What We Choose novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: What We Choose

At ten to two, Kenna flipped the sign on the bar door to CLOSED and locked it.

Then she checked the lock twice, and wedged a chair under the handle.

"Nobody's walking in on this one," she said.

I sat on the barstool.

She pinned a bar towel around my shoulders with the same clothespin off the tip jar.

Colter sat on the next stool with a beer, the way he had in September.

"You're not getting the last strip this time," Kenna told him. "This is a precision job."

"I wasn't going to ask."

"You were going to ask. I could see it on your beard."

She combed my curls up between her fingers and snipped.

Tiny auburn spirals fell on the towel. Not long ropes this time. Little commas.

I watched her in the mirror behind the bottles, with her tongue between her teeth.

"So," she said, snipping. "Big house on the point."

"Big house on the point."

"Which means the top floor in Dorchester is going to be empty."

Colter took a sip of his beer. "Rent's eight hundred."

Kenna stopped cutting.

"That's illegal in Boston."

"It's my building. Teapots stay."

"The teapots stay," she said, with her hand on her heart. "I'll die before I paint them."

She went back to my hair, a little blurry around the eyes.

"Next question," she said. "When he marries you, and he will, I've seen the way he looks at you holding a spoon. Are you going to be Dessa Gannon?"

Colter choked on his beer.

"There's already been a Mrs. Gannon," I said. "She went to Florida."

"Fair."

"I'm Dessa Quinlan. It took me a long time to get her back."

Colter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I'd never ask you to take that name," he said. "It's had a rough year."

Kenna laughed so hard she had to put the scissors down.

When she was done, I looked in the mirror.

Short. Close to my head. Curls all over.

My face looked older than it had in August. It looked like mine.

"Well?" Kenna said. "How do you feel?"

"Like me," I said.

The dress was green.

I found it in May, in a shop on Charles Street, on a Saturday when I'd gone in for nothing.

Silk, the color of sea glass. Thin straps. A straight neckline cut right across the collarbones.

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