and just thought it was funny to watch her plodding around, trying to think what she was doing or remember to whom she was talking. But there was nothing to do about people like that. Miss Dee never appeared to notice.

She started laying out the cookies again on the sheet, after rubbing it down with butter slowly, moving at her own pace, as she had always done. The work appeared to bring her more fully into herself, and she said to Ronny, as the smoke cleared from the kitchen, “We had a good rain last night.”

“Yes, ma’am. It was a big storm. You see how the leaves are coming down?”

She patted the cookie batter carefully onto the sheet. “I don’t see much, but I guess I’ll take your word on it. Are you working today?”

“Not till late.”

“What are all these boys doing peeping in the kitchen like this? Did something happen?” She thought about it for a minute. “Oh, that’s right. I burned the first batch of cookies. But the smoke’s clearing out.”

“You want me to shut the door?” Jamal asked.