“Counting what, Elise?” My mother’s patience snapped.

“This is exactly what Victoria warned us about. Look at you — talking to a watch, smiling to yourself in a hospital. You’re not well.”

“She’s not well, she never was.” My father took a step toward me, and his voice had the old weight in it, the tone that used to make me shrink to nothing.

“Victoria was right about you from the start. You never had what it takes. You’re weak, and you always were, and now the whole family can see it.” Five seconds.

I kept my eyes on the sweep of the second hand and let him say it. Every word out of his mouth was one more thing he would have to remember, later, that he’d said to the wrong daughter.

And I’ll admit there was a part of me — a small, tired, twenty-three-year-old part still standing at a kitchen sink somewhere — that wanted to look up at him and simply ask why.