“I know,” she whispered.
She tried again, her index finger touching the cold metal of the latch, but her hand shivered so hard the brass clicked against the wood.
I took the box from her hands and slid the small latch into place myself, the brass quiet against the white oak. She did not say thank you, only nodded and kept her arms crossed tight against her ribs.
By nine the next morning, Helen was standing by my assembly table with her winter coat still zipped to her chin, holding a small slip of paper she had not yet shown me. The air in the unheated shop was cold enough to show her breath in small, pale puffs.
She did not look at the custom cabinets I was preparing to sand. She did not ask if I wanted the thermos of hot tea she had set down on the corner of the bench.
“I helped her change out of her heavy wool sweater before she went to bed last night,” Helen said.
Her voice had the flat, level tone she used when she came home from a difficult twelve-hour shift in the emergency department at Oakridge Memorial.
She looked down at her silver wristwatch, her fingers tapping against the metal band. Then she looked back up at me with her eyes narrowed.
“There are four distinct dark marks on her left bicep,” she said. “They are shaped exactly like fingertips, Arthur.”
She paused, letting the words settle between us. “Someone gripped her arm hard enough to break the capillaries under the skin.”
The heavy cast-iron hand plane I was holding slipped from my palm. It hit the concrete floor with a sharp, ringing crack that echoed off the pine rafters.
The steel blade chipped on the edge of a steel bolt head, a tiny ruin of a tool that had belonged to my grandfather. Right now, the damaged metal was the last thing on my mind.
“She told me she strained her shoulder at the preschool,” I said, my hand already reaching for my keys.
“A strain does not leave four round purple spots on the inside of the arm,” Helen said.
She checked her watch again, a nurse’s reflex to a ticking clock. “The grip marks are deep, and they are fresh. She is covering for him, Arthur.”
