But the gloves never came off.

Not even when he fell asleep on the couch during a movie.

Not even when sweat darkened the back of his shirt after an hour outside.

Not even when Lila offered him lotion and he flinched before he could hide it.

Ten nights after he arrived, I woke to the sound of running water.

At first I thought it was rain.

Then I heard the rhythm of it.

Not just water.

Scrubbing.

Slow. Hard. Repeating.

The bathroom light was on under the door. I stood in the hall listening for nearly a minute before I knocked.

“Nate?”

No answer.

I knocked again, softer this time.

Still nothing.

The door wasn’t locked.

I opened it just enough to look inside.

He was standing at the sink, shoulders drawn tight, breathing through his mouth. The gloves were on the counter beside him, turned inside out and soaked at the wrists. Water streamed over his bare hands while he rubbed them with a bar of soap so fiercely it looked like he was trying to erase his own skin.

Then I saw his palms.

Words.

Not pen marks.

Not doodles.

Not some stupid teenage prank.

Words carved across healing scars and older white lines, crooked and jagged and impossible to mistake.

DIRTY.

LIAR.

THIEF.

BAD BLOOD.

The soap slipped from his hand and hit the sink.

He looked up and saw me in the mirror.

For one terrible second, neither of us moved.

Then he reached for the gloves.

“Don’t,” I said too fast.

He froze like I had shouted.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, lowering my voice. “I’m sorry. I just…”

His back hit the wall. Water dripped from his fingers onto the tile. He didn’t look embarrassed.

He looked terrified.

“Please don’t tell Aunt Lila,” he whispered.

That hit me harder than the scars did.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, not to trap him, but to shut the rest of the house out for a second.

“Nate,” I said carefully, “who did that to your hands?”

He shook his head once.

“Did you do it?”

His mouth opened. Closed.

Then he said, in the calmest voice I have ever heard from a frightened child, “I had to. Otherwise they said I’d forget what I am.”

Every part of me went cold.

“Who said that?”

His eyes filled instantly, but the tears stayed there, trembling. He looked down at his hands like they belonged to someone else.

Finally he whispered, “Grandpa started with the marker.”

My father.

The same man who wore pressed shirts to church and talked about discipline like it was a holy calling. The same man who told everyone he was doing his duty by taking Nate in after my sister died.

“What do you mean he started with the marker?” I asked.

Nate swallowed hard. “At first, if I messed up, he wrote words on my hands and made me keep them there all day. So I’d see them every time I touched anything.”

My throat burned. “What kind of messed up?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Spilling. Forgetting. Talking back. Touching food before prayer. Looking lazy.”

I looked back at those words carved into his palms and forced myself not to shake.

“And the cuts?”

He closed his eyes.