AKSEL

After dinner, Hovhannes asks me to stay and play Lego with him. It's an excellent excuse to spend time with my nephew while postponing a private conversation with Father. He's only in Armenia for a short visit. Before he returns to England, avoiding that conversation altogether will be impossible. Too many things were left unsaid tonight. But that doesn’t mean the confrontation can’t be postponed — at least for a little while longer.

By the time we're done playing, it's time to put Hovhannes to bed. Anahit and I handle the evening routine together. When we finally leave his room, Mother and Father have already settled in the garden with Armenian brandy. Using tomorrow's early training session as an excuse, I wish them goodnight.

Anahit walks me to the front door. Along the way, she admits how much she's missed the feeling of having the entire family together. It's true. Our last family dinner had been nearly a year ago. Still, something about her nostalgia rings hollow.

I've been waiting all evening for a chance to speak with her alone. At last, the opportunity arrives. The hallway is empty. It's just the two of us.

"I'm sure Father offered to help until Albert got back on his feet," I say.

"There was no need for that," Anahit replies a little too quickly.

I nod.

"Then something else influenced your decision. "Because breaking up your child's family—“

Anahit cuts in before I can finish.

"Hovhannes isn't losing his family. The family is simply..." She hesitates, searching for a gentler word. "Separating."

"And the shared assets will separate too," I say evenly. "Along with the possibility of being dragged through years of expensive litigation."

Anahit says nothing.

The silence tells me more than an argument would have.

"Are you seeing someone?" I ask.

The question leaves my mouth before I've fully registered it. Somewhere along the way, I'd apparently convinced myself there was another man hidden inside this story. Some shadowy figure pulling at the roots of the divorce from behind the scenes.

"No."

The answer comes out sharper than expected. That single burst of emotion tells me far more than the word itself.

***

There is nothing remotely interesting about the ceiling. I've been staring at it for the better part of forty minutes anyway.

My body is tired. My mind refuses to cooperate.

I was fourteen when Anahit announced she was in love.

She was twenty-two at the time, finishing her law degree at Cambridge. Albert was in the first year of his master's. They met through the Cambridge Law Society, where Albert served as president. Technically, it wasn't their first meeting. But according to Anahit, it was the day she became convinced she had found her perfect match.

He loved horseback riding. He read the same English philosophers she did. Both of them dreamed of one day founding an organization that would provide free legal aid to people living in Armenia's rural communities.

The Najarian name wasn't unfamiliar to us.

Albert came from an Armenian family much like our own. He belonged to the same church, attended the same Armenian dance club, walked in the same Armenian Genocide remembrance marches every April 24. Our parents crossed paths at the same Armenian charity galas year after year, donated roughly the same sums to the homeland, and exchanged the same well-rehearsed patriotic sentiments that inevitably floated through such evenings.

So Albert's face, growing older and sharper with each passing year, was hardly unfamiliar to our family. Yet all those years of overlapping diaspora circles had never brought them together. Cambridge did.

Study sessions in the Cambridge library became long walks through the gardens. Long walks became shared ambitions, shared plans, and shared dreams.

Anahit and Albert's wedding felt like something out of a fairy tale.

Both families had insisted that the marriage wait until after graduation, but neither of them had any interest in waiting. They were determined to make their vows while the future still belonged entirely to them.

They were married at St. Sarkis Church in London. The ceremony left a permanent mark on me. It felt as though my sister was stepping out of our world and into a larger one, a world of new promises.

Our parents had dragged us to more English and Armenian weddings than I could count, yet I remember almost none of them.

I remember this one.

Even now, the memory survives in impossible detail. my fourteen-year-old mind recorded the entire day in two colors: white and pale pink. Anahit's dress was white. Albert's suit was pale pink. The tablecloths were white, the napkins pale pink. The wedding cake and candelabras were white. The flowers and candles were pink.

Anahit defied our parents exactly once in her life. She refused to postpone her marriage to Albert. On that day, and for years afterward, she was happy. Always.

Until six months ago.

The glow of my phone cuts through the darkness.

A message from Rosie.

"Haven't heard from you in over a week.
Soooo I've taken the hint.
I'm seeing someone else now.
Just thought you should know."

Rosie and I lasted about five weeks.

She was beautiful. Model beautiful. Clever, too. We had dinners, drinks, conversations. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. For a while, she provided a welcome distraction from the exhausting legal battles that followed the end of my career: insurance claims, sponsorship disputes, and the endless contractual loose ends that surfaced once professional tennis was no longer an option.

But no matter how much I tried, I never managed to feel connected to her. And when I moved to Armenia, it never even occurred to me to tell her I was leaving or formally end whatever it was we were having.

Rosie's message feels less like a breakup and more like a warning.

Little by little, my life is becoming a collection of unfinished chapters.

And just like that, the third disappointment of the day arrived.

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