His mouth opened, but no answer came.
I touched the bandages around my face. “The doctor already warned me about the swelling.”
“This isn’t about swelling.”
His voice broke on the final word.
My chest tightened. “Then what is it about?”
Daniel’s hands were trembling. I had seen him worried before. I had seen him tired, frustrated, and grieving. But I had never seen fear move through him like this.
“You can’t look at yourself yet,” he said.
A nervous laugh escaped me. “What does that mean?”
He took one step forward. Tears gathered in his eyes.
“I couldn’t let you go through it,” he whispered.
The room seemed to tilt beneath me.
Without thinking, I reached toward the edge of my bandages.
“No.” Daniel’s voice was sharp enough to make me freeze. He rushed toward me. “Please, Cora. Don’t.”
His panic turned my fear into certainty.
“Something happened,” I said. “Something went wrong.”
“No.”
“You told me I didn’t need the surgery.”
“I told you that you were already beautiful.”
Tears slipped beneath the bandages and stung my skin. “And you were right. I ruined my face.”
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“Then why did you remove every mirror in the house?”
He said nothing.
In that silence, my imagination built its own answer. I pictured the surgeon hiding the truth. I pictured nurses smiling at me because they felt sorry for me. I imagined Daniel seeing whatever lay beneath the bandages and realizing that the face I had spent years trying to fix had become even harder to look at.
My knees weakened.
Daniel caught me before I hit the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, holding me tightly.
I pressed my face against his chest and broke apart. “I just didn’t want to feel ugly anymore.”
His arms closed around me. “You never were.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
He shut his eyes. “I don’t know how.”
Before I could demand an answer, three hard knocks struck the front door.
PART FOUR — THE PEOPLE AT THE DOOR
Daniel flinched as if the sound had hit him physically.
Another knock followed, louder and more urgent.
He looked toward the hallway, then back at me. The fear on his face deepened.
“I need to answer that,” he said.
“Who is it?”
