Time slips through my fingers like water. I spend it in my room like I always do: forums, the game, forums, the game, sleep, repeat. Every moment is like the last... Until one night when Mom asks me to come eat with her and Dad in the dining room. Dinner is a battlefield of tiny sounds. The clink of forks against plates. The scrape of a chair as Mom leans forward. The faint hiss of the new dish washer. Mom is smiling at me across the table, the kind of smile that stretches too wide, like a balloon about to pop. Her hands are folded in front of her, fingers laced tightly, and I can see the faint shimmer of the wedding ring she’s worn since before I was born.