Chapter 6: Rule Two

I couldn't sleep, so I washed dishes.

It was two in the morning. The house was dark and the harbor wind pushed at the windows.

Zia Ines had left every pot from supper in the sink. I turned on the hot water and started on them out of habit.

Two years of mornings in Thurston's kitchen had trained my hands.

I was scrubbing the soup pot when a wine glass slid out of the suds and broke against the faucet.

I grabbed for it.

The edge opened my palm from the base of my thumb to the middle of my hand.

"Damn it."

I stood there with water running over the blood.

A light came on behind me.

"Don't move."

Rocco was in the doorway in a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants, barefoot, with his hair flat on one side.

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and turned off the tap.

"It's nothing," I said.

"It's to the bone."

"It's not to the bone."

"Sit."

I sat on the stool by the counter.

He opened a drawer under the stove, took out a first aid kit the size of a toolbox and set it in front of me.

Then he stopped, and his hands stayed flat on the counter.

"I can do it," I said.

"It's your right hand. You can't wrap it with the left."

I looked at him.

"May I?" he said.

He had asked me once before, years ago, when he wanted to carry a box I was struggling with.

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