For one confused second, I thought a window had broken.
Little pieces of light were scattered across the hardwood near the far wall, catching the afternoon sun coming in through the blinds. Sparkling. Almost pretty.
Then I got closer, and I stopped.
My grandmother’s antique mirror lay smashed across the floor.
“No.”
I dropped to my knees beside it.
The dark wooden frame had split at one corner, right where two of the carved pieces met. The glass had shattered into dozens of pieces, some as big as my hand, some as small as grains of sugar. They were spread out in a wide circle, like it hadn’t fallen.
Like it had been thrown.
“No, no, no.”
I reached out and touched the edge of the frame. The wood was cool and smooth under my fingers, the way it had always been. The carved roses on the top corners were still there. One of them had a chip out of a petal.
That mirror had hung in my grandmother’s bedroom for as long as I could remember.
Her name was Lena. She was my father’s mother. She lived in a little white farmhouse an hour north of town with a porch that sagged in the middle and a kitchen that always smelled like cinnamon and coffee. Every summer, from the time I was five until I was fourteen, my parents dropped me off there for two weeks.
The mirror hung over her dresser. It was tall and oval, in a dark walnut frame with carved roses at the top. The glass was old and a little wavy, so your reflection looked like it was standing underwater.
Every morning, I’d stand in front of it and brush my hair before breakfast. And every morning, Grandma Lena would come stand behind me and watch.
“You’re pulling too hard,” she’d say. “Gentle, Nicky. Your hair didn’t do anything to you.”
Then she’d take the brush out of my hand and do it herself. Long, slow strokes. A hundred of them. She counted out loud. I’d stand there watching her face in the wavy glass behind mine, and I’d feel like the safest person in the whole world.
When my mother died, the year I turned fifteen, I spent the whole summer at Grandma Lena’s. I barely spoke. I barely ate.
But every morning, I stood in front of that mirror. And every morning, she brushed my hair.
She never told me it would be okay. She never told me it was God’s plan. She just brushed my hair and counted to a hundred and let me cry when I needed to.
After she died, eleven years ago, my father gave the mirror to me.
“She’d want you to have it,” he said. “You’re the one who stood in front of it.”
It was one of the few things of hers I owned. A quilt. A recipe box. A pair of reading glasses. And the mirror.
And for reasons I had never understood, it was also the one thing from the entire divorce settlement that Brian had fought hardest not to give me. 