For years, my mother wore long sleeves even in the middle of summer. One day I finally asked, “Did Dad do something to you?” She went pale, closed the door, and said something that frightened me even more…

They were covered in old, uneven scars.

Not fresh.

Not the kind I had spent months imagining.

They were decades old.

“I was twenty-one,” my mother said. “There was a fire in our house.”

I froze.

“Your father and I were engaged at the time. When he found out, he ran inside looking for me.”

I looked at my father.

He lowered his head.

My mother continued.

“I spent a long time in the hospital. The hardest part for me wasn’t the pain. It was how I looked afterward. I didn’t want anyone to see my arms. Not even him.”

My father sat beside her.

“But he came every single day,” my mother said. “Every day. Whenever I told him to leave, he would say, ‘I’m going to marry you, not your arms.’”

My eyes filled with tears.

But I still had one question.

“Then why do you sometimes get scared when he suddenly reaches toward you?”