For the next few days, Mal is strangely silent. He doesn’t leave me alone again. Whenever I wake up, he’s in the room, sitting in the leather chair, watching me.
He helps me take short walks around the cabin, letting me lean on his arm as I wince and shuffle.
He takes my temperature, cooks my meals and feeds them to me, gives me water and medicine, and helps me in and out of bed when I have to use the bathroom.
When I ask him why he doesn’t own a television, he shakes his head. When I ask how anyone can live without a computer, he sighs. He rebuffs almost all my attempts at conversation, especially if it has anything to do with his lifestyle or something personal about him.
On day four of the silent treatment, he asks out of the blue if I’d like to take another bath.
“Yes,” I say, relieved he’s finally back from wherever he went inside his head. “I’d like that very much.”
Looking pensive, he nods.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging down, staring at the rug. It’s dark outside. All the candles in the cabin are lit, giving it a warm, homey glow.
When he doesn’t move or say anything else, I ask tentatively, “Did you mean now?”
As an answer, he rises, goes into the bathroom, and turns on the bathtub faucet. He comes back and picks me up in his arms.
I don’t argue that I should be walking. He’s not in the mood for my sass, that much I can tell. I just let him carry me into the bathroom and undress me, feeling hideously self-conscious again but trusting now that he won’t make it more awkward for me than it already is.
When I’m lying in the water and his hands are in my hair, he starts to speak to me again in Russian, like he did the last time he gave me a bath.
He talks and talks, his voice low, the cadence of the foreign words hypnotizing.
There’s emotion in his tone, but it’s not anger. If anything, it seems like the opposite. Like he’s trying to get me to understand something of vital importance to him.
I want to ask him what, but I don’t.
I know he won’t answer.
When he’s rinsed me, dried me off, and put another of his huge clean shirts over my head, he announces it’s time for my stitches to come out.
“Oh. Okay. Do I have to go to a hospital for that?”
The look he gives me is insulted. He picks me up and brings me back to bed.
He fluffs the pillow under my head, pulls the sheets up to cover my crotch, lifts the shirt up to just under my breasts, and peels off the bandage. From a drawer in the nightstand, he removes large tweezers and a pair of surgical scissors, both wrapped in plastic.
Anxiety blooms over my skin like a rash. “Is this going to hurt?”
“No. You’ll feel a tug or two, but that’s all.”
I nod, knowing that he’d tell me if it was going to be painful.
He opens the tools, cleans them with a gauze pad and a sharp-smelling liquid from a brown bottle, then leans over me and goes to work.
After a moment, he says, “You’ve healed well. This scar won’t be bad.”
I’ve resisted looking at the wound until now, so that’s a relief to hear. When I lift my head and peek down at my uncovered stomach, however, the relief evaporates, replaced instantly by disgust.
“Not bad? It’s hideous!”
“You’re exaggerating again.”
“I’m Frankenstein! Look at that gash! It’s a foot long! And why the hell is it shaped like a lightning bolt? Had the surgeon been drinking?”
“He had to go around your belly button.”
“Couldn’t he have made a crescent moon? I look like Harry fucking Potter, times ten!”
“Stop shouting.”
Groaning, I let my head fall back to the pillow. “So much for wearing bikinis.”
“You could get a tattoo to cover it up. Add to your collection.”
His voice remains even when he says that, but there’s an echo of warmth in it that gives me pause.
“I’m sensing you have something you’d like to say about my tattoos, Mal.”
Snipping and tugging at the ugly black stitches, he quirks his lips. “Just curious.”
I sigh and roll my eyes. “Where do you want me to start?”
“With the one on the inside of your left wrist.”
The speed with which he answers makes it obvious he’s been thinking about that one for a while. It’s a single line of cursive black writing and consists of four words:
Remember Rule Number One.
“Well, if you must know, that one’s my favorite.”
“What’s rule number one?”
“Fuck what they think.”
He stops mid-snip and looks up at me. “Who’s they?”
“Everyone. Anyone else but me. It’s a reminder that other people’s opinions don’t matter. To live my life how I want, regardless of outside pressure. To be unapologetically me.”
After a moment, he nods slowly, satisfied. He goes back to work, teasing out a severed stitch and placing it to one side on the old bandage. “And the words ‘you can’ on your right ankle?”
“I used to say ‘I can’t’ to my mom a lot when I was little. It was just an excuse for something I didn’t want to do, or something I thought was too hard, but she wouldn’t let me get away with it. She’d just stay calm and say, ‘You can.’ And then I would, because I didn’t want to disappoint her. The tattoo reminds me to keep going when I want to give up.”
I’m quiet for a moment, lost in memory. “My mom was the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Mal glances up at me, his eyes piercing. “Was?”
I nod. “She died when I was a kid. Ovarian cancer.” My voice drops. “It’s not a good way to go.”
“There aren’t any good ways to go. Some are just faster than others.”
“My great grandma died in her sleep at ninety-nine. That seems pretty good.”
“Sure, if you didn’t have to live to be ninety-nine to get there.”
“What’s wrong with getting old?”
“Don’t know many elderly people, do you?”
“Not really. Why?”
He says cryptically, “Old age isn’t for the faint of heart.”
The little pile of snipped black stitches is growing. And he was right: I’ve barely felt a tug. He’s good at this.
From what I can tell, he’s good at everything.
“What about the dragon on the nape of your neck?”
I grimace. “Big yikes.”
“Translate.”
“I got that during my Game of Thrones phase. I was obsessed with Khaleesi. A little boss bitch who owned three dragons and kicked butt all over the men? Yes, please. Wait. Is that…is that a smile I’m seeing?”
“No,” he replies instantly. “That’s just the face I make before projectile vomiting.”
“Ha.”
“And the pattern on the back of your right arm?”
“I thought it was pretty. What about that big scary hooded skeleton on your back?”
He gives me a look that says Think about it.
“Oh. Right.” My laugh is small and embarrassed. “How about that line of text going up your ribs? What language is that?”
“Cyrillic.”
“What does it say?”
“No past, no future.”
“Wow. That’s dark.”
“There’s not much humor to be found in my line of work. Except if it’s black.”
“Makes sense. What about that big red V on your left shoulder? That one looks fresh. Is it someone’s initial?”
“No.”
“Is it a Roman numeral?”
“No.”
“Then what does it stand for?”
Finished with removing the stitches, he sets the scissors and tweezers aside, balls up the bandage with the cut up pieces of thread, puts it on the dresser, then looks at me.
“Vengeance.”
I open my mouth then close it again.
“Well, well, well,” he murmurs, his gaze intense. “Look who finally got quiet.”
I bite my lower lip. His gaze drops to my mouth briefly, then he looks back into my eyes.
Honestly, I can’t think of a single thing to say. There is nothing to say. There are no words for this situation.
After a tense few moments pass, he says, “You haven’t asked me to take you home.”
There’s a question in there. The question is Why not?
To avoid his penetrating gaze, I glance down at my stomach. Then I slowly pull the shirt down, covering my scar.
“Okay.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I don’t have an answer, at least not one that makes sense. I feel him staring at me in blistering intensity, and my cheeks start to burn.
He’s about to say something when a sharp noise makes me jump. It comes from the window on the other side of the room and sounds like a person is standing outside in the dark, rapping their knuckles on the glass.
My voice turns high with panic. “What’s that sound? The wind? A bear? A serial killer?”
Cool as a cucumber, he says, “It’s Poe.”
“What’s a Poe?”
Rising from the bed, Mal crosses the room and slides up the windowpane. Cold night air rushes in. Onto the sill hops an enormous black crow, fluttering its wings.
The thing probably weighs twenty pounds. It has glittering black eyes, a razor-sharp beak, and a frightening air of intelligence.
It looks at me, squawking like Satan sent it for my soul.
“Oh, god!”
“No, Poe.” Mal holds out his arm. The creature hops onto his forearm, looks up at him, and makes a chattering birdy noise of affection.
“You’re shitting me. You have a pet crow?”
“Don’t talk about him like he’s not in the room. You’ll hurt his feelings.”
I can’t tell if that’s a joke or not, because his face is serious. Like it always is.
“Do you want to feed him?”
I look at the bird with trepidation. Unimpressed, it stares back at me. “What does it eat?”
Mal deadpans, “Human eyeballs.”
I say drily, “Great, you’re a comedian now.”
He sits at the foot of the bed and holds his arm out toward me. The bird hops down to his wrist, head bobbing. I let out a small sound of fear.
“Amuse him for a minute while I go get his food.”
The crow flutters down from Mal’s arm and lands on my thigh. It feels like someone dropped a toddler on me. The sound of fear I make this time is louder.
Mal rises. Before he turns to leave the room, I could swear I spot a smirk on his face.
Poe stands defiantly on my leg, adjusting his wings and glaring at me.
Trying to sink as far back into the pillow as I can, I say faintly, “Hi, Poe. Um. Nice to meet you. I hope you’re not a carrier of the plague.”
Squawk!
“Was that insulting? You’ll have to excuse my manners. I don’t often have conversations with winged creatures.”
Squawk!
I get the distinct sense this fucking bird wants a better apology than the one he just got, so I add lamely, “I’m sorry for saying that thing about the plague. It was rude. Um…you have very pretty feathers.”
I know the glint of satisfaction in its eyes isn’t my imagination, because it emits a softer squawk and starts grooming its feathers.
Mal returns to the room holding a small dish. When Poe sees him, he caws in excitement, hopping up and down on my leg and probably causing bruises. Mal hands the dish to me. I peer over the edge and see that it’s filled with small brown pellets.
“What is this?”
“Cat food. Crows love it.”
As if to prove his point, Poe flaps his wings, lands on my chest, pokes his head into the bowl I’m holding, and starts eating.
“Mal?”
“Yes, Riley?”
“There’s a giant crow on my chest.”
“I can see that.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Poe stops gobbling cat food pellets for a moment to turn his head and glare at me.
With faint laughter in his voice, Mal says, “Only to people who refer to him as ‘it.’”
Poe stands on my chest, waiting.
Feeling like an absolute idiot, I apologize to the bird again. “Sorry, Poe. I’ve only ever had goldfish. They don’t have nearly as much personality as you.”
Poe produces a quiet, rambling series of clicks and grating rattles to show his displeasure with me, then he starts eating again.
I’ve been dismissed.
The three of us are silent until Poe finishes off the cat food. Then he flies back to the open window, making me jump as he takes off from my chest.
With a final farewell squawk, he flies off into the night. Mal closes the window behind him and turns back to me, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest.
“Do you have any other animal friends I should expect for a visit?”
“There’s a family of raccoons who comes over from time to time.”
“Any bears?”
“Not friendly ones. Time for you to go to sleep.”
“Are you this bossy with all your patients?”
“Are you this mouthy with all your doctors?”
“Only the ones I like.”
There’s a pause where he simply stands and stares at me, his eyes warm. Then a miracle occurs: he smiles.
It’s beautiful.
He murmurs, “Go to sleep, Riley Rose.”
“How can I sleep with you standing there staring at me?”
“You’ve been doing well with it so far. Now close your eyes.”
I heave a sigh, flop my arms dramatically at my sides, then obey him and shut my eyes.
I must fall asleep almost immediately, because I remember nothing after that.
When I wake up in the morning, Mal is sleeping on his side next to me in bed, his arm under my neck, a leg thrown over both of mine, his big warm hand splayed over my belly.
Right over my scar.
