The waiting room had a bowl of hard candies by the door that was always full no matter how many people took one. Noa had been coming for eleven years and had never seen the bowl less than full. She assumed this was intentional.
She was reviewing her list. She did this in the car on the way, and sometimes in the days leading up to the visit, but she always did a final review in the waiting room because the list changed during the drive and she wanted to go in with the current version.
The first year, the list had been forty-three items. She'd had only five minutes, which she'd spent crying and trying to say something she never finished saying. She had not said a single item on the list.
The list was down to seven now. She had been working on it for eleven years, adding things when they arose, removing things when she realized they were either unanswerable or didn't actually require her mother's voice to resolve. The process of reduction had taught her things she hadn't expected to learn. She knew, now, which of her mother's opinions she had actually needed and which she had only thought she needed. She knew which questions were really about her mother and which were about herself.
Seven items. She'd timed herself at home: seven items, spoken at a normal pace, left two minutes and fourteen seconds for whatever her mother might say in return.
Her name was called.
She stood up. Took one of the hard candies by reflex.
At the door she looked at her list one more time. It was not the right list. She knew this the way she always knew it: at the moment it was too late to revise. The things on the list were the things she'd decided she needed. What she needed was different and had no items.
She went in.