The others put their heads down to their work. Grandma takes her chair at the head of the table, but she’ll be up a dozen times. I slide the top from the repair bin and stop before it’s even open all the way. The smell hits me so hard, it would have knocked me over if I wasn’t already sitting.

It’s sharp and nutty. Dario.

I can’t savor it, because there’s also a metallic sting. I was young—maybe eleven—when we were counting pennies to put into rolls. There were five left over. I closed my fist around those last pennies. I was going to hide them in my room and keep them for myself. But when Grandma opened my hand, my palms were sweating and the smell that came from them was copper and guilt.

I open the box to find the pile of seafoam green fabric. Bloodstains explain the sweaty-penny smell.

This is why he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

I have to repair my husband’s blood-soaked prison uniform. I look at the women. They don’t look back. Even Denise has her head down over her work. Only Grandma takes a moment to glance at me.

“The pocket’s on the bottom,” she says.

“Thank you.”

I take out the shirt. An index card is paper clipped to the neckline. The card says Close rip in front and replace pocket. As promised, a square of fabric lies on the bottom of the bin.

If I bury my face in this shirt, it will be as if I were there with him.

Once I remove the pocket, I close the bin and put it at the base of the chair, where my feet can rest on it, then lay out today’s project. I can’t have an emotion about the blood or how the pocket got torn off so violently the whole front of the shirt ripped. No sympathy. No love. No questions. It needs repair. That’s what I’m here for. This is the test.

“Was it scary outside?” Lili asks cheerfully, threading her machine.

“Scary?” I reach for the sewing kit in the center of the table. Needle. Seam ripper. Thread. Which color do I match? The fabric or the blood?

Breakfast was toast with jelly. It threatens to come up.

Don’t be sick.

I pluck thread to match fabric and another to match blood.

“Did you find anyone he took?” Ginny adds, trying to sound casual. “Any of us that he got? What about Nella? Did he say where she is?”

Just another girl snatched. Another reason to fear outsiders. But Nella’s bare feet are touching ocean water and the salt breeze is blowing back her hair.

What if I told them how it could be for them? What if I offered them freedom?

What if this is a test of my truthfulness?

Denise is looking right at me. She knows I wasn’t suffering outside. She knows what happened to Dafne. She’s the only one who’s seen me with Dario. She clears gunk out of her throat and quickly draws her hand across it.