Emma O’Connor hadn’t had braces on her teeth for more than twenty-one years, but she still ran her tongue over her front teeth whenever she was lost in distraction. In some remote part of her mind, she’d never quite gotten over the feeling of the difference once the brackets and wires came off. Even as a grown woman, some small part of her remained right there at that transition of her teenage self—transformed from wrong to right, at least in the teeth.

The habit of feeling for it, for reconfirming herself to herself, became a time slip, a subconscious touching base when she fell absorbed in a task.

The scar running up the right side of her neck into the sunken place that should have been the squared turn of her jaw was a souvenir from a more recent metamorphosis, this time from right to wrong. And also to wronged.

The scar had finally faded to a quieter shade of pink on the white field of her skin, but it had always been too high to cover with a scarf, so she’d grown out her hair to hide it, as much as it would ever stay hidden.

The tall, slick, sharp-jawed urban pixie, in good suits and a constant hurry, wouldn’t recognize the shaggy-haired woman in T-shirts and worn-through jeans that she’d become.

Dragging her fingers along the knotted track of damage and repair on her neck was now part of the ritual fidgeting, along with the habit of sweeping her straight white teeth with her tongue, unconsciously revisiting the reminders of her milestones. She did these things when she was lost in thought—daydreaming, puttering, reading, and especially when she was at the computer, as she was now, clicking through the social media feeds.

Her mother’s page was set to private, so Emma only caught electronic glimpses of her whenever she commented on someone else’s post. Her brother’s son had become quite a good photographer as his high school years spooled out, so mostly there were just pictures by the dozens, imported from his Instagram feed. But her sister was a Facebook champion.

Regular days and holidays, big events and little nothings, Bethany chronicled it all. She was so thorough in her updates that some days Emma nearly forgot that they hadn’t spoken to each other in four years. But time had definitely passed. There was a new baby in the family, and also a niece by marriage she’d never met. A favorite cousin had passed away after an illness he hadn’t yet been stricken with when Emma last saw him. There were new jobs and house moves and achievements and sometimes pictures of what someone had for lunch. Everyone got cartoon cakes in their birthday messages.