The Aurora Borealis Keeps Its Lament novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Measured
Alba's POV
My mother did not take off her coat for an hour.
She sat in the mess hall with her bag on her lap and her reading glasses on their chain, and she looked at Iker without a word.
"Stand up," she said.
Iker stood.
"Turn round."
He turned, carefully, with one hand on the back of the bench.
"Mama," I said.
"Be quiet, Alba. I am measuring a man who made my daughter cry in a restaurant."
She unrolled the tape from her neck and ran it across his shoulders.
"Broad," she said. "Thin. You've been eating tinned fish."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Arm."
He held it out.
She wrapped the tape around his wrist and read the number and said nothing for some time.
Paloma, who had come to watch, put a hand over her mouth.
"Señora Quiroga," said Iker at last. "I'd like to say something to you, and I'd like to say it to your face. I can't see it. I'll explain."
My mother's fingers stopped.
"I know," she said. "The director told me on the plane. All of it."
"Then you know I owe you an apology."
"Do I?"
"You asked me at the table to look at your daughter. I looked at the wall. You thought it was contempt." His voice was steady, but his hand had closed on the bench. "It was not. I'd been looking at the wall for six years, and I had told myself that was a kindness. I took away her chance to ask me the right question. I let her walk out of that restaurant, and I let her think I did not care. I let her read me my own work every morning for four years and said nothing."
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