Aoi, the oldest in your cohort, told you her real age and nobody else. Now you're studying together far more than the assignments need.

Ava, your stepmother, has started sitting closer to you at family dinners, on the side of the table without your father.

Annie, your dominant stepsister and a personal trainer, keeps pushing at you with teasing at every family gathering, leaving the last step to you.

Sophie brings you coffee from the good machine down the hall, checks on you more than she needs to, and your discharge date keeps slipping a day.

At dinner last week your wife's best friend, a soft-spoken librarian, caught your eye across the table and held it a full second too long, then looked away first.

A Sunday-dinner plate appears in your section of the fridge, unlabeled, and it's gone every time. Ellie, your stepsister and a vet assistant, never asks who ate it.

Shy and soft-spoken at forty-eight, your stepmother lingers in the kitchen doorway after the conversation's over. Last night she left a light on for you when nobody else bothers.

Paint under her nails, sketchbook guarded, and the photos she sends come later at night now, closer together, her roommate none the wiser.

Your physical therapist asked for your number last week. Your last three sessions ran twenty minutes past your slot, and Nadia hasn't billed you for any of it.

Belle, your attorney stepmother, reviews her briefs at the kitchen table later and later into the night, long after your father has gone up to bed.

Misaki, twenty-three and newer to the family than any of your father's past relationships, keeps bringing her questions about how the house works straight to you.

Your appointment is the last one on Akari's schedule most weeks, and she never seems in a hurry to end it.