Chapter 4
Brynn was already there when Meghan unlocked the front door at eight.
That wasn’t unusual. Brynn arrived early most mornings, let herself in through the back, and had the stations wiped down and the coffee started before Meghan came through the front.
They’d never discussed the arrangement. It had just settled into place over the three years they’d shared this salon—two women who co-owned a business and split the silence between them like a property line.
The coffee waited on the counter between their stations.
Two mugs. Brynn’s was the blue one she’d brought from home.
Meghan’s was the white one from the cabinet in the back room.
Black, a little creamer. Brynn knew how she took it.
Had known since they were sixteen and started drinking coffee at Betsy’s counter after school, pretending to be adults.
Brynn set the white mug on Meghan’s station without looking at her. Just placed it there and went back to her side.
“Thanks,” Meghan said.
Just the word. No warmth behind it. No inside joke. No callback to something only the two of them would understand.
There’d been a time when a cup of coffee between them would have come with a whole conversation attached—a look, a raised eyebrow, a reference to something that had happened at school or some boy one of them had sworn off for the third time that month.
That was gone. What was left was the mug on the counter and a single syllable that covered the distance between them without actually crossing it.
Meghan picked up the coffee and took a sip. It was right. It was always right.
The morning moved quickly. A trim at 8:30. A color at nine. Brynn had a blowout at 8:45 and a walk-in who wanted bangs, then changed her mind in the chair. The cat slept in the window between their stations, unbothered by scissors, voices, and the low hum of the hair dryer.
At 10:15, Dorothy Nolan came in. Dorothy was eighty-one and had been getting her hair set at this salon since before Meghan and Brynn were born.
She’d come every Thursday for decades—first when it was Hope Hollow Salon, then when Faye Donovan ran it, then when Meghan and Brynn bought it and changed the name.
Dorothy didn’t care what the sign said. She showed up on Thursdays, sat in whatever chair was open, and talked about whoever was on her mind that week. Today, she settled into Meghan’s chair and folded her hands in her lap like a woman preparing to hold court.
“I saw the banner on Main Street,” Dorothy said. “Richard’s outdone himself this year.”
“He usually does.”
Meghan draped the cape and fastened it. Dorothy’s hair was white and fine, set in the same style she’d worn since before Meghan was born. The routine was automatic—shampoo, set, a light hold spray Dorothy called “the good stuff,” even though it was the same bottle Meghan used on everyone.
“I remember the parade when your grandmother rode in the carriage,” Dorothy said. “She wore a yellow dress. Prettiest woman in the whole procession.”
“She’d have loved hearing that.”
“Oh, she knew.” Dorothy smiled. “Helen Barnes always knew.”
Meghan worked the shampoo through Dorothy’s hair at the sink, listening to the familiar rhythm of a woman who’d outlived most of her audience and made do with whoever would listen.
Dorothy moved from the parade to the weather to the new family on Birch Street. Normal Thursday territory. It was during the set, while Meghan was rolling the last curler near Dorothy’s left temple, that the old woman tilted her head slightly and looked at Brynn’s station in the mirror.
“I remember when you girls used to come in here together,” Dorothy said. “You and Brynn and that pretty redhead and the other one. Thick as thieves, the four of you. Faye used to let you sweep up after school just so you could hang around.”
Meghan’s hands stopped moving. Just for a beat. Half a second, maybe less. Then she finished the curl, slid the pin into place, and reached for the next roller.
Across the salon, Brynn’s scissors went quiet. Meghan didn’t look at her. She didn’t need to. She could feel the silence from Brynn’s station the way you felt a draft from a window someone had cracked open.
“That was a long time ago,” Meghan said.
“Wasn’t that long.” Dorothy adjusted herself in the chair. “You girls were always laughing. Brynn used to do your nails during lunch. Remember that? Right there at Faye’s manicure table. She’d paint little designs on them. Flowers, I think.”
“Stars,” Meghan said, before she could stop herself.
“Stars. That’s right.” Dorothy smiled, pleased to have the detail corrected. “Where did those other two end up? The redhead moved to Nashville, didn’t she?”
“She’s back in town for the summer.” Meghan kept her voice steady. “They both are.”
“Well, good. You should all get together. Life’s too short for people to drift apart.”
Dorothy said it like the simplicity of the advice made it true. Get together. Life’s too short. As though distance between people was just a scheduling problem.
Meghan finished the set, moved Dorothy under the dryer, and busied herself at the counter, reorganizing bottles that didn’t need reorganizing. Behind her, Brynn’s scissors started again. Measured, careful.
Neither of them spoke.
Dorothy left at eleven, tipping the same amount she’d tipped for thirty years and promising to be back next Thursday. Meghan walked her to the door, held it open, and watched her cross the sidewalk to the bench where her daughter waited with the car.
She closed the door and stood there for a moment, looking out at Main Street. The banner Dorothy had mentioned was strung between two lampposts—red, white, and blue. HOPE HOLLOW FOURTH OF JULY CELEbrATION was printed in letters big enough to read from three blocks away.
Stars. She’d said stars, and she’d been right.
Brynn used to paint tiny white stars on Meghan’s nails every Friday afternoon at Faye’s manicure table.
Meghan would sit with her fingers spread, still wet, while Brynn finished Elissa’s nails or started on Sadie’s.
They’d talk about nothing. Boys, school, which teacher was unfair, what they were doing that weekend.
The content didn’t matter. What mattered was the hour, the table, the four of them in a circle with their hands out, trusting each other with something as small as nail polish.
Meghan walked back to her station and started cleaning up from Dorothy’s set. She pulled the clips from the tray, wiped down the counter, and swept the floor. Brynn was working on a young woman getting layers. They didn’t look at each other.
The guilt was always there. Not sharp. Not the kind of thing that woke her up at night. But present. A low hum under everything else, like a refrigerator running in the next room. Most days, Meghan could work around it. Most days, she barely noticed it.
Dorothy’s words had turned the volume up.
Meghan’s version of what happened was simple. She’d dated a boy. She was twenty, he was twenty-one, and for three months, he was the center of everything. Charming, funny, attentive in a way that made her feel like she was the only person in the room.
Then he’d pushed for more. She’d held the line. And he’d left. No explanation. No fight. Just gone.
Three months later, she’d found out he was with Brynn.
That was the part that broke it. Not the boy leaving.
She’d survived that. It was seeing Brynn with him.
Walking into the diner and finding them in a booth together, his arm around her shoulders, Brynn laughing at something he’d said.
Meghan had stood in the doorway for two full seconds before Betsy caught her eye and shook her head slightly.
Meghan had turned around and walked out.
After that, she got angry. Not the kind that shouted. The kind that stopped calling. Stopped showing up. Stopped answering the door when someone knocked.
Brynn had tried. Meghan knew that. She’d called, texted, left a note on Meghan’s windshield that read Can we please talk about this?
Meghan hadn’t responded to any of it. She’d decided Brynn had taken something from her, and the decision became fact before anyone could challenge it.
By the time Brynn and the boy ended—which happened fast, though Meghan never knew the details—the damage was done. The friendship had calcified into something Meghan didn’t know how to break open. So she didn’t try. She let the silence do the work, and the silence built walls.
When they bought the salon together, it was because they were the only two stylists in town and the business made sense even if the friendship didn’t. They’d agreed to be professional. Civil. They could share a space without sharing anything else.
And they had. For three years, they’d cut hair side by side, split the rent and the supply costs, taken turns ordering product, and kept the invisible line between their stations as clean and sharp as the part in a client’s hair.
Meghan on the left, Brynn on the right, the cat in the window between them.
The thing Meghan lived with—the thing she couldn’t shove aside no matter how many times she rearranged it in her head—was the suspicion that she’d been wrong. Not about the boy. About the anger. About what she’d done with it and who she’d aimed it at.
She didn’t know what Brynn’s side of the story looked like. She’d never asked. She’d been too busy being the injured party to wonder if there was more to it, and now it had been so long that asking felt like pulling a pin out of something that might not survive the explosion.
So she didn’t ask. She said “thanks” when Brynn handed her coffee. She said “night” when they locked up. She kept the line clean.
The cat stretched in the window, resettled, and closed its eyes. Meghan picked up the broom and started sweeping.