My hand curled on the countertop before I could stop it.
Composure is a discipline. I practise it the way other people practise sword forms: spine straight, voice level, breath measured. Ten minutes ago a twelve-year-old said Mom and looked at Rose as if she'd been handed the sun. I said "Congratulations" with a blade folded inside it and watched Rose decide not to bleed. Now I was sitting across the island instead of beside her, and the ward light above the door had noticed.
Childish, I told myself. I am twenty-six. I know the arithmetic of love. It isn't subtraction.
I also know what I learned to count before I learned anything else.
