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