‘I know I’m hard work,’ Suzanne said softly. ‘You are hard work,’ I agreed, rolling my eyes.
Sometimes – a lot of the time – in fiction, you have to have the protagonist say the wrong thing without consequence, because that happens in life. There's no narrator to break the fourth wall and signal to the audience, "THIS IS THE WRONG THING TO SAY!" So Caddy says this and never hears that what she *should have* said is, "No, you're not hard work, you're hurting, and I'm here. You're not a burden." But she didn't know she needed to say that, and Suzanne didn't know it either, because she was *expecting* to hear "You are hard work." This is such a sad moment reading it over, made all the worse because Caddy never realises her mistake, and never knows how deeply Suzanne takes this into her heart.
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