It’s a delicate dance being here in town. If my head is held too high, I’m the bitch who thinks she’s better than them. If I look down and avert my eyes, then I’ve been defeated and am guilty of everything they’ve accused me of, which tells them they’ve won.
Neither is the truth, but at the same time, neither is a lie.
Before I have a chance to lose my courage, I beeline it for the salon.
“Welcome to Fiona’s, how may I help you?” the perfectly styled lady says from her seat behind her shabby-chic reception desk.
“Yes, I called earlier about getting my hair trimmed and colored. Tatum Knox.” Her eyes whip up, telling me everything I already knew.
That I was the topic of conversation around here after I called earlier.
She recovers quickly. “Yes. Of course. I have you booked with Fiona herself. If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you started.”
Stares follow me as I move through the expansive salon, which reminds me so very much of the kinds I used to go to when I was younger. When my life was about debutante balls and who was dating who.
“Here you go. Fi will be right with you,” she says, and I breathe a sigh of relief when I see that her chair is in the back corner of the salon and that no other stylist is around her.
“Tatum Knox. Blessed be,” Fiona’s distinctive voice calls to my right when she sees me. “You’re actually among the living now. Talk about a sight for sore eyes.”
Fiona bends to where I’m seated and wraps her arms around me in a hug that is as unexpected as her warm welcome. When she steps back, my smile is instantaneous despite my jittery nerves.
“Hi.”
“Hi? That’s all you have to say to the woman you are letting down by letting all of that brassiness rent space on that head of yours? What? You don’t write. You don’t call. You let gray hairs grow and cancel appointments.”
I sit there and look at her, uncertain how to exactly voice my reasons, which are only justifiable by my standards. “Um . . . uh—”
“Such nonsense,” she says as she grabs my hand and squeezes. “I don’t care why you kept canceling, all I care about is that you’re here. That you’ve finally shown that gorgeous face of yours.” She pats me on the shoulders. “Now, let’s get that mess on your head fixed up so you can feel like your old self again. You might still look great, but darling, I can make you look fabulous.”
I laugh, and for the first time since getting out of the truck, I feel as if I can breathe. “I missed you.”
She puts the cape on and squeezes my shoulder again. “I don’t get a chance to miss you at all. Hell, you’re still the talk of the town even when you’re not here.”
“Jesus.” I roll my eyes, loving that she’s still the same and they haven’t poisoned her opinion of me yet. “That bad?”
“Nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Just be glad they’re still talking.”
We fall into small talk as she adds color to my hair. She doesn’t once demand to know why I pretended not to be home the last time she came out to the house for my regularly scheduled appointment. She doesn’t ask about the ranch or the horses or where in the hell I’ve been over the past year.
All she says is that it’s good to see me.
All she talks about is the town happenings to catch me up to speed.
All she does is deflect anyone who wanders by to see if they can get any information to gossip about.
“Your scars are looking great,” she murmurs absently as her hands massage my scalp in the washbowl.
My hand goes instinctively to the white lines on the underside of my jaw and lower part of my neck. The screech of brakes and utter fear that held me hostage return momentarily as if the car running me off the road happened yesterday, not two years ago.
“I used the concoction you told me about.” I meet her eyes as she leans over me, her hands still rubbing in circles. “That, and they’ve faded with time.”
“Time fades all scars. Even the ones we can’t see,” she says with a wink and squeezes the excess water from my hair. When she helps me sit up to wrap a towel around it, the other clients sitting near the bowls glance my way before texting furiously.
“You’d think you were royalty the way these ladies are burning up their phones,” she jokes when she begins to trim.
“It’s ridiculous.”
“It is. Fletcher was a dick. No one else in this town will say that to your face, but you know me, I will. Ginger might too. But, I’m sorry, you’re better off without him.”
The part of me that isn’t used to having any sort of support fights back the tears. “I know, it’s just . . .”
“Hard? Shitty? Hurtful? Yeah, it’s every single one of those and a whole slew more, but in this town, women don’t stand behind women. They only hide behind their husbands.” She says this just a touch too loudly as she snips two inches off my hair. “Good thing I’ve had enough husbands to know they aren’t worth standing behind.”
Her laugh sounds off in the brightly lit salon. One of the reasons she’s my ally is because the people here have judged her just as harshly. If it weren’t for the fact that she’s the best stylist in town, they would treat her as they treat me.
As if her husbands never screwed anyone over and whatever they did was her fault.
“So, you were out and about taking photos the other day?” she leads. How did my walk out on Old Sawmill Road last week become town news? Rusty mentioned it too. Is it a crime to need a few minutes to myself with scenery other than the ranch? The irony is I didn’t have my camera on me. The fact that someone added that detail shouldn’t surprise me. “Honey, people in this town know the minute you step off your land. Get any good shots?”
“Don’t play that off,” I say, not bothering to correct her. “What are they saying now?”
“Nothing you need to care about.”
“Seriously, Fi. What is being said?”
She smiles tightly, the lines at her eyes crinkling in a way that tells me she isn’t going to tell me because she’s protecting me. It’s the same look she’d give me when she’d come out for her house calls to do my hair and knew what was being said about Fletcher in town but didn’t want to let me know.
She holds her finger up before switching on the blow-dryer, and I know the moment is lost. There’s no way she can shout over the sound and not let everyone else in the salon hear her.
So, I sit with my thoughts. I let the doubt own me, and the want to just get the hell away from here is just as strong as my need to prove them all wrong. That I’m nothing like my husband. That I’m nothing like the woman they’ve made me out to be.
The question is, do I believe it or am I turning a blind eye because I’m afraid to know the truth?
“And voila!” she says as she switches the blow-dryer off and unfastens the cape from around my neck. “As good as new.”
I laugh. “Far from it, but—” I stare at myself in the mirror. At my hair, which is a couple of inches shorter but looks completely different. At the shiny color that has replaced the dull flatness I walked in here with. At the little bit of life in my eyes. “It’s a start.”