“Do not touch that animal again.”
The boy stopped.
Lydia did not.
“Why?” she asked.
Her father looked back at her.
“Because I said so.”
The answer was familiar.
Lydia’s fingers tightened around the armrests.
For years, nearly every fact about her body had arrived through him.
You cannot feel that.
You cannot stand.
You cannot risk therapy.
You cannot be left alone.
You cannot trust what you think you felt.
She had accepted the sentences because they came wrapped in concern.
Now a barefoot stranger’s accidental touch had sent a sharp sensation through her ankle in front of fifty witnesses, and the first thing her father wanted was silence.
“Touch my foot again,” Lydia said.
The boy froze.
Her father’s voice cracked across the lawn.
“No.”
Lydia looked at the boy.
“Not hard. Just touch it.”
He glanced at the guests, then at her father, then back at Lydia.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
Her father moved toward him.
One of the guests stepped between them.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
“Charles,” the man said, “you already knocked him to the ground.”
