Chapter 15: The Salon

I didn't go on Thursday.

I picked on Thursday, and Friday, and I let the earring sit in a sandwich bag on the kitchen windowsill where I could see it.

"Why wait?" Megan asked.

"Because Saturday's her busiest day."

Megan looked at me for a second.

"Remind me never to make you mad," she said.

Kelsey's salon is on Front Street, between a fudge shop and a store that sells T-shirts with lighthouses on them.

Pink awning. Gold letters on the glass.

I'd painted those letters myself, six years ago, the week she signed the lease.

She'd cried and bought me dinner.

At eleven o'clock on Saturday, every chair was full.

Six stylists, six clients, three more waiting on the velvet couch with magazines.

The dryers were going.

A ring light was set up by the front window for Kelsey's videos.

Megan stopped on the sidewalk.

"You want me in there?"

"I want you right here by the window," I said. "Where you can see."

I went in.

The bell over the door rang.

The bridesmaid who wrote "prettier than you" was at the second chair, holding a blow dryer.

She saw me and turned it off.

That made the room quieter, and people looked up.

Kelsey was at the back station doing foils on a woman in a black cape.

She had little pearl studs in her ears today.

She saw me in the mirror.

She smiled, and her hand kept painting the foil.

"Lib. We're booked. You'd have to call."

"I'm not here for a cut."

I walked all the way to the back.

I set the sandwich bag down on her station, between her combs and her phone.

The gold hoop sat in the bottom of it, with a little dirt still on it.

"You lost this," I said. "Under our breaker box. Wednesday night."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Anonymous Notes That Destroyed My Wedding from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.