whenever Ava battled a particularly strong bout of anxiety, her hands ended up bearing the most obvious scars. She would scratch at her cuticles viciously, leaving the skin pink and jagged and cracked. Often, at least one finger was wrapped in a bandage, while the rest of them were dry and dirty from hours at the sketch pad or in the soil out back. Her nails, of course, were always bare—no manicure stood a chance. Ava knew that her hands looked ugly. But they’d still built her a beautiful life.
