Chapter 2: Purple Hands text

The kitchen was colder than the porch.

Hannah stood at the sink with her back to me, bare feet on the tile, sleeves pushed up past her elbows. The water ran continuously. Her hands were a deep, unnatural purple from the cold. Soap suds clung to her wrists. The window above the sink was pushed fully open, letting the winter air pour across her while she worked. At the dining table, under the warm light of the chandelier I had chosen and paid for, Ethan and his mother sat over plates of roasted chicken. The good china—the set I had given them—was arranged as if for a performance.

Neither of them looked up when I entered.

Ethan spoke first, still facing his plate.

“Stop washing those dishes and bring my mother more food. That is what you married me for.”

Patricia held out her empty plate without turning her head. Ethan took it from her and shoved it against Hannah’s chest. The china struck bone and then shattered on the floor between them. Hannah flinched hard, shoulders rising as if she already knew the next movement in the sequence. A thin cut opened along the side of her hand where a fragment had caught her. She did not step back from the cold water. She only stood there with purple fingers and broken porcelain at her feet.

I remained in the doorway.

The anger that rose in me was immediate and absolute. I did not let it reach my face or my voice. Anger would have given them a scene. A scene would have given them something to argue about. I needed something cleaner than argument.

Hannah finally noticed me. Her eyes widened with a mixture of relief and pure dread. Ethan followed her gaze and offered the slow, dismissive smile of a man who believed he was still in charge of the room.

“Well,” he said. “Look who decided to drop by.”