The Day Two Sisters Burned for Husbands Who Never Came novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: No Hands

Calla's POV

I walked past Dalton on the grass and went straight to Ansel.

I did not mean it as an insult.

I only knew where I was going before my legs did.

He stood up when he saw me, with soot across his face and his gloves in his hand.

His palms were blistered white and raw.

"Don't," I said, when he tried to hide them. "Give me those."

A paramedic from the volunteer engine was already wrapping Dalton's arm in wet gauze, and the old man was on a stretcher breathing oxygen, with his dog under the cot.

I took Ansel's wrists and turned his hands over in the light.

"You're an idiot," I said.

"I know."

"You went in a window."

"So did he."

"I know that too."

I looked up, and he was smiling at me with his whole filthy face.

I put my forehead against his chest and stayed there while my son woke up between us and objected.

At Lakeshore Children's, the emergency doctor cleaned Dalton's arm and told him he would keep it, and might keep the scar too.

He sat on the edge of a bed behind a curtain, with his sleeve cut off to the shoulder.

I sat in the plastic chair beside him, with my son on my knee.

"Two Sundays," he said. "Three. I didn't mean to say that I'd earned anything."

"You haven't."

"No."

"You went in a burning house for a stranger's grandfather and a dog."

"I'd do it for anyone."

"You would," I said. "That's the thing I couldn't stand."

He looked at me.

"I stood at a window with fire at my back," I said, "and the man who knew exactly where I was kept a woman's hand in his. You'd have run in for anybody. You just didn't run in for me."

"I know."

"I've known you for years. I didn't understand that until today."

His face crumpled.

He held it together for only a moment.

"I'm not forgiving you," I said. "I want you to hear that from me and not guess it."

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