I didn’t answer the question. I reached for her wrist instead. She flinched.
“What happened to your face?”
“I fell,” she said too quickly. “Off my bike.”
I looked at her hands then. Swollen fingers. Red knuckles. The hands of someone who had tried to shield herself.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I’m fine.”
I grabbed her sleeve and pulled it up before she could stop me.
The room went cold.
Her arm was covered in bruises. Some yellow with age, some purple and fresh, deep enough to make my teeth clench. Finger marks. Belt lines. The kind of injuries that don’t come from accidents, only from repetition.
“Who did this to you?”
Her eyes filled immediately, but she still tried to hold back.
“Lidia.”
She cracked apart at the sound of her name.
“Damian,” she whispered. “He hits me. He’s been hitting me for years. And his mother helps him. His sister too. They treat me like I’m not even human.”
