This is the peril of anecdotes. You took a momentary observation and wrote a whole narrative surrounding it. How do you know that this is a parental tether? May

This is the peril of anecdotes. You took a momentary observation and wrote a whole narrative surrounding it. How do you know that this is a parental tether? Maybe she had spoken to her mother the night before and expressed some worry about that particular quiz. The call you heard was just a follow up and she is otherwise fully independent. (I catch myself doing this frequently: that couple's marriage is in trouble—they're not even talking over dinner, that driver is on his phone scrolling through Facebook probably, etc. Those stories may be true but there's perfectly reasonable alternatives that would look exactly the same.)