Nina and Lila, the nurses, had the gentlest profiles—soft lighting, slow captions, tired eyes. Nina worked in pediatrics, while Lila worked emergency. Lila posted a reel of her holding pressure to a patient’s wound with shaking hands, then smiling through blood. Nina had a post that simply read: “We were all someone’s baby once.”
They looked like women who’d learned how to stay calm when the world fell apart. But they also looked tired of cleaning up other people’s damage. Justin marked Lila: possible. Nina: less so. He wondered if either of them ever asked Lucy what kind of father he’d been.
Sloane and Norah came next. Sloane, the lawyer, had a sharp mouth and sharper eyes. Her bio just said, “Brooklyn. Feminist. Tired.” Norah’s feed was full of modernist buildings, tight black turtlenecks, and photos of models in structures she’d designed. Not one post mentioned family. Norah rarely smiled. Sloane didn’t at all.
One tweet from Sloane lingered: “Children aren’t resilient. They’re just quiet about pain.” It had gone viral. Justin stared at the date—Father’s Day. He sat back, a sick heat in his chest. Sloane was a no. Norah might talk to him. But she looked like she never forgot a slight.