"Whether you were adjusting to the university environment," Tyler said, his voice as steady as a metronome's. "And whether I thought you were finding the postgraduate program... what you expected."
Mike leaned back, the plastic chair creaking slightly under his weight. He didn't look away; he let the silence hang for a beat, letting the weight of the question settle.
"Those are specific questions," he noted, his tone suggesting he knew exactly why a mother would pivot from generalities to such targeted inquiries.
"She asks specific questions when she's working toward something," Tyler replied.
There was a chilling, clinical quality to the way he spoke about his own mother, the detached, analytical observation of a child who had learned to treat a parent not as a source of warmth but as a complex system to be decoded.
"I don't always know what her ultimate objective is... I just notice the patterns in her behavior."
"What did you tell her?" Mike asked.
