Chapter 5: Thirty Days Dead

Dario's boat house stood alone on the north side of the cove.

It had one big room with a stone fireplace, a kitchen along one wall and a stairway down to the water.

He had given me the bed upstairs and kept the couch for himself.

By nine that night I had not eaten, and I had not stopped moving.

I walked from the window to the stairs and back.

"Sit," Dario said from the kitchen.

"I can't."

"Then drink this."

He set a glass of water on the table and went back to the stove.

I picked up the glass and threw it at the wall.

It burst against the stones.

I stood there with my chest heaving, and a sliver of glass stuck out of my palm.

"There," I said. "I wanted that to happen to someone."

Dario looked at the wall and then at my hand.

He did not tell me to calm down.

He took a first aid kit from under the sink, pulled out a chair and tapped it.

"Hand," he said.

I sat and gave it to him.

He turned my palm toward the lamp.

His fingers were rough and very careful, and they did not shake once.

"Hold still."

He drew the sliver out in one pull.

I breathed in through my teeth.

"It's deep," he said. "It needs two stitches."

"Do you know how?"

"I learned in places where there were no doctors."

He threaded the needle by feel.

The first stitch went through, and I watched his face instead of my hand.

Close up, the scar through his eyebrow was older than I had thought.

His eyes were so dark I could not tell the pupil from the iris.

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