Chapter 14: The Scar

"You did that on purpose," I said.

"Say it again slowly," Fiorella said. "You'll want it exact."

I took my phone out of my pocket and pressed record, and I held it between us.

She looked at it and her smile grew.

"Go on," she said. "Ask me anything."

"Why?"

"Because Mother's slap left a mark on my cheek, and Father didn't look at it."

She said it lightly, with her hands folded.

"I was eleven, and I carried your dinner up the back stairs, and I took the slap, and he walked past me in the hall without turning his head."

"So I went into the bathroom and broke the plate on the edge of the tub."

"I cut my wrist, and I screamed, and he came running."

She turned her scarred wrist in the light.

"He picked me up and carried me down the stairs, and he called me his brave girl."

"It was the first time in my life he had carried me anywhere."

I stared at her.

I remembered the blood on my pajamas, and her arms around me, and her voice saying she would always protect me.

"You let me believe Mother did it."

"You were eight. You believed whatever I said." She tilted her head. "That was the best part."

"And the soup?"

"The soup is how it's done."

Her voice stayed warm and even, the voice that had never failed her once.

"You never leave someone you owe, Mirella. So I made you owe me."

"The dinners under your door. The scar. The hand on your forehead when you were sick."

"Every kindness was a leash, and you wore every one of them for twenty years."

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