Chapter 2: The Warm Water
The bathroom in Dad’s downtown townhouse smelled of cedarwood soap and clean linen, a stark contrast to the chemical sting of the estate. The clawfoot tub was filled nearly to the brim with steaming water, the surface unbroken except for a few drifting bubbles. Dad stood by the sink, rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, his navy jacket draped neatly over the back of the mahogany chair outside the door. He had spent the last twenty minutes carrying boxes and old blankets from the trunk, turning his sterile bachelor apartment into a makeshift sanctuary.
"Let's get these off, sweetie," he said softly, kneeling beside the porcelain rim. He reached for the hem of the black maid dress, the stiff white collar rustling as he carefully unbuttoned the back. The fabric felt heavy, soaked in the humiliation of the past six years, and when he finally lifted it away from my shoulders, I felt an immediate, chilling lightness in the air. I sat on the edge of the tub in my simple cotton slip, shivering slightly not from the cold, but from the sudden absence of the weight I had carried for so long.
He didn't make me step in right away. Instead, he took a soft washcloth, soaked it in the warm water, and added a generous dollop of lavender-scented soap. With agonizing slowness, he began to work at my hands. The black shoe polish resisted at first, smearing across my skin like dark ink before slowly dissolving under the friction of the cloth. Dad didn't speak while he worked; his jaw was set tight, his eyes fixed entirely on my fingers as if he were performing surgery. Every stroke of the cloth was deliberate, gentle, and utterly devoted to erasing the evidence of what had been done to me.
"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly, noticing how I winced when he brushed against a raw spot near my left knuckle.
"Only a little," I whispered. "Veronica said the polish protects the leather. She said if I didn't rub hard enough, the leather would crack."
Dad’s hands paused instantly. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and for a second, the air in the room grew heavy with a suppressed storm. When he resumed washing, his touch was even lighter, if that was possible. "The only thing that needs protecting in this family is you, Sofia," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "And I failed at that for a long time. I was traveling, always chasing the next contract, believing the people I trusted were taking care of you. I was blind."
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"You didn't know," I said, repeating the excuse I had told myself in the dark hallways whenever I heard his car pull away for an early morning flight.
"Knowing doesn't excuse being absent," he replied firmly. When my hands were finally clean—pink and scrubbed raw, but free of the black stain—he helped me step down into the water. The heat enveloped me, soothing the aches in my legs from hours of kneeling on the hard carpet. Dad sat on a low stool beside the tub, holding a large fluffy towel across his knees, waiting patiently for the moment I was ready to climb out into a world that finally felt safe.
