The Silver Bracelet

Chapter 3 — The Ruined Leg

The first morning began at six. Vera showered in the small, immaculate bathroom attached to her room, dressed in the navy scrubs that had been laid out for her on the chair — a thoughtful gesture she suspected was Hargrove's and not her new employer's — and braided her hair into a single rope down her back. She studied herself in the mirror as she did so. The face that looked back at her was unremarkable to the point of being almost generic: high forehead, straight nose, a mouth that was perhaps a fraction too wide for the rest of her features. The birthmark she had carried on her left cheekbone since childhood had faded to a pale shadow. There was nothing in her reflection to suggest she had ever been anyone other than who she appeared to be: a twenty-year-old woman from upstate New York with a high school equivalency diploma and a worn silver bracelet. She was, she reminded herself, exactly what she seemed. The bracelet was the only thing in the room that suggested otherwise, and even it told no story she could read.

She arrived at Mr. Crowley's suite at eight minutes before eight. Hargrove met her at the door with a tray: a single cup of black coffee, no sugar, a small porcelain pot of cream on the side that he confided had not been used in eleven years but which Mr. Crowley insisted upon as a matter of principle.

"He will not eat breakfast until ten," Hargrove murmured. "He will not speak to you for the first hour. Do not take it personally. He does not speak to anyone for the first hour."

"Understood."

"The bathroom is through the dressing room. The chair is by the bed. Today is a bathing day." Hargrove's voice did not change inflection, but something in his eyes did. "He will be unpleasant about it. He is always unpleasant about it. The leg, Miss Thorne — he cannot bear to be seen with it. Do not look at it longer than you must, and do not, under any circumstances, look away first."

Vera nodded once, took the tray, and went in.

The bedroom was larger than the entire ground floor of the house she had grown up in. Dark curtains were drawn against the morning; a single lamp burned on the bedside table. The bed itself was unmade, and the man in it was sitting up against the headboard with a folder of papers in his lap and a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses pushed low on his nose. He was, she registered with a small jolt, wearing a soft gray t-shirt that was too large for him and sweatpants that had been hacked off above the right knee. Without the armor of the previous day's sweater and signet ring he looked younger, and — she searched for the word — smaller. He did not look up as she set the coffee on the bedside table.

"It is seven fifty-three," he said. "You are early."

"You said eight. I thought I'd be ready."

"I said eight. Eight does not require seven fifty-three." He turned a page. "Sit in the chair by the window. Do not speak until I have finished my coffee."

Vera sat. She did not speak. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked in a slow, expensive way, and from somewhere outside the window she could hear the gardeners beginning their work, the soft snip of shears and the low murmur of Spanish. She studied the room without turning her head: the leather-bound books on the shelf by the bed, all of them read; the framed photograph on the dresser of a much younger Samuel Crowley standing beside a tall man with the same dark eyes, both of them in riding clothes; the wheelchair by the dressing-room door, its chrome gleaming. The wheelchair was custom-built, she noticed. The right leg rest was extended and padded. It had been made for this man, for this leg, for this exact wound.

At eight fifteen he closed the folder, removed his glasses, and looked at her for the first time that morning.

"Bathing," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Samuel. Mr. Crowley is my father, and he is a vegetable in a private clinic in Greenwich, so the title is wasted on me." He pushed the sheets aside with a brisk, angry motion, and she saw his legs.

She did not look away.

The left leg was normal — long, lightly muscled, the foot bare. The right leg was a ruin. From the knee down it was withered, the calf half the circumference of the left, the ankle twisted slightly inward. A long surgical scar ran from below the kneecap to mid-shin, the skin around it shiny and discolored. It was, she understood in an instant, the leg of a man who had been told at seven years old that he would never walk again, and who had spent the next twenty-four years proving the doctors approximately right.

"The bathroom," he said, and his voice had gone flat and hard, "is through the dressing room. The chair is by the door. The water is to be one hundred and two degrees, no hotter, no cooler. The left leg enters the tub first. The right leg is lowered by you, slowly. If I tell you to stop, you stop. If I tell you to leave, you leave. We will not discuss this again."

"Understood."

He swung his left leg over the side of the bed, reached for the chair, and pulled himself into it in a single practiced motion that had obviously been performed ten thousand times. He did not look at her as he wheeled himself past her into the dressing room; she followed at a respectful distance. In the bathroom she had already drawn the tub — she had come in early for exactly this purpose — and tested the temperature twice with a thermometer she had found in the cabinet. One hundred and two degrees. She had laid out towels, a fresh pair of sweatpants, a clean t-shirt, and the bottle of unscented soap she had found by the sink.

He looked at the preparations. He looked at her. Something in his face, which she would learn to read over the coming weeks, did not soften exactly but did ease by a degree.

"Turn around," he said.

She turned. Behind her she heard the soft sound of clothing being removed, the creak of the chair as he shifted his weight, a brief hiss of breath as he lowered himself onto the edge of the tub. She did not turn around. She did not need to. She had done this work in hospitals for men twice his age and half his dignity, and the kindest thing she could give him was the pretense that he was not being witnessed.

"The left leg," he said, and she turned in time to support his left calf as he swung it over the rim of the tub. Then the right, lowered slowly, slowly, into the water; she held it under the calf and behind the heel with both hands and let the warm water rise around it without comment. His face was white and his jaw was clenched, but he did not make a sound.

"Five minutes," he said. "Then the soap. Then we get out. Do not —" and here his voice cracked, very slightly, and recovered — "do not touch the right knee."

"I won't."

She knelt by the tub. She did not speak. The clock on the bathroom shelf ticked. The water rippled. After three minutes she picked up the soap and, without being asked, began to wash his back, working in the long, slow strokes she had been taught at Hudson Valley for patients with nerve damage. He stiffened, then, gradually, did not.

When she helped him out of the tub and into the chair, he was shaking slightly. She wrapped a towel around his shoulders without comment and knelt to dry his right leg with the kind of careful, professional attention she would have given a wound. She did not look at the knee. She did not need to. He watched her do it, and after a long moment he said, in a voice stripped of all its earlier cruelty: