“Mom always said order protects love,” he mentioned lightly, rinsing glasses. The sentence passed through the room and hung there, like a framed motto no one had agreed to hang. Evelyn smiled, curious about the mother who’d said it, and where order ended and love began.
She began feeling ever so slightly—not punished or scolded—graded. A raised eyebrow instead of a red pen. A small nod rewarded alignment. She looked for the middle ground between relief and resistance and found herself standing in it on most nights, careful not to make a splash.