Her words made sense. If Susannah needed me, then that was something I could do. “I can do that,” I said, turning around to look at her. “I just don’t get how Mr. Fisher can leave her all alone like this when she needs him most.”
She looked away, out the window, and then back down at me. “This is the way Beck wants things to be. And Adam is who he is.” She cradled my cheek in her hand. “It’s not up to us to decide.”
Susannah was in the kitchen making blueberry muffins. She was leaning up against the counter, stirring batter in a big metal mixing bowl. She was wearing another one of her cotton housedresses, and I realized she’d been wearing them all summer, because they were loose. They hid how thin her arms were, the way her collarbone jutted up against her skin.
She hadn’t seen me yet, and I was tempted to run away before she did. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“Good morning, Susannah,” I said, and my voice sounded high and false, not like my own.
She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s past noon. I don’t think it counts as morning anymore.”
“Good afternoon, then.” I lingered by the door.
“Are you mad at me too?” she asked me lightly. Her eyes were worried, though.
“I could never be mad at you,” I told her, coming up behind her and putting my arms around her stomach. I tucked my head in the space between her neck and her shoulder. She smelled like flowers.
She said, still in her light voice, “You’ll look after him, won’t you?”
“Who?”
I could feel her cheeks form into a smile. “You know who.”
“Yes,” I whispered, still holding on tight.
“Good,” she said, sighing. “He needs you.”
I didn’t ask who “he” was. I didn’t need to.
“Susannah?”
“Hmm?”
“Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll never leave.”
“I promise,” she said without hesitation.
I let out a breath, and then I let go. “Can I help you with the muffins?”
“Yes, please.”
I helped her make a streusel topping with brown sugar and butter and oats. We took the muffins out of the oven too early, because we couldn’t stand to wait, and we ate them while they were still steaming hot and gooey in themiddle. I ate three. Sitting with her, watching her butter her muffin, it felt like she’d be there forever.
Somehow we got around to talking about proms and dances. Susannah loved to talk about anything girly; she said I was the only person she could talk to about those kinds of things. My mother certainly wouldn’t, and neither would Conrad and Jeremiah. Only me, her pretend-daughter.
She said, “Make sure you send me pictures of you at your first big dance.”
I hadn’t gone to any of my school’s homecomings or proms yet. No one had asked me, and I hadn’t really felt like it. The one person I wanted to go with didn’t go to my school. I told her, “I will. I’ll wear that dress you bought me last summer.”
“What dress?”
“The one from that mall, the purple one that you and Mom fought over that time. Remember, you put it in my suitcase?”
She frowned, confused. “I didn’t buy you that dress. Laurel would’ve had a fit.” Then her face cleared, and she smiled. “Your mother must have gone back and bought it for you.”
