Do you know what that does? I can’t be annoyed with you. I don’t have the equipment.”

The clock in the living room did its thing. Half past whatever.

“When I was seven,” she said, “you were the safest place I ever was. And I was seven, so all I had to do was be there. Now I’m twenty-seven and I have to be your daughter, and I’m not good at it, and I have never once been anybody’s daughter for longer than eleven months.”

I sat down at my own kitchen table.

“I don’t know how to be less,” I said.

“I know.”