After, Anna receives the same treatment and somehow looks even more polished than she already was, she insists on one more stop.
The nail salon is just as polished. Pale pink walls. Quiet conversations. The kind of place where they bring you tea without asking.
Lucy sits in the oversized pedicure chair as if she were on a throne. Her legs barely reach the edge.
“Warm?” the technician asks.
Lucy dips her toes into the water and squeals. “It’s bubbly!”
I choose a soft neutral for myself, something understated. Lucy chooses a pale blush with the tiniest shimmer because “it sparkles but not too much.”
Anna watches us with a small smile, hands folded in her lap, as if memorizing the scene.
When they paint Lucy’s tiny nails, she holds her fingers out carefully, concentrating with the seriousness of a surgeon.
“Do not smudge,” she mutters to herself.
I lean back, letting someone shape and file and paint my nails while my sister, no… my daughter, giggles beside me, both of us redheads with matching glossy hair and soft pink toes.
For a few hours, we are not navigating concussions or illnesses, expectations or forced engagements, we are just… girls being girls.
When we step back onto the sidewalk, hair shining, hands linked, Lucy between us, she looks up at me. “Do you think Daddy will notice?”
I smile. “Of course, he’ll notice, but Lucy, never forget that he noticed before.”
That night, after dinner, her bath, and three separate negotiations about which pajamas are the “comfiest,” Lucy chooses a book about a brave little fox who is afraid of the dark but learns that the forest at night is full of friends.
I lie on my side beside her bed, reading softly. Lenzin is sitting against the headboard, listening, arms crossed, watching us like we are sacred. I catch his eye when I turn the page. He smiles, barely.
Lucy fights sleep the way she fights everything over the past couple of days, but her blinks grow slower. Her fingers curl around the edge of the blanket. By the time the fox finds his courage, she has already drifted off.
I brush her hair back from her forehead and whisper, “You are so loved,” though she cannot hear me.
I must drift too, because when I open my eyes again, the room is darker. The little fox book is still open in my hand. And my neck aches slightly from the position I fell asleep in.
The hallway light is on, and I hear his voice, low enough that I can’t hear the words, but they are floating toward me.
I ease Lucy’s hand from the blanket and step out quietly, padding down the hall.
Lenzin stands near the window again, phone to his ear, shoulders tight in a way I do not see often. His voice, controlled.
“Yes,” he says in German. “I understand.”
A pause.
“No. I did not make this decision lightly.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“I will not marry her.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“I care for Anna deeply. She is my friend. She always will be. That is a big part of why I cannot do this.”
His hand runs through his hair, frustration breaking through the calm.
“You wanted something… romantic,” he continues. “Something that does not exist between us. You cannot force that.”
