From as far back as she can remember, which is far, she must admit, baby bottles made of glass, and cool blue and pink pins for her diapers, it has always been the same. When she was six, she didn't even think about the gift. It was that way for everyone else, she believed. Like she believed all adults had her best interests at heart, even the first grade teacher who made the children who couldn't hold their bladders wear the giant pacifier around their necks. She didn't know to complain about that. She didn't know what she could do was different from the rest.

In the mornings in the summer, when she was ten or eleven, she knew when the rest of the family had left the house without leaving her room, without hearing the car. The house was full of quiet. No one was feeling sad or worried (her daddy) or angry  (her mother). It was like glass and water, clear and soft, although a little cold, a little welcome distance. 

When she was thirteen, she began to understand she wasn't exactly like the other kids in the neighborhood. They didn't seem to understand how sad some people were. Why was she being so nice to that loser who wet her bed? To that mean guy who threw a rock at her? They thought she was weak. Weakness was niceness. Because of this misunderstanding, which she also understood was fear (and so she didn't respond to them in anger), she attracted bullying for most of her life, even from her closest friends, who did like to get sympathy from her for their problems, but didn't really respect her for it, as it wasn't something that they could understand. And people felt multitudes of things and only expressed one or two of them. She felt sometimes as if she was drowning in all those unexpressed moments. 

When she was sixteen, it was all a terrible mess. Her mother was so angry. She felt angry, too, when she was near her. Her father was always lying, and when she looked at him, she knew that he realized she understood that. But he didn't stop that year. 

When she finally left home, for a minute, there was peace, but now, on her own, without understanding her gift, she was a bit lost, not that it is unusual to be a bit lost at eighteen. She felt nothing but fear, but began to understand again, as she hadn't since she was a child, that it might not always be hers. 

When she was in her mid-twenties, she finally realized what she was, what she could do, but she couldn't control it. She ignored when she should have listened. She listened too hard when she should have let go. But it wasn't much different from the struggles of her friends and so, she got along okay. 

When she was in her mid-thirties, she left him. She knew he felt nothing, as he had never felt anything, as he never would feel anything beyond occasional triumph. He felt like a watch. She stopped lying to herself about it.

When she saw a television program later, revealing the sociopath as a watchmaker, she laughed in recognition at that man that she had dated and wondered if she was really so alone in her gift. Was it spying to feel what other people felt?  When she went home that year, her mother felt so murky and red, like blood and syrup, loving her but still disliking her at her core. She could finally identify it was something in her deeply loved mother, and not in herself, that caused these feelings. It had been the same since childhood. No child could have done something so bad to cause it. Maybe it was that time, when the girl had been seven and the mother said, "I didn't want to have another, but your father wanted to have one more, so I did." But she couldn't be sure. The gift did not allow her to read minds after all. 

When she was forty, a family member confessed to her that they too had the gift in some form. She felt sad she never knew. But she didn't talk about it even then. She just nodded and said she believed.