His fingers, rough against her skin, traced a curve from just under her breast to her navel. “It is so tight? This must hurt.”She was embarrassed. He’d never turned off the lamp on the table. It was just a reading lamp, but the dim halo of light reached the bed. Despite her best efforts to relax, to concentrate on what she herself was feeling and seeing, she’d been so aware that she was visible to him, not covered in darkness as she’d been with Alan. And now, after, it seemed her fear was founded: there was something strange about her naked body, something she hadn’t known was strange. Did other women have marks from corsets? Cora guessed, just from his reaction, that his wife hadn’t had marks. Immigrant women didn’t always wear corsets, especially if they worked. But did other women like her have marks? There was no way to know. Even while giving birth to the twins, she’d had a sheet over her, draped to her knees. No one had seen her bare belly since Mother Kaufmann stopped giving her baths.“You get used to it,”
