Chapter 2: Family Portraits
1141 Words
The morning sun filtered through Selina’s bedroom windows in slanted rays, brushing against the edge of her bed where the book Damien gave her still lay open. She hadn’t intended to read it again last night, but something about his handwriting—so direct, so effortless—had drawn her back.
She sat at her vanity, brushing her hair in long, measured strokes. A rare quiet clung to the apartment. No work calls. No presentations. No strategy meetings. Today, she would face something far more exhausting: her family.
Lan’s engagement ceremony wasn’t just another social event. It was an unspoken battlefield of expectations, gossip, and generational tension—especially now that her father would be there.
Her fingers paused mid-brush.
Twelve years had passed since the divorce. But in Vietnamese families, twelve years didn’t dissolve silence. It fermented it. No one ever said exactly what they meant. They just... observed.
And she hated being observed.
Downstairs, her mother was already in the car, waiting like a ghost from a past Selina couldn’t quite bury. She slipped into her ao dai—pearl-gray, with subtle golden embroidery over the cuffs—and took one last glance at herself in the mirror.
She looked dignified. Controlled. Entirely composed.
Just how she liked it.
But behind her eyes, the same quiet ache pulsed—a dread that no amount of poise could ever mask.
The venue was a family estate in District 2, lined with tamarind trees and lanterns strung between polished wooden beams. Inside, the air was fragrant with lotus and jasmine, and the clinking of tea cups underscored soft, ceremonial music. Selina had barely stepped into the foyer before the aunts descended.
“Selina! Trời ơi, con càng lúc càng giống mẹ con hồi trẻ!”
“You’ve been working too hard, haven’t you? Still no boyfriend?”
“When are you going to let someone take care of you, hm?”
Her smile didn’t c***k. Her responses were clinical—polite, short, evasive. She scanned the room for her cousin Lan, hoping to avoid further scrutiny. Instead, her eyes landed on a figure by the balcony.
Damien Vu.
She blinked.
He wore a cream button-down, navy trousers, no tie. Relaxed, but deliberate. His hair slightly tousled, as if he’d run his hands through it once before arriving. He didn’t belong to this crowd, and yet somehow, he fit perfectly in the frame of the morning light.
He saw her, lifted his glass in greeting.
Selina walked over.
“You weren’t invited,” she said.
“I was,” he said simply. “Lan and I went to university together. She sent me the invite personally.”
“Hm.” She didn’t smile, but something flickered in her eyes.
“You look…” he started.
“Don’t say ‘beautiful,’” she cut in.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Oh?”
“I was going to say—untouchable.”
She tilted her head. “Still flirting, Mr. Vu?”
“No. Still observing.”
He handed her a glass of water. “This place seems like a minefield.”
“You have no idea.”
She took a sip. Their fingers brushed. Brief. Electric.
Elsewhere on the estate, Uyen watched them from a distance.
Her daughter never looked at men like that. Not even when she was younger, before everything fractured. She saw in Selina the same steel she had forged from years of being let down—but Damien’s presence stirred something uncertain.
Beside her, an older relative clucked her tongue.
“Con bé đó. Lạnh lùng quá. Đẹp mà không ai dám lại gần.”
Uyen didn’t respond. She merely stared at the man talking to her daughter like she wasn’t made of knives.
After the ceremonial tea pouring, photos, and gifts, the guests were free to mingle. Selina stood in a corner garden, facing a pond scattered with pink lilies. She was finally alone.
Until her father approached.
He hadn’t changed much. Gray at the temples now. Slightly thicker around the waist. But the voice? Still the same careful calm that used to feel like silence.
“Selina.”
She turned, slowly.
“Ba.”
They hadn’t spoken in person since her college graduation.
“You look well,” he said.
She nodded. “I am.”
“I saw your name in the business section last month. The Vu Minh Complex. Impressive work.”
“Thank you.”
A pause.
“You’re doing it alone?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. The weight of words unspoken was heavier than those spoken.
“I never meant for things to be like this,” he said, looking at the pond.
Selina’s voice was quiet. “But they are.”
He nodded.
“Still,” he added after a while, “I hope someone will eventually stand beside you. You carry too much on your own.”
Selina met his gaze. “I carry exactly what I choose to.”
He didn’t argue. Just looked at her like he was seeing someone he hadn’t realized he’d lost until now.
When he left, she didn’t cry. But she did sit down, finally, under the shade of the tamarind tree, as if her heels had grown too heavy.
Damien found her there.
“I brought you something,” he said, holding out a small bag.
Inside: a fresh bánh da lợn from a street vendor they’d both passed after the property opening last week.
“You remembered,” she said softly.
“I always do,” he replied.
She took it, unwrapping the edge slowly. She didn’t eat it—not yet—but the gesture made something warm flicker under her ribs.
He sat beside her, not touching, just… there.
She exhaled.
“Everyone wants to fix me, you know.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I want to understand why you think you’re broken.”
The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was full of meaning, stretched like a tight thread waiting to snap—or be played like music.
“You keep showing up,” she said finally.
“I will, until you tell me to stop.”
She turned to him. The shadows of the trees danced across her face.
“I don’t want to tell you to stop.”
That night, she opened her mother’s car door, sitting in silence as the engine started. Uyen glanced at her daughter’s profile.
“You were different today.”
“I was surrounded by ghosts.”
“And one person who isn’t,” Uyen said quietly.
Selina didn’t answer.
But her fingers curled around the bánh da lợn still wrapped neatly in her lap.
Sometimes, healing began in the quietest of ways.
With presence.
With patience.
And with the courage to stop running.
To be contined...
- Writer
