After Ninety-Nine Lies, My Husband Finally Told Me the Truth novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Where I Can See It
He cut his hand on the dock that evening, and I was the one who saw it.
We had walked down to the water after the yard closed, because neither of us could stand a kitchen.
He knelt to loosen a line on a cleat, and the rope took the skin off his palm.
He looked at it and closed his fist.
"Show me," I said.
"It's nothing."
"That's my word. Show me."
He opened his hand.
The cut ran across the old scar at the base of his thumb, a white ridge I had known for five years and never asked about.
I took his wrist in both hands and turned it to the light.
His skin was hot, and a pulse knocked under my thumbs.
"What's this one from?" I said, and traced the ridge with my fingertip.
"A planer. I was nineteen. My father drove me to the clinic with a shop rag around it and didn't say a word the whole way." He swallowed. "He held my head afterward, in the truck, with his big hand. It's the only time he ever did."
I kept my finger on the scar.
His breath changed.
He looked at my hand on his, and his other hand shook against his thigh, and he did not move it.
I could feel the tension in his whole arm, and I knew exactly what he wanted, because I wanted it too.
I told myself I was a nurse, cleaning a wound.
"Hold still," I said, and dabbed the blood with my sleeve.
"Cora."
"Don't."
"I'm only saying your name."
"Say it again tomorrow," I said, and let go.
We walked up the dock, and he went back to the truck, which a neighbor had fixed with a new battery and a plastic window.
I lay in my grandmother's bed with my palm still warm.
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