Chapter 1 (Direct) - Why 2+2=4?

The chair was set a little too far from the bed to be kind. Emma sat in it anyway, straight-backed, as if she could hold the room up by force. One hand lay on her thigh; the other hovered within reach of the mattress—reachable on purpose, untouched on purpose. She kept her eyes on the window to the right of the bed. The curtains hung without moving. The light that slipped through was thin, as if a cloud had decided to wait there. Her grandmother lay propped against pillows, smaller than Emma remembered her being, but still busy—fingers worrying at the sheet, breath searching for a steady place. She reached, found Emma’s offered hand, and closed her own around it with a gentle insistence. Emma did not look down. The clock on the shelf gave one soft tick and then, for a moment, seemed to swallow itself. "Emma, I am dying." The sentence did not rise. It settled. It made the air heavy in a way Emma could feel behind her sternum, a pressure that wanted to climb into her throat and couldn’t find permission. She kept her gaze outward, as if the street could be an instruction manual. Her jaw tightened. Her hand stayed in her grandmother’s grip, neither squeezing back nor pulling away. There was a glass of water on the bedside table. A small cup. A strip of pills. Ordinary objects that waited like a job. Emma let her eyes drop to them and then, as if she were reading a checklist aloud, asked, "Do you want your medicine?" Her grandmother’s thumb brushed, once, over the side of Emma’s knuckle. The clock resumed a patient tick. The curtains made the faintest movement, like a test. "No. I don’t need the medicine anymore." Emma’s spine stiffened, almost imperceptibly. The offered hand became a fixed point, a handle bolted to the chair. Emma inhaled shallowly through her nose and held it a beat too long. In the pause she could feel a familiar mechanism spool up: don’t move, don’t feel, don’t make it worse. Her face stayed composed the way a door stays closed. Her grandmother’s grip tightened in response—not hard, not punishing, just desperate enough to be felt. The old woman’s eyes flicked to the window and back again, as if trying to catch Emma in motion. "A long time ago your parents died. You were strong. You got through it." The words were meant as comfort, but they landed like a mirror held too close. Emma’s shoulders rose a fraction and refused to come back down. The room kept its quiet, but the quiet changed: it became the kind that waits for a response it might not survive. The clock ticked. The curtains shifted. Light dimmed under a passing cloud and returned, as if the world were trying to be tactful. Emma stared at the window latch, at the small scuff in the metal where hands had learned it. She could name the scuff. She could not name what her chest was doing. Her grandmother continued, voice soft, still pressing, as if she could find the right doorway with enough tries. "When you were little, you followed your mother around the house asking why about everything. 'Why is two plus two equal to four, mom?'" A kitchen tile. A child trailing a woman who didn’t have room in her face for questions. The memory arrived clean and unasked, the way certain smells can pull a whole year out of hiding. "Your mother didn’t look at you. 'I’m tired,' she said—and she walked away." Emma’s throat tightened so suddenly it surprised her. Her lips parted and closed again without sound. She turned her face a few degrees farther toward the window, as if distance could be manufactured by angle. When she spoke, her voice was level. Almost bored by its own steadiness. "I’m fine. I’ve learned to be alone." The sentence was clean and finished. It did not tremble. It did not ask for permission to be believed. And yet the skin at the base of Emma’s neck prickled, a betrayal. Something in her ribs wanted to fold inward. She did not allow it. She kept her shoulders set, kept her breathing small. The room’s motifs continued without comment: tick, curtain, light. A domestic metronome. A reminder that the world could remain ordinary while something irrevocable happened inside it. Silence fell between them, not empty but shaped—like glass cooling into a form. Emma could feel her grandmother watching for the smallest crack. Her grandmother’s breathing hitched once. In the hitch there was a decision: forward, now, or lose her. "Promise me you will do what you love." Emma’s fingers twitched. She stared at the window so hard it began to blur, and then she blinked once, sharply, as if punishing her eyes for watering. "I promise." The words were quiet. Controlled. Something agreed to under duress. Her grandmother did not let the agreement end the matter. "And promise me too that you’ll let yourself be loved." Emma’s stomach tightened. For a breath she wanted to say no—not in anger, in honesty. The no rose as a physical reflex, a wall lifting itself before thought could catch up. Her grandmother saw it. Emma could tell by the smallest dimming around the eyes. Not wounded exactly. More like a person who realizes the bridge they hoped for is not there yet. It was now or never. Her grandmother’s free hand moved under the pillow and came out with a thin chain cupped in her palm. It glinted where the light touched it. "This necklace was my mother’s. She gave it to me before she died. I want you to wear it now." Emma’s gaze dropped despite herself. The chain lay across her grandmother’s palm like a thread. For a moment she imagined refusing, imagined the relief of motion. The image dissolved. Only the pressure remained. She rose instead, slow and competent, and stepped to the side of the bed. Without meeting her grandmother’s eyes, she gathered her hair off her neck with two fingers and turned a few degrees—just enough to offer access. Her nape was suddenly exposed to the room’s air. Her grandmother’s hands shook. She leaned forward into the space Emma had opened. The chain brushed the back of Emma’s neck. The clasp fumbled once, missed, and then found its place. A soft click. Emma’s shoulders tightened at the sound, as if the clasp had closed on something deeper than metal. She let her hair fall back. The necklace settled against her collarbone, a new weight, a quiet claim. The chain was cool at first, then warmed quickly against her skin. She could feel the tiny points of it settling, arranging itself as if it had always belonged there. She did not lift a hand to test it. Her grandmother’s fingers lingered in the air behind Emma’s neck, uncertain, then withdrew. Her grandmother searched Emma’s face for confirmation and found only a set mouth, a gaze that had returned to the window. Doubt landed, heavy and immediate: the gift might not have reached its target. Her grandmother lay back. Her chest rose once more. The inhale did not complete, or the exhale did not return. A tiny relaxation spread across her face, not as a smile but as a letting-go. Then the next breath did not come. For a second the room did nothing. Time held its posture. For a few heartbeats the curtains seemed to hang perfectly still again, as if they were listening too. The air thickened. Even the ticking sounded distant, muffled through cotton. Emma stood between the bed and the window, as if her body could serve as a boundary the world would respect. She did not touch her grandmother. Her eyes stayed outward, neutral, held. And then, as if some rule had been reinstated, the clock became audibly ticking again. Wind entered through the open window and lifted the curtains. A sun ray slid across the floorboards and reached, almost politely, toward the bed. Ordinary time resumed. Bureaucratic time. Emma’s fingers rose—two precise digits—and clamped the necklace against her throat, hard enough to pin down the swell that threatened behind her sternum. She took a controlled inhale, held it too long, and released it in a thin nasal exhale. Outside, someone’s footsteps passed on the street. Inside, the clock kept counting.