Her chin came up. “Excuse me. We can’t all be as dignified as you.”
Leaning in, I closed my hand over hers. “That’s not what I meant, Grace. I love your flair. You’re one of the few people I know who can pull it off. It’s what makes youyou.” I gave her hand a jiggle, let go, straightened. “And that’s a good thing. Only a strong person can do it. Only a strong person can stand up to those cameras and say,fuck you, I don’t care what you think, I’m a good mother, my son is a good kid, these charges are bogus.”
Her eyes held mine for a split second before shifting off. Guilt. Ah. So the charges weren’t bogus. Chris had been able to tell me how hacking worked from firsthand experience.
Where to go after that silent admission? I wanted to ask why he had done it or what Grace had said when she learned it, but I couldn’t criticize her when I knew thePeoplestory would. For now, “How is he?” seemed safe enough.
“Dense,” she murmured. “He doesn’t get that this goes beyond him to me. He keeps saying it’s no big thing, buthe’snot the one whose life is at stake.”
I might have argued. It seemed to me that Chris had more to lose with regard to future choices than Grace, who already had an education, a skill, a job, a home. Chris’s life was up in the air in every regard. I wondered what he felt about that. I wondered if Grace had even asked him, or whether she was too conflicted to talk.
Actually, I wondered if they ever talked about things—deep things—things beyond what time to leave for school or whether to bring in pizza or Thai. My mother and I had often talked about those deeper things when I was growing up. College changed that, like I’d become someone she couldn’t relate to. She hadn’t gone to college. She had married at twenty, at which point my father became her world.
“Maggie?” Grace prompted.
I wanted to yell at Chris, to ask what he had actually thought breaking the law would accomplish. I wanted to tellGraceto yell at Chris. I wanted to lash out at both of them for dredging up issues in my own life, which would, of course, get us nowhere.
Instead, I said, “You’re a survivor. You’ll get through this.”
But how, my past asked? In what shape or form? Life wasn’t fair. Just when you thought you’d reached a good place, a crisis could boil up and over, spilling into even the corners you thought most secure. Grace’s life would be forever changed, if only by the veil of suspicion that might linger in people’s minds.
Her thoughts must have gone there, too, because she seemed suddenly withdrawn. For both our sakes, I brought the discussion back to color. We looked at charts. When she pointed to the blandest brown, I pointed to one several shades brighter. When she pointed at one up from theblandest brown, I pointed at one down from my original. Liver to milk chocolate, wood brown to russet, we bargained back and forth a minute longer before I hid the chart behind my back.
“I’ll give you what you want,” I promised, “but I can’t ruin your hair. I’ll do a quiet, woodsy brown. Do you trust me in this?”
Her eyes held doubt. “That depends. Do you understand my fear?”
“More than you’ll ever know, but I’m also thinking about the cut. If you want a different look, you can do it with style. Leave the color as it is, but go short and straight.”
She was shaking her head even before I finished. “The color goes. And I don’t want short.”
“Okay,” I said, lifting swaths of her hair and letting them fall to imagine how her current layers would settle without curls. “A shag maybe? That would be easy. Unadorned. Very wash and wear.”
“Maybe.”
“Unadorned is big here. You’d totally blend in. You could still pull it up if you wanted, but it would frame your face and leave you enough to hide behind.”
The word “hide” resonated, as I knew it would. “Okay,” she said. “Go with that.”
I told her exactly what I was doing as I mixed the color, which looked nothing in the bowl like it would once it oxidized on her hair, and even then, a leap of faith was required. Applying color over color took an understanding of the chemistry involved. I had it. I actually liked the puzzle part of this so much that I had initially considered being a full-time colorist. Then my classes turned to makeup, and the more personal, therapeutic part of it won hands down.
Wearing thin latex gloves, I used the pointy end of my brush handle to separate sections and the front end to apply color, taking care to cover the vibrant browns by starting at the very root and working out. We didn’t talk. She closed her eyes, but I could feel the tension in her head and neck. Hoping to relax her, I turned up the wall speakers to allow for the soothing of soft guitar sounds.
After a bit, quietly, she said, “Three other men had their accounts hacked. Jay got their names.”
My hand faltered for an instant. I waited. “And?”
“They’re repeat clients.”
“Yours?”
“Yes. All in the last year.”
“Why did Chris choose them?”
She didn’t answer at first. Then, reaching down, she lifted her satchel from the floor, opened it, and took out what looked to be computer printouts clipped together. After removing the clip, she showed me one at a time. Each of the men was fortyish, light-haired, and fit. The last shot was a close-up of Benjamin Zwick, standing before a cluster of phones, recorders, and mics. A similar one had appeared in the local paper.
“They’re all good-looking.”
