The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

“Ada!”
Oh no. Ohnoohnoohnoohno. Without Jamie I would die.
“I’m not going to send you away. Why would I send you away? You made
a mistake. A little, small mistake.” Now both Susan’s arms were around me. I
tried to squirm free. She held me tighter. “Did you really think I’d send you
away?”
I nodded.
“Let me tell you something. When I was coming back from my meeting, I
was thinking, ‘Maybe Ada will have made some tea.’ I was imagining how
you’d have the lights on inside, and the blackout up, and I was thinking how
lovely it was to have someone to come home to again. I used to dread going
back to an empty house.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t make tea,” I said.
“That’s not what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “I’m trying to say that
I’m glad you’re here.”
I couldn’t come down from my panic. It took me most of the night before I
could really breathe. Susan made tea, and when I couldn’t swallow any, she
didn’t insist. “I half wonder if I ought to give you a slug of brandy,” she said.
“You’ll never sleep in the state you’re in.” She made me take a hot bath and
she tucked the blankets tight around me. She was right: I lay awake half the
night. But eventually I slept, and when I woke up, Jamie and I were still there.
I could see Butter out the back window. Susan was frying sausages for
breakfast and I could breathe again.
Not long after that Jamie came home from school carrying the ugliest cat
Susan and I had ever seen. Its filthy, matted hair might have been any color at
all beneath the dirt. One eye was swollen shut. It glared at Susan and me out
of its other.
“I’m keeping him,” Jamie announced, dumping the cat into the middle of
the kitchen. It swished its tail and hissed at us. “His name’s Bovril. He’s
hungry.”
Bovril was a hot drink Susan made for us most nights. It was nasty, but I’d
gotten used to it. It had nothing whatsoever to do with cats.
“You’re not keeping it,” Susan said. “Pick it up at once and put it out. It’s
crawling with fleas.”
“I am keeping it,” Jamie said. He picked the cat up—the cat went limp in