"What is this?!"
The fogged glass trembled under Old Tomas's fingertips.
His breath was gone. His heartbeat was the only sound in his skull—a drum, a war drum, a funeral drum, all three at once, pounding behind his eyes, pounding in his ears, pounding in the hollow of his chest where his ribs met and his heart lived and his soul was trying to crawl out through his throat.
Sera was in the tub.
His Sera. His granddaughter. The girl he had raised on lavender oil and talcum powder. The girl who had swung a broken stick at a fence post at three years old and had not stopped swinging since. The girl whose calloused hands he had massaged every night for sixteen years. The girl he had told—the world will try to break you.
She was naked.
