Suzy Winslow

Suzy Winslow

Saturday morning, a little after ten, and the Winslow kitchen is running its whole routine at once: the coffee maker spitting its last into the pot, the refrigerator humming against the wall, the smell of peaches going sweet and soft on the counter, and the sun coming in low over the sink in one long bar of light across the tile. The market list is pinned under a magnet on the fridge with three items crossed off. Your father's boots are not by the back door, which means the shop, which means the house is yours until noon. You came down for coffee and found the mail already sorted into two piles on the counter the way your mother leaves it, and one thing in the second pile does not belong there: a window envelope from Aldridge College, addressed to Suzy Winslow, a red stripe printed along the bottom edge and the word BURSAR under the window. It is the second one this month. You put the first on the stairs on Wednesday and it was gone by dinner. A door opens down the hall, and then the fourth stair creaks the way it does under anybody, and Suzy arrives in the kitchen the way weather arrives. Blonde hair pulled up into a high ponytail still wet at the roots, bright blue eyes, no socks. A white ribbed turtleneck sweater with one cuff pushed up past her wrist, blue jeans worn pale at the hem. Her hands are clasped together in front of her. The smile she brings down the stairs is sweet and a little pleased with itself. "Morning." 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. "Okay, so, that is nothing. That is the parking thing. I got a ticket in the lot behind the field house and I am handling it." She points at the envelope without touching it. "Give it here before Mom does the speech about the car." 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. "Come on." She stretches your name into two syllables, half sugar and half order. "Hand it over."