But then Mireille pulls out a second box and extends it to Manon. “And for Manon, whose caution in the forest—whose effort to protect us all—never goes unnoticed.”

Manon smiles with tight lips and cuddles the box in her lap.

“But that’s not fair,” Tai says. “Only the winner should get the prize.”

“My little one.” Mireille ruffles Tai’s hair. “Just as your sister looks to you for your great sense of adventure, for your open delight in the world, so must you look to her for her caution and awareness,” she says, placing a hand on Tai’s shoulder. Her eyes are dark. “These woods can be treacherous. You never know which trees will curl their roots around your ankles, which foxes will prance right down a foxhole with you in tow,” she whispers. Her voice takes on a goofy pitch as she reaches for their necks with little fingers. “And which forest vines will grasp for your necks!”

The girls burst out into laughter, clutching their necks, contorting themselves to escape her tickles. The chocolates fall to the floor, and the camera takes a step back.

“We give up!” Tai shouts. “Leave us alone! We give up!”

They fall onto her in a pile, hysterical. Smiling.

Mireille, stroking their black hair, stiffens.

Mireille goes still then, her arms holding the girls close. “Let’s be quiet, my loves,” she says, looking out the scratched window into the thick black-green tangle of the woods. “Your father’s friends won’t like that we’re here.”

She watches the shadows outside as they thicken and multiply. As they turn the forest into something ominous and lush—dusky and replete with melancholy.

“But the forest is so lovely, isn’t it?” Mireille continues. “Beauty isn’t that which is beautiful, it is that which pleases us.”

The cameraman steps back, then turns, the camera zooming into the meaty dark of the woods. He softly clears his throat.

“Your mother is so special,” he whispers. “Are you special, too, girls?”

[Video ends]

TAI

This won’t be super bubbly and fresh like I want it to be, but life’s only like champagne in that it can be not-so-easy to digest sometimes, right?

Here’s the truth: My parents each gave me a secret from the world, one beautiful egg of a secret each that I’ve carried with me since I was a snot-nosed kid, very, very carefully, so they would never crack.

Dad told me I was born with the mark of luck on me. It came in the form of this gross little fatty deposit at my temple—Mama had it removed by a plastic surgeon when I was a year old so I wouldn’t be teased, thank God—but Dad told me the luck itself would never leave me, and … it hasn’t.