I did not sit down.
This was deliberate. In my father's study there was always a geometry to where people positioned themselves and what the positioning communicated, who sat and who stood and who stood where, and I had been reading that geometry since I was old enough to be in this room, which was earlier than most people would have considered appropriate and exactly when my father had considered it necessary. Standing put me at the window side of the room, slightly behind and to the left of where Alana sat, close enough to intervene if intervention was required and far enough that I was not managing her, was not appearing to manage her, was giving her the room that she had just demonstrated, in the thirty seconds since my father told her to sit down and she sat down and looked back at h
