The examination room was bright and too cold, with the constant buzzing of a lamp above the chair and that clean smell that had always calmed Lily since she was five years old.
This time nothing reassured her.
She sat in the dental chair with her shoulders hunched, her hands clasped on her knees, and when Dr. Harris asked her where it hurt, she pointed to her left side without looking at him.
Then he looked at Daniel.
It was only a second, but I saw it.
It wasn’t the distracted glance of a child towards a familiar adult, but the quick, tense look of someone checking where the danger is before speaking.
Dr. Harris saw it too.
I knew because he barely looked up from the instrument tray and held his eyes on Daniel for a second longer than usual, as if he were trying to remember something.
“Let’s take a look, champ,” she said in her usual friendly, almost cheerful tone. “Open wide, like you’re about to bite into a cloud.”
Lily obeyed.
Daniel took another step closer to the armchair.
Too close.
Not next to me, not behind me, not with the gesture of a stepfather present, but at a strange angle from where I could see my daughter’s mouth and her face at the same time.
“You don’t need to be so hovering,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted.
He smiled without looking at me.
—I just want her to feel accompanied.
It wasn’t true.
I knew him well enough to know that Daniel never interfered in anything that didn’t directly concern him, and that sudden intensity, that keen vigilance, reignited an old discomfort that had been asking me for a name for too long.
