Chapter 7: Cousins

By Thursday, the cabin had a routine, and I hated how much I liked it.

Chan was up first, stoking the stove, ribs wrapped, pretending they didn't hurt.

Hyunjin slept until I banged a pot, then came down the ladder with his hair in a messy knot and one eye shut.

I gave the tour at two and ran the numbers on the till at five.

The man in the parka had not come back.

Every night, a text came in on Chan's cheap black phone.

Every night Chan read it with his jaw tight and said nothing about it.

I was learning to ask him one question and then leave the room.

That Thursday I came in from the woodpile and found Hyunjin sitting on the porch step.

He had his hand held out in front of him, palm up, and he was frowning at it.

"What did you do?"

"The ladder," he said. "I think it bit me."

I crouched down and took his hand.

A splinter as long as a toothpick had gone in at the base of his thumb, and the skin around it was pink.

"That's your own fault. You slide down it instead of climbing."

"It's faster."

"It's also how you get a splinter. Hold still."

I got my tweezers out of my jacket pocket, and I turned his hand toward the light.

His palm was long and warm and dry.

There was a callus along the base of each finger, and a thin white scar across the heel of the hand.

"What's that from?" I asked.

"A dance floor. A bad turn when I was seventeen."

I drew the splinter out in one clean pull and pressed my thumb over the dot of blood.

His fingers curled slowly around mine and then went still.

I could feel his pulse in the pad of my thumb again.

I thought, very clearly, that I should let go of his hand.

I didn't.

The gravel crunched in the drive.

I looked up, and Hyunjin let go of me fast.

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