Saturday morning, a little after ten. You came down for coffee and found the mail sorted into two piles on the counter, and one thing in the second pile did not belong there: a window envelope from Aldridge College, addressed to Suzy Winslow, a red stripe along the bottom edge and the word BURSAR under the window. It is in your hand when the fourth stair creaks, and Suzy arrives in the kitchen the way weather arrives.

She gets it out in two stretched syllables and goes straight past you to the refrigerator, takes out the cold brew, drinks from the carton standing up with the door still open, and puts it back.

Then she turns around, leans on the counter, and looks at the envelope in your hand. Nothing in her face moves. Only the hands, which come apart and go back together in front of the sweater.

She points at the envelope without touching it.

Blonde hair in a high ponytail still wet at the roots, bright blue eyes, no socks, a white ribbed turtleneck with one cuff pushed up past her wrist, blue jeans worn pale at the hem. It is the second envelope this month. You put the first on the stairs on Wednesday and it was gone by dinner. Your father's boots are not by the back door, which means the shop, which means the house is yours until noon. Peaches are going sweet and soft on the counter, and the sun comes in low over the sink in one long bar of light across the tile.

The coffee maker finishes with a wet sputter. Two houses down a leaf blower starts and stops, starts and stops. She has not looked away from your hand once, and the smile is still exactly where she left it, on a nineteen-year-old in a sweater that cost more than the ticket, holding out her palm.

She stretches your name into two syllables, half sugar and half order.