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Back at the house, I made grilled cheese sandwiches and cut up an apple while Sienna spread her costume sketches across the kitchen island.

She ate standing beside the drawings, pausing between bites to explain how the Bride’s hair needed to rise above her head instead of lying flat against it.

I reminded her to finish chewing before giving me further instructions.

After lunch, we cleared the dishes and turned the kitchen table into a makeshift makeup station.

I brought in a clean adjustable lamp and a tabletop mirror from the workshop, along with a few unused brushes suitable for the job. Sienna retrieved her dress and the hair supplies we’d bought Thursday.

The kitchen filled with the familiar smells of bread, cinnamon from Sienna’s favorite air freshener, and the faint sweetness of the makeup as we opened the containers.

I hadn’t done detailed makeup work in years.

Most of my professional projects had involved sculpting and fabrication, but I’d worked with enough makeup artists to understand how they built effects with color and shadow. I’d also spent plenty of time painting faces that weren’t attached to living people.

Sienna was considerably more demanding than any of my old creations.

“Dad, her cheeks shouldn’t be that dark. I want her to look pale, not like she’s been sleeping in a cave.”

I studied the face in the mirror.

She had a point.

“All right. Let’s lighten that and keep the deeper shadow closer to the cheekbone. You’ll still get the hollow look without making it too heavy.”

Sienna watched carefully while I blended the color.

When I handed her the sponge, she practiced the same technique on the other side of her face. Her first attempt was uneven, but she adjusted the pressure and tried again.

By the third pass, the shading looked remarkably good.

I moved the mirror closer.

“See how the two sides are different? The second one has a softer edge. That’s what you’re aiming for.”

She turned her face from one side to the other.

“Oh, I see it.”

I let her correct the first cheek herself.

We worked through the rest of the makeup together. I showed her how to use a narrow dark line with a lighter edge to create the appearance of a raised scar without putting anything uncomfortable on her skin. She chose where the scar should curve and insisted that the stitches be slightly uneven.

“Real stitches wouldn’t all be exactly the same,” she explained.

I couldn’t argue with that.

She practiced the pattern on paper before we drew it along her cheek and near her jawline. I kept the makeup away from her eyes and let her check the effect in the mirror after every few lines.

The result was convincing without being gruesome.

Her pale face, shaded cheeks, and carefully painted stitches gave her the look of a classic movie monster, but she still looked unmistakably like my ten-year-old daughter underneath it.

The hair took considerably longer.

We used a padded form beneath the upper section to give it height, then pinned her dark hair around it while she consulted her reference drawing. The first attempt leaned alarmingly to one side.

Sienna studied herself in the mirror.