Page 58 of Sins of the Hidden

"M-Mari?"

The next step brought him close enough that I could see burst capillaries scattered across his weathered face. Dark, bruise-purple half-moons hung beneath bloodshot eyes that refused to blink. Lips pulled back in something between a grimace and a snarl, revealing teeth ground down asymmetrically. Around his neck hung a chain with a wedding ring, the precious metal secured directly over his heart with a safety pin that pierced through his shirt. The constant pressure had worn a permanent callus into his chest.

"Marilyn is my wife." His gaze shifted beyond me. "This is her kitchen."

"I-I assumed since it was clean and stocked, Victoria used it."

Wrong answer. The wrongest possible answer. His jaw locked with an audible click, and a muscle jumped in his temple like something trying to escape through his skull. The tic throbbed with relentless rhythm, each spasm a desperate affirmation that would not stop.

"I clean and stock it every week." His voice lowered as his steady hand traced the countertop. "Every. Single. Week. Just in case we finally find her." His jaw clenched tightly. "She'll have her safe place to come back to."

"F-Find her?" The question was both stupid and cruel, but I couldn't stop it.

"She went missing three years ago." The words emerged scraped and raw. His hand moved to the chain at his neck, fingers clutching the ring not with reverence but with the desperation of a drowning man grasping his last breath. "One thousand, one hundred and forty-six days." His voice hardened, each number precisely measured with obsessive accuracy. His eyes, hard and haunted, refused to blink as if afraid she might vanish in that split second his vision faltered. "Sixteen hours. Twenty-two minutes."

The kitchen suddenly felt like a preserved shrine to a vanished woman.

"Oh, I'm so?—"

His hand shot up abruptly. I flinched, a strangled yelp escaping my throat. His sleeve rode up with the motion, revealing what at first looked like scars on his inner wrist. Looking closer, I saw rows of hash marks etched into his skin, hundreds of tally marks, meticulously grouped in sets of five. Some were old and silvery, others pink and healing, the most recent still scabbed over and angry red.

"Don't want your goddamn apologies." His jaw clenched tightly. "I just want you to get the fuck out of here."

I looked down at my half-finished work and the mess on the floor. The batter spread between the tiles. "I–um." My throat closed completely, my eyes watering. "C-Could I just finish my orders that I've already baked? Then I'll clean up and leave."

He stared at my hands for a long moment. His shoulders dropped slightly, the tension in his body shifting. "Fine."

"T-Thank you." Relief bloomed briefly before withering under his continued scrutiny. He leaned against the wall, a deliberate casualness belied by how his thumbs dug into his own biceps, leaving crescent-moon indentations that whitened then flushed with trapped blood. I recognized it as a grounding technique—pain anchoring him to the present when the past threatened to drag him under.

The piping bag trembled between my fingers. Jagged lines of frosting zigzagged where they should have curved smoothly. I knocked over a bottle of vanilla extract, fumbled measuring cups, and added salt instead of sugar to a batch of icing. My fingers, usually so precise and confident with pastry, kept betraying me as I felt his gaze fixed on my back.

"Calm the fuck down."

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. The piping bag nearly slipped from my grip. "I-I can't." My knees trembled beneath me. "I-I don't do well a-around people."

His tone was flat. "You own a baking business."

I didn't respond. What could I say? That baking was predictable? Something I could control? That people were chaotic and dangerous?

I turned away from his scrutiny and tried to lose myself in the familiar routine of baking. My fingers still trembled as I sifted flour, but the repetitive motion gradually steadied my breathing. With each measured ingredient, each precise fold of batter, I felt myself reclaiming a small piece of control.

I piped another rosette, then another, finding my rhythm. The act of baking, of creating order from chaos, grounded me. Without realizing it, I began to hum softly.We Dancedby Brad Paisley flowed from my lips, a melody that reminded me of the times I spent with my mom in the kitchen as a child when I first grew to love baking.

The sound of shattering ceramic cut through the melody. I looked up to find Husk frozen in the doorway, the mug he'd been holding now in pieces at his feet. His face had drained of all color, eyes wide and haunted.

"That song," he whispered, voice barely audible. "Where did you learn that song?"

I stopped humming immediately, heart racing. "I-I'm sorry. It's just something my mother used to sing. I didn't mean to?—"

"She used to hum that," he said, barely above a whisper. "That exact one. Every time she baked."

His eyes were fixed on a point past my shoulder. He gripped the counter, knuckles whitening with the effort.

"It was our song," he continued, each word dragged from somewhere so deep it seemed to physically hurt. "First dance at our wedding." His hand moved to the ring hanging at his chest,gripping it so tightly his knuckles whitened. "I haven't heard it since... since she..."

Heat crawled up my neck as I set down the piping bag with trembling fingers, leaving a smear of pink frosting on the stainless steel. I kept my eyes fixed on the counter, too scared to look up, desperately wishing I could disappear. The weight of his mourning filled the room, making it hard to breathe.

Several unbearable seconds passed in silence. When I finally risked a glance, his haunted eyes were still fixed on me.

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