Chapter 25
“Why are you punishing yourself? If you ask me, Brett did a fine job of that all on his own. You didn’t deserve it then from his hand, and you certainly don’t deserve it now from your own.”
“I’m not punishing myself.” I’m protecting myself.
But Penelope doesn’t get it. She thinks I’m being stubborn. She doesn’t understand that I’m hanging on by a thread, the last string of my self-preservation.
The truth is, I’m not as strong as she is.
If our roles were reversed, if she’d been the one to develop alopecia and lose her hair and the man who was supposed to promise to love her in sickness and in health, she wouldn’t have let the knocks keep her down.
She would’ve found a way to rock her baldness—in a sophisticated, ladylike way, of course.
But I’m weak. I’m weak, and as Tai has pointed out, I care what other people think of me. I don’t want to be whispered about behind my back. I don’t want to be pitied or treated differently. I don’t want people’s opinions to change when they see me without a wig.
I don’t want Tai to look at me differently.
I’m weak because I crave the way his eyes darken with desire when they capture my own.
I’ve sworn off love for myself because I can’t go through the pain of watching that flare of interest in a man’s eyes dim again.
Yet every secret smile, every flirtatious remark, no matter how disingenuous I might tell myself it is, has been slowly filling a corner of my empty heart.
I’m weak because I don’t want to go back to when that corner of my soul was a dried-up well.
I’m weak, and I’m stuck. I don’t want to go back, but I can’t allow myself to move forward.
Either direction would be like pulling a plug and watching everything that has been filling me up drain away once more.
“Give me one good reason. One good reason that doesn’t include Brett in any sort of way.”
“If you’re so obsessed with the man then why don’t you date him?”
“He’s not my type.”
“But he’s mine?”
“The reason he’s not my type but he’s yours is the same. The man has eyes only for you, Evangeline. Listen to me. Any man who looks at you the way Tai does is your type.”
Pressure has been building in my chest ever since this conversation started. Now I feel as if my lungs are going to explode if Penelope doesn’t change the topic. I grasp at anything that might make her stop acting like a hound dog on a hot trail.
“He’s blackmailing me.” The words explode from my mouth.
Penelope’s face darkens as she goes completely still. “What did you say?” Thunderclouds roll behind her eyes.
I wince. I really shouldn’t have opened my big, fat mouth. “Well, it’s more like we struck up a bargain than blackmail in its strictest sense. But don’t worry about it. Just . . . maybe now you can stop singing his praises and trying to get me to throw myself at him.”
“Oh, I’m going to do a lot more than worry about it,” she seethes.
Gosh she’s scary when she gets like this. I’m almost afraid to ask. . . . “What are you going to do?”
Her nostrils flare. “I don’t know yet, but I’m not going to just sit here. I should’ve protected you from Brett. This is my chance for a do-over.”
I set my hand on her arm. “Don’t.”
She eyes my hand holding her back. “Why not? What aren’t you telling me?”
I have no choice. Unless I tackle Penelope to the ground and physically keep her from marching out the door in a crusade for my honor, I have to tell her the whole story.
So, I do. I start with Mrs. Goldmann and how her love story had given me the idea to do a little matchmaking of my own.
How Tai had discovered what I’d been up to, the mess I’d made of my first attempt as a marriage broker, and the deal we’d struck.
By the time I’m done, Penelope is clutching her middle, simultaneously laughing and groaning.
“Oh man, laughing is hurting the tattoo.” She peaks down to where her new tattoo is wrapped in a protective layer of clear plastic. Her mirth recedes, her eyes shining for another reason.
My own heart swells when I look at the blue morpho butterfly permanently inked into her skin. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the winged insect merely rested on Penelope’s hip. That at any moment its vibrant indigo wings will beat and it’ll take flight.
“This actually makes me like him even better.”
“Not big on consent without a little arm-twisting first, are you.” I scoff because that’s the reaction I need to maintain. The unaffected front.
She makes a derisive raspberry sound with her lips. “Please. That’s not even close to what this is.”
I fold my arms protectively across my chest. “Oh really? Then what is this exactly?”
She places both of her hands on my shoulders and looks deep into my eyes. “This is a chance. For you to see beyond yourself. Beyond the mirror and your reflection.”
“Are we having a Mulan moment here?” I attempt to joke, but it falls flat.
“I’m being serious. The way I see it, he’s given you the gift of time. Something you wouldn’t allow yourself to have on your own.”
I don’t answer because, honestly, I don’t know what to say to that.
“Tell me truthfully. Have you hated every minute you’ve been forced to be in his company, or have you been making excuses to keep your walls up?”
She doesn’t understand. I need those walls. If they come down, they’re going to come down on my head and crush me.
“You don’t have to say anything. I already know the answer.” She drops her hands and reaches for her purse. “Thanks for coming with me tonight.”
“Of course,” I say, but it comes out weak, like I’d just run a marathon. An emotional marathon, to be more precise.
Penelope stops with her hand on the knob of my front door. She looks back at me over the top of her shoulder. “You should bring him to Grampie and Granny’s party. I think they’d like him, although the real prize would be the look on Brett’s face at seeing you two together.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say because I know that’s what she wants to hear.
“Love you, sis.”
“I love you too.”
She walks out, and I shut the door behind her, leaning back on the wood as my body sags.
How have I gotten myself here? How have I let my plan—my life—get so muddled? I was supposed to stay along the edges, not get caught in the fray. I was supposed to be ordinary, unremarkable, invisible.
What am I supposed to do? No way forward. No way back.
Kitty Purry scrambles out from under the couch. She always hides when people come over. Except she hadn’t when Tai had arrived. Huh. Strange, that.
She comes over and butts her head against my shin. I reach down and pick her up, snuggling her soft fur against my cheek. She starts to purr, the sound and vibration comforting.
I resettle us on the couch, and she curls in a ball on my lap.
With one hand, I stroke the top of her head and with the other I reach up and hook my fingers under my wig, pulling the hairpiece off my scalp.
I set it on the couch beside me, making sure the strands are lying correctly and won’t get tangled.
I’m feeling vulnerable and fragile so I know I shouldn’t but I also can’t help myself.
I pull out my phone and open the camera app, then switch the lens to selfie mode.
My face is framed in the screen, staring back at me.
I’ve studied my reflection before. Mostly from the way Brett must have seen me.
At first, my hair had come out in patches.
Big clumps pulled away from my scalp in fistfuls in the shower, clogging the drain.
Half dollar–sized perfect circles of smooth skin surrounded by long tresses.
In the beginning, I could hide the bald spots by how I arranged my hair.
With a strategically placed bobby pin and some hairspray, no one was the wiser.
But the hair kept falling out, the bald spots multiplying. The strands of hair still clinging to my head appeared thin and scraggly. With tears streaming down my face, I’d eventually taken a razor to the last thin wisps.
When I’d first developed the condition, Brett had looked at me with concern.
He’d held my hand as the doctor inserted multiple injections of steroids into my head with a sharp needle.
But my hair didn’t grow back. We tried other treatments.
I got balder. Brett’s concerned looks turned to antipathy, then distaste and finally revulsion.
There came a point when he couldn’t even bring himself to look at me at all.
When he’d called off the wedding and asked for his ring back, he’d done so while staring down at his hands.
I take a deep breath and try to push those memories and the feelings they stir up back down.
I realize how I see myself is so tainted and wrapped up with how Brett saw me.
It’s hard to trace the slope of the naked dome of my head without the same sick-to-my-stomach feeling that I felt the last time Brett let his gaze touch me, his mouth pulled down in disappointment and eyes darting away as fast as they could in aversion.
I thrust up my chin and stare into my eyes.
My eyes are unchanged. They’re still the color of an Irish meadow after a spring rain.
At least that’s how Grampie describes them.
My lips, they’re the same too. Although maybe a little sadder.
A little more reserved and not as free to laugh as easily as they once were.
My cheekbones, my nose, my chin. I recognize each feature.
With a bracing breath, I force my gaze higher and wider.
I take in the whole picture of my face instead of each of its individual attributes.
I know what Brett saw, but for the first time I ask myself, What do you see, Evangeline?
I wait, silent, hoping for an epiphany. For some lightning strike of brilliance and self-realization.
But nothing comes. Inside, I still feel . . . blank.
What would Tai see?
The thought comes unbidden, and I hate that it crosses my mind. Not wanting to give it a second of consideration, I exit the camera app and take a deep, cleansing breath.
Kitty Purry stretches out a paw, her claws extending and retracting as she sets her tiny pads on my thigh and begins to knead.
I switch over to a social media app to search for Inked by Design. The photo Tai had snapped of Penelope’s butterfly is the first picture in his feed. I have to agree with my sister that the man is insanely talented.
Instead of browsing his newest posts first, I flick my thumb over my screen, causing the tiles of pictures to roll like the Price Is Right wheel.
Finally, the scrolling slows and stops. I click on the last picture so it will enlarge and fill my whole screen.
Then, I scroll much more slowly, studying each tattoo he’s posted like it’s a priceless work of art hanging in a museum.
There are pictures of animal tattoos like the one he’d done on Penelope.
Details so intricate I almost convince myself I am looking at the real thing.
The flowers he’s created on people’s skin make me think of something you’d see in a botanical garden.
I can almost smell the sweet, floral fragrance from one woman’s peony tattoo.
My breath hitches as the familiar outlines of a particular full sleeve tattoo unfold before my eyes. Penelope had been wrong. Tai did have a picture of himself on his social media feed—or at least a picture of his fully inked arm.
I’d only been able to get glimpses here and there.
Little pieces when he’d shed his jacket and had a T-shirt on underneath.
But I’d never been able to see the whole piece to its full effect before.
Along the outside of his forearm is the negative space of a cross, rays of sunburst light shooting ethereally out from behind the center of the crossbeams. Almost resting on top of the cross is a dove with its wings stretched out in flight.
The ink wraps his arm in clouds and wisps.
On his upper arm is a majestic lion with a full mane in black and white.
The only color are the cerulean blue eyes that appear kind and inviting.
I can almost hear him telling me, as Aslan did to Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia, “Courage, dear heart.” Nestled off to the side is a baby lamb curled serenely in slumber.
Tai Davis, the town’s reputable bad boy, has the redemption story memorialized on his body for the world to see.
Conviction sits uncomfortably on my chest, and I squeeze my eyes shut. In order to protect myself, I’ve tried to judge Tai’s story by his cover.
And that’s only conviction number one.
I’m sorry, God, I pray as I let my chin fall to my chest. I’ve been so hurt. I’ve wallowed. I’ve blamed even God.
All my life I’ve called Him Father, myself His daughter. Learned in church that as a father, He delights in giving good gifts to His children. But what good gift did He give me but disfigurement and heartbreak?
I didn’t consciously turn my back on Him, but I see now that’s what I’ve done all the same.
I’m sorry.
Kitty Purry hops down from my lap, then stretches, her front paws in two straight lines in front of her, her bum sticking high in the air as she yawns.
“I’ll get your dinner in just a second,” I assure her. I scroll through Tai’s feed a bit more before pausing on a picture that causes my heart to stutter in my chest. It’s a collage, the same woman in each photo but taken from different angles.
She’s bald. And she’s beautiful.