It was faint at first, so faint that I thought it might just be the tap running somewhere in the house. But then it grew louder, more insistent. A steady stream of water, almost like it was coming from the bathroom.
“Lila,” I called softly, but she didn’t hear me. I had to check.
I walked quietly down the hallway toward the bathroom. The door was cracked, just enough to let a sliver of light escape. As I approached, I heard something else: scrubbing. Slow, methodical scrubbing, like someone was trying to erase something that wouldn’t come off.
I hesitated at the door, unsure of whether I should knock or just step inside. It felt invasive, like I was about to witness something that was meant to stay private. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, that this was different from the usual teenage quirks I had brushed off before.
I turned the doorknob gently, and the door swung open.
Nate was standing at the sink, his shoulders bare, his head bowed low. The gloves sat on the countertop, discarded for the first time in days. He was scrubbing his hands with an intensity that felt unnatural, too focused, too deliberate.
At first, I thought it was just a weird phase, something he was doing because of his obsession with cleanliness. But then, as the water ran over his wrists, I saw something. His skin wasn’t just pale. It was raw. Red lines streaked across his palms, jagged and uneven. The kind of marks you’d expect to see after something was pressed into your skin again and again.
But the worst part? In the center of his left palm, there was an emblem. A symbol burned into his skin. It was too clear to be a scar, too deliberate to be a mistake. A police insignia. Not inked, but branded.
I froze in the doorway, my breath catching in my throat. Nate didn’t look up at me immediately. Instead, he just kept scrubbing, the water running over his hands in a futile attempt to wash away the marks that I knew now were meant to stay.
The silence stretched between us for what felt like an eternity.
Finally, he looked up at me through the bathroom mirror. His expression was unreadable, his eyes calm, almost resigned.
“You weren’t supposed to see that, Uncle,” he said softly, his voice barely a whisper over the sound of the water.
I didn’t know how to respond. My mind was racing, trying to piece together what I had just seen, trying to make sense of what was happening. The gloves. The marks on his hands. The police insignia branded into his skin.
“What happened to you, Nate?” I asked, my voice trembling with a mix of confusion and concern.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his palms higher, as if showing me the marks more clearly, the emblem like a stamp burned into his flesh.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said quietly. “Please. Just… don’t ask me about it.”
But I couldn’t stop myself. The questions tumbled out before I could stop them. “Who did this to you? Why didn’t you tell me? Why the gloves? What does it mean?”
Nate took a deep breath, and for a moment, I thought he was going to say something. But then, he just lowered his hands and reached for the gloves, slipping them back on with practiced ease, like it was nothing.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice cold and distant now. “I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Please, just… just let me be.”
And that was it. The door between us slammed shut. He turned away from me and left the bathroom, disappearing down the hallway without another word.
The next few days felt strange. The normal rhythm of our house—Lila watering her plants, me tinkering with the yardwork, Nate sitting quietly in corners or working through his tasks—had become suffocating. There was a heavy silence in the air, thick with unsaid words and a distance between us that hadn’t been there before.
