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I'm beginning to think that might have been a mistake.

Chapter 5 — Carolina

The glasses are a problem.

I come down at ten with my hair still damp from the shower, wearing an old gray T-shirt from a 10K I never finished running and a pair of leggings. Ethan is at the kitchen table with a report spread out in front of him and a pen between his teeth. The glasses have thin dark frames. They've slid halfway down his nose. He pushes them back up with one knuckle without lifting his eyes from the page.

The overhead light is off. There's only the lamp on the counter, which turns the whole room amber and puts his beard in gold and shadow.

I have been a physical therapist for three years. I have been in rooms with men who were stripped down to shorts and shaking with pain and I have kept my face perfectly professional through all of it.

I stand there for what is probably too long.

"Is she asleep?" I say.

He looks up. The glasses magnify his eyes very slightly. The blue behind them is warm and tired and does something that goes straight to my knees. "Out like a light. She slept through the stairs. I took her boot off in her sleep and she didn't even complain."

"One boot?"

"She'd lost the other. It's under the couch."

"I'll find it in the morning."

I come in barefoot over the cold floor and pull out the chair across from him. The report is in his square, careful handwriting. I can read it upside down from here the way I can read anyone's chart. Complainant states she was asleep at time of incident.

"Is that me?"

"That's you."

"I sound very calm."

"You were very calm." He takes the pen out of his mouth. "Kieran wants it by morning."

"Kieran can wait, can't he?"

"Kieran can do a lot of things."

He leans back in his chair and rubs his left shoulder with his right hand. It's a small, automatic movement, the heel of the palm pressed into the muscle. He doesn't even seem to know he's done it.

"Does it hurt?"

"It's fine."

"Ethan."

"It aches. It always does at night." He takes the glasses off, folds them, and sets them on top of the report. "It's not a big deal."

"Where did you do it?"

"Two winters ago. A man named Roy Bessemer decided he would rather not be arrested, and took me over a retaining wall with him." He shrugs, winces when the shoulder moves. "I landed wrong."

"And Margaret gave you exercises."

"She gave me a sheet of paper in March. I lost it."

"She also said you stopped coming to appointments."

"Wednesdays at three. School lets out at three."