“Should I stop him?”
“I don’t think anything could,” she said quietly. “He’s been at that machine since he could reach the pedal. You know that.”
I did know. I had watched her hem my curtains while Eli, six years old, fed her pins from a magnetic dish and asked why the thread had a number. By ten, he was sketching dresses in the margins of his spelling homework. By thirteen, he was altering his own jackets on her old Singer.
I hung up and pressed my forehead against the cool window.
Two weeks felt impossible. Two weeks felt like a countdown to another disappointment I would have to absorb for my daughter.
Meanwhile, Hazel sank.
She stopped coming downstairs for breakfast. She wore the same gray hoodie three days in a row. When I knocked, she answered in syllables.
I tried to keep her tethered with small lies.
