small and broken: “Why did Grandma cut my promise?”
The video ended.
No one spoke.
Mark closed the laptop and looked at his mother.
“That’s what you destroyed last Thursday, Mom. Not just hair. A promise. A five-year-old boy’s way of loving his sister through the hardest thing our family has ever been through.”
Brenda’s face had gone white.
“I… I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t ask. You decided he looked ridiculous and you fixed it. Without permission. Without understanding. Without caring what it meant.”
Mark’s father cleared his throat. “Brenda, you didn’t tell me you cut Leo’s hair.”
“I… it was just a haircut, Robert. Boys shouldn’t have long hair—”
“You took him out of school,” Mark continued. “You lied to the school about a medical emergency. You took him to a barber and held his hands while he cried and begged you to stop.”
One of Mark’s brothers—Uncle Tom—set
