It seemed like a power play to use my real name instead of calling me Elle like everyone else—had he been doing that the whole time? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t want to answer, but I couldn’t let us just sit there in silence. I knew he could wait for the answer much longer than I could wait to give it to him. I also felt if I lied he’d somehow know. I didn’t trust my voice. I stood still in the doorway. I felt like a child being lectured standing up like that—why couldn’t he have taken me somewhere to sit down? To the library or his stately home office, not this hazy bathroom? “She left,” I said, trying to keep things simple.

“You lost your mother too?”

“I didn’t lose her,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him anything else, but he just sat there, steam swirling around him, waiting for me to finish. “She walked out on my dad.”

I cursed myself for giving away so much. I didn’t know how, but I suspected he’d somehow find a way to use it against me. “I had my dad,” I said, unsure why I was still talking, telling myself to shut up. “I would’ve chosen to live with him anyway.”

“Well,” he replied, nodding thoughtfully. “That is different.”

I thought he was going to say something about being thankful for my father; it was the direction this conversation had always gone in the past, but instead he said, “There’s no resentment when someone dies. It’s a clean break. You can mourn them without all your other emotions getting in the way. You don’t have to sit around for years and wonder why she doesn’t return, if you could’ve done something different to make her stay.”

“What are you getting at?” I said, angry now, anxious to see what he was planning to do, but also not wanting to continue this conversation at all, wanting to leave this sick old man to die. It started to disgust me, breathing in the steam surrounding us. It was starting to feel like tendrils emanating from his body, connecting us somehow. And yet, I was also aware that all he was actually doing was pointing out his daughter’s privilege—the very same trait I’d initially hated her for.

“Let’s get it straight,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s had it hard. You probably can’t afford to buy new clothes, there’s probably a safety pin holding your bra strap in place.”

I cringed. It was nightmarish for him to be thinking about my underwear. “Don’t delude yourself,” he continued. “She’s not to be empathized with. Her inability to do anything but appreciate her perfect storybook life shows nothing except a lack of moral character.”