“I know it looks awful.”
“She cried in the bathroom, Mom. I heard her.”
“Like you fought hedge clippers and barely won,” I said.
She laughed once, then wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “Was it stupid?”
Jonathan had lost his hair in clumps on a pillowcase. Letty had never forgotten it. Neither had I.
I crossed the room, took the scissors from her, and pulled her into my arms. “No,” I whispered. “No, sweetheart. Your dad would be so proud of you. I know I am.”
She cried against my shoulder for a little while, then leaned back. “Can we fix my hair? I look like a founding father.”
Letty had never forgotten it.
***
An hour later, we were at Teresa’s salon, where Letty sat in a cape while Teresa studied the damage and sighed once softly.
Teresa’s husband, Luis, came in halfway through and stopped when he saw the ponytail on the counter.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
Before I could answer, Letty said, “A girl in my class needs a wig.”
He looked at her properly and then smiled at me in the mirror. “Hi, Piper. That’s Jonathan’s girl, all right.”
My daughter sat a little straighter under the cape. “You knew my dad?”
“A girl in my class needs a wig.”
Luis nodded. “Yes, sweetie. I worked with him for eight years.”
She touched the blunt ends of her hair. “He would’ve liked this haircut?”
Teresa snorted. “No decent man would support a bathroom haircut, my girl.”
“Mama,” Letty whined.
“But,” Teresa added, softening, “he would’ve loved the reason for it.”
Luis leaned against the station and looked at Letty. “Your dad couldn’t stand seeing people suffer alone. It drove him crazy.”
“He would’ve loved the reason for it.”
Letty looked down at her hands. “Millie tried to act like she didn’t care, but she did.”
“Of course she did, baby,” I said.
Teresa stayed late. Between fixing my daughter’s hair and matching hair already set aside for pediatric wigs, she managed to finish one by the next morning.
***
Before school, Letty and I picked up the wig.
“Do I look weird, Mom?”
“You look like yourself,” I said. “Just with less maintenance.”
“Of course she did, baby.”
I turned eighteen on a Tuesday. No cake. No card. Not even a half-hearted “happy birthday.” Just my father sitting at the kitchen table, his wife stirring sugar into her mug, and my stepbrother leaning back in his chair with that look people get when they already know how the story ends.
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