Chapter 22
Meghan should have said no. The salon closed at five, and a full color on hair that thick would take at least ninety minutes.
But the woman was visiting her sister for the weekend and had a wedding on Saturday, and she looked so desperate standing in the doorway that Meghan pulled a cape off the hook and said, “Sit down.”
They worked in silence. The only noises were the sound of scissors, the low hum of the timer Meghan set for the color processing, the occasional murmur between each stylist and her client. The cat had moved from the window to the counter between the stations, as if to supervise.
Brynn finished first. Her client paid, tipped, and left. Brynn started her closing routine while Meghan waited for the timer. When it went off, Meghan rinsed, toned, and blow-dried, and by the time the walk-in was looking at herself in the mirror and smiling, it was almost seven o’clock.
“Thank you so much,” the woman said. “You saved my life.”
Meghan smiled. “Have fun at the wedding.”
The woman left. The door closed behind her. The salon went quiet.
Brynn was still there. She didn’t have to be.
Her closing routine had been done for half an hour.
She could have locked up her station and gone home.
But she’d stayed. Folding towels, reorganizing the back room, and doing the kind of busywork that only existed when someone needed a reason to remain.
Meghan processed her register. Cleaned her station. Swept the hair from around her chair. The routine was automatic, and tonight she was grateful for that, because her mind had been somewhere else all week.
On the tailgate with Wyatt.
On the porch with the peaches.
On the things she had started noticing about Brynn.
She finished sweeping. Brynn stood at the counter, closing out the register tape. They moved around each other without speaking, the choreography of two women who knew exactly where the other would be at any given moment.
Meghan pulled her keys from the hook. Brynn already had hers. They walked to the front door together, and Meghan held it while Brynn stepped through. The cat stayed on the counter, watching them leave.
Meghan locked the door. Tested the handle. Pocketed the keys. Then they stood on the sidewalk.
Main Street was quiet. The shops were closed. The bunting Richard had hung for the parade caught the last of the evening light, red and white and blue against the warm brick of the storefronts. Somewhere down the block, a car started. The pharmacy’s security light flickered on.
Meghan should have said good night. That was the script. Lock the door. Stand on the sidewalk. Say good night. Turn right. Walk home. She’d done it a thousand times. The words were right there, easy and familiar, ready to carry her away from this moment and into the safe routine of her evening.
She didn’t say them. Instead, she said, “Can I ask you something?”
Brynn looked at her. Not surprised—or if she was, she didn’t show it. She just looked at Meghan and waited, bag on her shoulder, keys in her hand.
Meghan hadn’t planned this. Hadn’t rehearsed it or chosen tonight for any reason other than the fact that they were both here, on this sidewalk, and the question had been weighing on her for weeks.
“After he left,” Meghan said. “Were you okay?”
She didn’t say the boy’s name. She didn’t have to. There was only one he between them. The one they’d never discussed. The one whose shadow had lived in the space between their two stations for three years without either of them acknowledging it was there.
Brynn didn’t answer right away. She looked at Meghan for a long moment, then down at her keys.
She tucked them into her bag slowly, like the task required concentration, adjusted the strap on her shoulder, and looked down Main Street, toward the hardware store where her apartment waited above the shop.
Meghan waited. The evening air was warm and still. A moth circled the streetlight above them, tapping softly against the glass.
“After which one of them left?” Brynn asked.
The words were quiet, almost flat. She said them to the sidewalk, or to the street, or to the air between them. Not quite to Meghan. Like they had slipped through a door she’d been holding closed, and now they were standing on the sidewalk too, impossible to take back.
Meghan’s mind went blank. The sentence hit her, and everything behind it emptied out—the assumptions, the story she’d built, the version of events she had carried for eight years like luggage packed so long ago she’d forgotten what was inside.
After which one of them left?
Which one?
Of them?
Brynn’s face changed. Something moved across it. A flicker, quick and private. Then the composure came back, smooth and practiced, the same composure Meghan had watched her put on every morning for three years.
“Never mind,” Brynn said. “I shouldn’t have said it that way.”
She shifted her bag on her shoulder and looked at Meghan once more. Half a second—long enough to reveal something Meghan couldn’t read. Something old and heavy and tired. Then she turned and walked toward the hardware store.
Meghan didn’t follow her. Didn’t call after her. Didn’t say good night or wait or come back or any of the words that might have kept the conversation open. She stood on the sidewalk.
The streetlight above her came on, but she didn’t notice. The moth kept circling. A car passed on the cross street, headlights sweeping across the storefronts, and she didn’t notice that either.
After which one of them left?
The question sat in her chest like something swallowed wrong. Six words. Brynn had said six words, and every single thing Meghan had believed about what happened eight years ago had shifted under her feet.
She’d assumed one man. One leaving, the same as her. But Brynn’s sentence had more than one in it. More than one man, or more than one leaving?
Or both?
Meghan stood outside The Cutting Room and stared at the locked door. Through the glass, she could see the two stations, the counter, the cat still sitting on the shelf between them.
The salon looked the same as it always did. The chairs, the mirrors, the line between them. The line Meghan had drawn. The line she’d maintained for three years because she believed she understood why it was there.
She didn’t understand. She’d never understood. And Brynn had just told her that in six words, then walked home.
Meghan stood there until her feet started to ache, and then she stood there a little longer. She wasn’t ready to walk home. She wasn’t ready to be in her kitchen with the decent floors and the cabinets that closed. Alone with a sentence she couldn’t take apart because she didn’t have the tools.
Finally, she moved. One step, then another. She turned right, toward the hill, toward her house. She walked slowly, bag on her shoulder, keys in her pocket, the warm July air sitting on her skin like a hand.
At home, she didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t make dinner. She sat on the couch in the dark living room and held a throw pillow against her stomach. The room went fully dark around her.
Still, Meghan didn’t move.