A few had healed so long ago that they had become difficult to distinguish from the surrounding skin.
Others looked as though they had once been deep enough to leave permanent reminders of the pain that caused them.
I stood completely still.
I could not speak.
I had expected wrinkles. I had expected the ordinary changes that come with age. I had expected the small imperfections that neither of us had possessed when we were seventeen.
I had not expected this.
Anna immediately pulled her dress back into place.
Her face crumpled.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Those two words brought me back to myself.
“Anna, no.”
She shook her head, struggling to fasten the dress.
“I should have told you.”
I moved closer, then stopped when I saw her flinch.
That tiny movement hurt me more than anything I had seen.
She was my wife.
I was the man who had promised to love her.
