Eight forty-seven PM.

I know because I checked my phone while standing in the doorway of the bathroom, which smelled like strawberry toothpaste that had somehow ended up on the mirror instead of on a toothbrush, and I thought: I have been standing in doorways saying the same four words since 2019.

Brush. Your. Teeth. Mia.

Not yelling. Not yet. That comes later, around the fourth ask, when something in my chest goes tight and I stop being a person and become a sound.

She was sitting on the edge of the tub holding a plastic dinosaur, explaining to it — quietly, patiently, with genuine tenderness — why it needed to eat more vegetables. The dinosaur was listening. I was invisible.

"Mia."

Nothing.

"Mia, teeth."

She moved the dinosaur's head up and down. "He says okay."

I counted three ceiling tiles. A thing I started doing in March. Therapist said to find something concrete in the room when I feel it rising. I've memorized every ceiling in this house.

"Mia. Toothbrush. Now."

She looked at me. Really looked at me, the way six-year-olds do when they're about to say something that will either break your heart or make you want to sell them.

She said: "Mom, why do you always sound so angry when you ask?"

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Stood there in the doorway with the strawberry smell and the dinosaur and the three ceiling tiles, and I had absolutely no answer. Because she wasn't wrong. Because I was angry. Because I'd been angry about this specific thing every single night for — I did the math in my head — roughly six hundred nights in a row.

And the worst part wasn't the anger.

The worst part was that I couldn't remember the last time bedtime felt like anything else.

I took the toothbrush off the holder and handed it to her without saying a word.

She took it.

And something about the way she looked at me while she brushed — careful, watching — made me feel like I was the one being studied.

Like she was trying to figure out where her real mom went.

I turned off the bathroom light and walked to the kitchen and stood over the sink in the dark.

Mia went to her room.

I told myself I'd go say goodnight in five minutes.

Twenty minutes later I was still at the sink when I heard her voice through the wall.

Quiet. Almost a whisper.

Not the dinosaur this time. Different. Softer.

I put down my glass and walked to her door.

And stood there with my hand on the handle, not going in.

Listening.