Number -

It's the license plate of a dark blue Ford, the chapters of town ordinances, brass symbols on house doors – even Henry, dragged from operation to homework, looks up as she reaches for dishes with, "What's eight threes?"

She lives too much in the storybook, Regina knows, to be haunted so by a number, but she's alone as the clock ticks on to midnight, that last hour that never quite forms, ink under her fingers where a man should be and even math must know the wrongness. Twenty-three she touches, ripped and mended, should (could) there not have followed a twenty-four?