Marta's stroke stuttered.
Recovered.
"Done," she said, after a moment. Her voice was steady. Her professional voice. The voice that had survived forty years of this family.
"Front," Viktor said.
She moved around him.
The water at her thighs, the underskirt soaked through, her chest above the waterline. She found his eyes — those purple ones, looking at her with the patient, assessing quality that she had decided, professionally, she was not going to interpret — and began to lather the soap against his chest.
His abs.
The muscle under her palms was not what she'd been prepared for. She'd known him as a child — had actually bathed him before, as she'd said — but this was not the body of that child. This was the body of something that had been doing significant physical work with great frequency.
Her hands moved down.
The waterline.
She stopped.
