If only she’d laughed instead of insisting. The memory carried the weight of a hinge; before it, her father had still been reachable; after it, the distance became a wall. It wasn’t just that he grew sharper with her. It was the way his patience with the others seemed to expand in contrast, as though her presence alone was the irritant.
She couldn’t understand why he had grown so short with her, why his patience frayed faster when she was the one asking questions. Each time he brushed her aside, it left her puzzled, wondering what she had done wrong this time. The harder she tried to win him back, the more he seemed to turn away.