“I still need authorization, sir.”
Miles shrugged lightly.
“Then she can wait outside.”
The words were casual.
Dismissive.
My mother stepped around me as though I were a misplaced chair.
“We’ll see you afterward,” she said lightly, not actually looking at me.
My father followed her without speaking.
That was the moment I felt it again—that strange, hollow sensation of being erased while still physically standing in the room.
My name is Elena Carver, I’m thirty-four years old, and for most of my life I have occupied a strange role within my own family: present, dependable, but somehow never essential.
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