“He did?” Jenna scrunched her face.
Tabby nodded. “But then it still hurt!”
“Oh no!” Jenna shook her head.
“Butthenhe stopped.”
“Well, that’s good. That’s how you know he's a good dad. He’s a fast learner.” She stared at the reflection of his daughter in the mirror, then her eyes flicked to him. For a second, it seemed to him, she forgot anyone else was in the salon, her focus was just narrowed to the three of them. But then a chair moved behind her and popped whatever bubble she’d been floating in.
The walls went back up, and she reached into a tiny drawer and was still grinning as she pulled out a thinmeasuring tape and ran it down Tabby’s back along the side of her hair. She spoke to her, looking at her reflection in the mirror. “Okay, little lady, you have plenty to donate, but are you absolutely, positively,
supercalifragilisticexpialidociouslysure you want to donate it?”
Tabby giggled at the word.
“Because once you cut it, it takes along timeto grow back.”
“I know.” Tabby was just short of rolling her eyes. Deacon knew that fun, defiant gesture was coming any day. “Daddy tells me all the time. That’s the costakisses to my actions.”
She didn’t quite know how to pronounce consequence, but she had the gist.
Jenna appeared amused at his daughter’s mispronunciation. She looked over at Deacon. “Okay, and are you sure, Dad?”
“It’s her hair. She’s been growing it out for two years.”
The chime above the salon door punctuated his statement and drew his attention. He glanced over and saw a cut-and-paste, clone of Jenna. The young woman was the spitting image of her mom, her features as unmistakable as an artist’s signature on an original work. The same heart-shaped face, the same huge blue eyes, the same easy smile, and the same thick, shiny golden-blonde hair. Her confidence was palpable, as if the room owed her its attention by virtue of her existence alone.
Deacon had the fleeting, surreal sense of watching a mirror reflection of two generations simultaneously. The resemblance was uncanny, not just in appearance but in the expressive animation, the way the girl’s entire body seemed to predict her words before she’d even spoken them.
“Oh my gosh, Mom, thank you so much. You are the be—” The teen’s voice, bright and unfiltered, rang out as she pushed the door open with her hip. But as her gaze swept the salon and landed on the scene at Jenna’s station—Jenna, Deacon, and Tabby in the chair—her words cut off mid-beat. Her jaw dropped, lips frozen in a perfect ‘O’, and her hands, previously animated in the process of dramatic appreciation, stopped mid-air, like she’d been paused by a remote control.
Jenna’s daughter, Blake, did a sweeping visual survey of the salon in three seconds. She took in everyone, as if mentally cataloging not just the people but the undercurrents, the alliances and tensions, the unsaid things hanging in the air. She landed back on Tabby in the chair and then on him, and a huge, delighted grin spread across her face, and she began walking towards them.
He became acutely aware of the rest of the salon, the subtle shifting of bodies and the way the conversation in the waiting area had settled into a charged hush. It felt like every person in the room was waiting for the next act in a very public play, and Deacon realized he was both an observer and a character—only he hadn’t been handed a script for this scene.
“Hey Blake,” Robbie from the front desk called out in a casual, friendly tone, but Deacon caught the faint edge, like maybe he too was bracing for whatever this girl would bring.
“Hey Robbie, how’s Layla feeling?”
“Better, thanks.”
Blake made a beeline past the waiting area, treating the whole salon like her own personal runway. Deacon noted the way she navigated the space, polite but not deferential, as if she was born to move through rooms and make them hers. She reached Jenna’s station and, with thebuoyant energy only teens seemed to have, spoke in a voice that made the Muzak sound like mute background static.
“Moooom, sorry to interrupt. I was just coming by to say thank you so much for dropping off my sweats. You saved my life, you are my queen.”
“No problem, you gonna head home to get homework done?” Jenna asked, her tone light but with an undercurrent of don’t-mess-with-me.
“I was gonna hang out here with you. I miss you.”
Jenna, who looked like she was calculating how far Blake would take this, and also tired, he noticed. He hadn’t gotten a chance to stare at her when he knew she wouldn’t catch him. With her attention diverted, he saw dark circles under her eyes. He wanted to send everyone home, pick her up, carry her to his house, put her to bed, and make her stay there for a week. Not even for fun stuff, just so she could sleep. He would feed her and then she could sleep. That was it.
He had to actively stop himself from doing that.
“I can hang out at the front with Robbie if you need me out of the way.”
Deacon watched as Blake’s gaze dropped to Tabby in the big black salon chair. Her eyes widened and she bent down to eye level with his little girl, something genuine in her posture that reminded him how good some teens could be with kids.
“Hi, I’m Blake,” she said, and her voice lost all sarcasm, pretense, or show. “I love your hair, it’s so pretty.”
