He nodded, but his eyes were fixed on the yard like his mind was somewhere else entirely.
After a moment, I said gently, “You know, you don’t have to wear the gloves here.”
He glanced down at them, then away. “My hands get cold,” he said. “That’s all.”
It was too quick. Too practiced. But I let it go.
The days passed in a strange rhythm. Nolan never caused trouble. He helped when asked, never complained, kept to himself. But that same answer came every time.
My hands get cold.
It sounded less like an explanation and more like a line he’d memorized.
Then one night, after dinner, I heard water running down the hall. At first I thought someone had left the sink on. Then I heard another sound—scrubbing. Slow, hard, relentless.
I walked toward the bathroom. The door was cracked open just enough for light to spill into the hall. I hesitated, feeling like I was about to cross a line, but something in my gut told me this wasn’t nothing.
I pushed the door open.
Nolan stood at the sink with his head lowered, shoulders bare, the gloves lying on the counter for the first time since he’d arrived. He was scrubbing his hands with a force that made my chest tighten. Water poured over skin that looked wrong—too red, too raw. Angry lines crossed his palms and wrists as if something had been pressed there over and over.
Then I saw it.
In the center of his left palm was a mark.
Not a cut. Not a scar you’d get by accident. A deliberate emblem, burned clean into his skin. A police insignia.
I froze.
He kept washing for another second before finally looking at me through the mirror, his face unreadable.
“You weren’t supposed to see that, Uncle,” he said quietly.
My throat went dry. “What happened to you?”
He didn’t answer at first. He just lifted his hands a little, as if showing me what words wouldn’t. Then he reached for the gloves again.
“Please don’t ask,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
But I did ask. I couldn’t stop myself.
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