The Bride Ran, So I Wore Her Crown and Married the Valley's Don novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Her Father's Hands
My father came to the shop every evening, and on the sixth one he brought his own chair.
He set it beside my mother's Singer, took a seat with a groan, and cracked a pistachio on his thumbnail.
"Don't start," I said.
"I haven't said a word."
"You're breathing loud, Papa. That means you have one."
He dropped the shell in his cap and looked at the machine.
"I worked it out at the first supper," he said. "The hand."
I stopped pinning.
"A man with a hurt hand reaches for things with the other one. He didn't. He used the glove for forks, doors and the oxygen housing, and it never once held back." He cracked another shell. "So I knew there was nothing wrong with it."
"And you said nothing."
"He set the table himself, Talin. Before we came. Everyone else in that house sends the housekeeper." My father held up a fork. "Knives pointed in, toward his own plate, so nobody at the table could be reached by one. A man who sets knives like that isn't going to hurt my girl. I figured he'd tell you when he could."
"He should have told me in September."
"He should have," my father said. "I should have told you your mother wasn't getting better, the November before she died. I said she was. I wanted you to laugh one more Thanksgiving."
I had not known that he knew I knew.
"That was a lie, Papa."
"It was a lie, and I'd do it again, and you were right to be angry for a year." He reached over and patted my arm with a hand that smelled of salt. "I'm only saying you can be angry and still open the door. They aren't the same thing."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Bride Ran, So I Wore Her Crown and Married the Valley's Don are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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