I Do Nails for a Living – But Nothing Prepared Me for What Was Under Hers

At a quiet nail salon, Sadie begins to notice something off about her newest client, a woman with perfect clothes, haunted eyes, and a different kind of silence. What begins as a routine appointment turns into something far more intimate, unraveling a story of grief, connection, and the quiet act of staying.

I work at a boutique nail salon downtown. It's the kind of place that smells like lavender, eucalyptus oil, and acetone. We have minimalist furniture, calming playlists that loop soft piano music, and little bowls of mints at the front desk that nobody really eats.

Except Jess, the receptionist, she loves those things.

I've worked here for three years. I know our regulars by name, their favorite colors, the way some of them ask for glitter only when something in their life is quietly unraveling. But mostly, I keep to myself. I come in, I paint nails, I listen.

It's what I've always been best at: listening, and noticing things that slip past most people.

My ex-boyfriend once told me that I was "too sensitive," like it was a habit I could unlearn if I just tried hard enough. And maybe, for a while, I believed him.

Maybe I did try.

But some things settle too deep in the skin to be unlearned.

Her name was Anna-Marie.

She walked in one overcast Friday afternoon in February. It was a little after four. I remember the time because I'd just told Casey, my co-worker, that I was going to refill the footbath salts but stopped when I saw her.

She looked... expensive. Her silk scarf was neatly twisted around her neck, her black coat belted at the waist, and her pointed boots clicked softly against the marble floor.

But there was something else.

Her makeup was flawless but her eyes looked fogged, like the light behind them had flickered out. She moved like she'd been underwater for a long time and had only just surfaced.

"Full set, please," she said quietly, not quite looking me in the eye. Her voice was soft and dry, like paper that had been left in the sun too long.

"I'm Sadie," I said, leading her to my chair.

"Anna-Marie," she almost whispered.

We didn't talk much that first time. She picked a deep plum shade, something moody. I asked how her week had been and if she had any special weekend plans. Usually our clients loved small talk; it gave them a chance to let the light shine on them.

Anna-Marie was different. She was guarded in a way that seemed familiar but haunted.

"I'm just trying to get through the day, Sadie," she said, smiling faintly and shaking her head.

I nodded. I understood that more than she knew.

When she left, I watched her walk out into the grey light. Something about her stillness stuck with me. I thought maybe I was reading too much into it, like I always did. But I remembered how tightly she clutched her coat, like it was the only thing holding her together.

She came back the next Friday, same time, with the same faint smile. A different color, a stormy blue this time. Anna-Marie had the same distant eyes. I could tell that she was being haunted by the same ghosts.

It became a pattern. Every Friday at four, and she never missed a week.

By her fourth visit, something was different. She arrived fifteen minutes late and looked like she'd walked through a rainstorm. Her coat was streaked with mud, her scarf slightly askew. She sat down without a word, and when I took her hands in my own, I paused.

There was soil under her nails.

Not a little, not like she'd been potting daisies in a windowsill. This was thick, dark soil packed into the creases around her cuticles and embedded deep beneath the nails themselves.

I tried not to let it show on my face, but my stomach turned.

"You've been gardening?" I asked lightly, brushing her fingertips gently.

Her gaze drifted to mine, slow and heavy. She hesitated.

"I have," she said, her voice barely audible. "In a cemetery, Sadie."

And then she looked away, like the words had just slipped out before she could catch them, like some part of her was horrified by her own honesty.

My hands didn't stop moving but my chest tightened in that slow, creeping way it always did when something wasn't right. I kept my face calm, my tone even, but inside, I felt the hairs on my arms rise.

I wanted to ask more, to press just a little further, but something about her posture, the way her shoulders stayed taut and her head dipped low, told me that she was already regretting saying anything at all.

So I stayed quiet.

I finished her nails with more gentleness than usual, pretending not to notice when her fingers trembled against mine.

That night, I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark, lit only by the glow of my phone screen. I started searching through Google without really thinking.

"Signs of psychosis."

"Why would someone dig in a graveyard?"

"What does grave soil look like?"

Each search made my chest feel tighter, my breath shorter. I told myself I was just curious, that I was just imagining things... but I couldn't shake the image of her hands in mine, cold and dirt-caked, like she'd clawed through something sacred and buried.

The next Friday, I found myself watching the clock more than usual. My eyes kept flicking to the front door, heart thudding a little harder with every passing minute. I wasn't sure what I was hoping for, that she would come in like normal, or that she wouldn't come at all.

Anna-Marie came in right on time.

At first glance, she looked fine. No dirt. No smudged mascara or trembling hands. But as soon as she sat down and placed her fingers in mine, I noticed it. Her nails weren't dirty this time, they were stained.

A dull red, almost brown at the edges, flaked and dry like old rust. It wasn't polish. It was blood, dried and packed beneath her nails, hidden in the creases of her cuticles. It was the kind of blood that had sat there for hours.

I tried not to react, though I could feel the heat rising under my skin. My pulse thudded steadily in my ears, heavy and loud.

"You've hurt yourself, love," I said gently, my voice barely above a whisper. "What happened?"

She looked down at her hands, then up at me with an expression so eerily blank it made the hairs on my neck rise.

"There was a bug," she said, her tone light. "I scratched too hard."

And then she laughed. One sharp, brittle note. It sounded wrong, hollow, like it didn't belong to her at all.

I didn't laugh back.

Her hands trembled slightly while I worked, and I found myself moving slowly, softer, adjusting my pressure instinctively, afraid I might break something that was already hanging by a thread.

After she left, I stood at the front window and watched her disappear into the evening fog. The sky had turned the color of bruised fruit and the reflection of the salon lights against the glass felt too bright, too clean.

The room behind me felt smaller, heavier somehow, like all the air had tilted sideways and settled wrong.

I didn't ask my manager if I could go. I didn't explain, I didn't hesitate. I just grabbed my coat and stepped outside, the bell above the door chiming faintly behind me.

I followed her.

She turned off the main road and slipped into a side street I must've walked past a hundred times and never noticed. It was narrow, cluttered with overgrown weeds, sagging fences, and brick buildings with rusted gutters and faded paint.

There was something forgotten about it, like a place the world had stopped paying attention to.

When I turned the corner, I saw her.

She was standing in the middle of a narrow alleyway, her back to me, arms wrapped tightly around her chest like she was holding herself together.

"Anna-Marie," I called out, hesitant but steady.

She turned slowly. Her face was pale, her eyes unreadable. She didn't look surprised. If anything, she looked... relieved.

"Sadie, you followed me," she said. It wasn't a question; it was a quiet fact.

"I had to," I replied. "I'm worried about you."

"Why?" she asked softly, as if the concept of concern was foreign.

"Because I see you, honey," I said. "And it looks like you're carrying something you shouldn't be carrying alone."

Something in her cracked. I could see it happen, right there, in front of me...

She lowered herself onto a plastic crate near the wall, her coat bunching around her legs in soft folds that looked too expensive for a place like this. The alley smelled like wet brick and dust, and the wind funneled through it in cold little gusts that caught her scarf and sent it fluttering around her like a whisper trying to say something no one had the courage to hear.

"My husband died eight months ago, Sadie," she said. "It was a heart attack with absolutely no warning. He was 39, can you believe that?"

I remained standing, not because I wanted to keep my distance, but because I wasn't sure if sitting would make it too real. She didn't look up at me. She just stared at her hands.

"We were having lunch. I went to get more water, and when I came back, he was slumped forward, face-first into his plate. I thought he was choking," she continued.

She swallowed hard and her voice cracked just slightly at the edges. I felt my breath catch, just for a second.

"The first month, I didn't sleep," she continued. "The second, I stopped eating. By the third, I was on three different kinds of medication and seeing a psychiatrist who didn't remember my name half the time."

She let out a laugh, dry and hollow.

"The pills made me numb. But then... they started making me strange. I'd wake up in the garden with no memory of how I got there. I'd find dirt on my shoes and packed under my nails. I thought I was sleepwalking at first. Then I started going to the cemetery. It was just to sit near Michael... Then one day..."

She paused, looking down at her knees like she wasn't sure she should keep going.

"One day, I took a trowel with me. I just wanted to be close to him. I thought if I dug deep enough, maybe I could touch the coffin... Just to feel the wood. Just to remind myself that Michael was still... somewhere. That he was real. That he had existed."

"That was last week?" I asked softly.

She nodded.

I moved slowly, finally sitting down beside her, my hands resting in my lap, unsure if I should reach out yet.

"I scratched my thigh until it bled this morning," she whispered. "Because I thought there were bugs crawling under my skin. But it was the medication... I know that."

She looked at me then, eyes glossy and red, tears streaking silently down her cheeks.

"I'm not crazy. I just don't know how to live in a world where he's not there... You must think I'm mad, being a walking mess and coming to get my nails done every week."

I didn't answer right away. I just reached out and took her hand, gently, like I was touching something fragile. Her fingers were ice cold.

"I can take you somewhere," I said quietly. "Somewhere safe, Anna-Marie. You don't have to figure it all out alone."

She didn't argue. She didn't flinch. She just nodded, barely.

I'd found the clinic the night before, after another restless scroll through forums and articles about grief, insomnia, and where to go when the pain gets too loud. I'd found it for... me. But Anna-Marie needed it more.

I drove her to a women's mental health clinic about 30 minutes outside the city. The road out there was long and quiet, winding through neighborhoods that faded into open space, it was the kind of drive that made you think about things you'd rather avoid.

We didn't talk much in the car. I think we both needed the silence. Anna-Marie sat curled in the passenger seat, her forehead resting lightly against the window, her scarf pulled tighter than usual, like she was bracing against more than just the cold.

Inside the clinic, the lighting was soft, the chairs were mismatched, and the air smelled faintly of rose and antiseptic. She filled out the intake forms with shaking hands, her handwriting barely legible in places.

When the nurse at the front desk asked if she had someone with her, she looked over at me... I nodded before she had to say anything.

"You can put my details down," I said quietly. "Here, I'll call it out."

She listed me as her emergency contact. I watched her hand move across the page. My name looked strange in her script, like something borrowed, something she wasn't sure would stay.

When they finally called her name, she stood, then turned back to me at the doorway. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"His toothbrush is still on the sink," she said. "I knock it over sometimes. Then I put it back."

That one sentence lodged itself in my chest.

"It's okay," I said gently. "He was real. You loved him. That doesn't go away just because the world keeps turning..."

She gave me the faintest smile. Fragile, like something you couldn't hold too long without breaking.

And then she followed the nurse down the hall and disappeared behind a soft-closing door.

It's been three weeks since that night.

Every Friday, I drive out to the ward with my nail kit in a canvas tote bag. The first time I visited, she was sitting by the window in a chair, staring out at a garden she couldn't step into. There was a wall of glass between her and the world, and she looked like she hadn't decided whether she missed it yet.

When she saw me, her whole face shifted. It wasn't with joy or surprise. It was something softer. Something that felt like relief.

"You came," she said.

"Of course, I did, honey."

Her scarf fluttered softly around her neck again, catching the light breeze from the open window behind her.

"I didn't think people really meant it when they said that. My family haven't shown up once," she smiled, a little more fully this time. "But that's okay. They don't understand sadness and how it lingers."

As usual, Anna-Marie chooses the polish colors. Last week was sky blue. This week, it was a muted mauve, delicate and soft, the color of cherry blossoms just before they fall.

"Do you think this one's too sad?" she asked, holding up the bottle between her fingers. "It feels like a funeral dress in a garden."

"I think it's gentle," I said. "And there's nothing wrong with gentle."

"I don't want to forget how to be that," she nodded.

She talks more now. She tells me about the nurse who sings off-key when she waters the plants, and the therapist who makes her do breathing exercises she only half-fakes.

"Every time I inhale, I swear I'm just trying not to cry," she said once, giggling through it.

"Do you cry?" I asked gently.

"Not where they can write it down."

She even told me that I should post more nail art on my Instagram.

"People like little stars and moons, Sadie," she said. "It makes them feel like something far away is reachable."

One day, I told her about my sister. The older one I lost in a car accident when I was seventeen. I told her how no one says her name anymore, how silence has its own kind of gravity.

"Some days I still hear her laugh," I added. "But it feels like someone else's memory."

I told her I was always the one who noticed too much.

"I'm glad you did," she whispered. "If you hadn't, you wouldn't have seen me."

Today, while I filed her nails, I repeated something she had said to me that night in the alleyway.

"I just wanted to be close to her."

She stilled. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she didn't open them for a long while. When she did, they were shining with something that hadn't been there before.

"I don't think I said it properly last time," she whispered. "Thank you, for staying."

"I wanted to," I said. "I still do. You may have walked in as a client, Anna-Marie... but you've become so much more."

We sat like that for a long while, letting the silence stretch, but this time it didn't hurt.

We were just two women who had carried too much silence and finally, gently, found the language to share it.

And I understood, in that moment, that it was never really about the polish, or the shape, or the buff, or the shine.

It was about grief, yes. But more than that, it was about the quiet miracle of being seen, and the unexpected grace of someone choosing to stay.

If you've enjoyed this story, here's another one for you: At a crowded music festival, Serenity is trying to outrun everything... her past, her family, and even herself. One spilled drink, one stranger, and one unexpected connection later, she's forced to face the noise inside her head. Beneath the music and the mess, something begins to stir. Maybe it's forgiveness, maybe it's something more.

This work is inspired by real events and people, but it has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

The author and publisher make no claims to the accuracy of events or the portrayal of characters and are not liable for any misinterpretation. This story is provided “as is,” and any opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.