Safe With Me (12 page)

“Maddie,” the girl mumbles, slumping into the chair. She avoids looking in the mirror, which as a stylist, Hannah has learned to recognize as something women who have self-esteem issues tend to do. If they don’t
see
their perceived flaws, then they don’t have to feel inadequate. Hannah’s heart squeezes, wondering what could have made this girl feel so bad about her looks.

She suddenly recalls a conversation she had with Emily a few months before her accident, when Hannah found her daughter standing in front of the mirror in her bedroom, wearing only her white cotton training bra and panties. As Hannah stepped inside her room, Emily clutched the flesh around her belly between tight fingers and made a strange, growling noise.

“Honey, what are you doing?” Hannah asked with a frown.

“I’m so
fat
!” Emily wailed, letting go of her stomach and dropping her hands to her sides.

“No, you’re not,” Hannah said calmly, putting her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and looking at their reflection. At twelve, Emily was dark haired and pretty, but short for her age, so her middle was a little thick in comparison to the rest of her body. Hannah was five foot seven with a naturally thin build, which was definitely a product of heredity more than of diet and exercise. The sperm donor Hannah had chosen was six foot four, with no history of obesity in his family, so she was hopeful Emily wouldn’t struggle with her weight. Hannah had seen too many clients zip into the bathroom to vomit after sampling from the platter of buttery, sweet pastries Sophie insisted on setting out every day—it terrified her that Emily might someday fall victim to similar behaviors. “You just haven’t had your growth spurt yet, sweetheart. I didn’t get mine until I was fourteen.”

Emily leaned her head against Hannah’s chest, regarding her mother’s reflection. “Are you
sure
?” she asked with a sniffle. “Katie Shaw is my age and is like, an
Amazon
woman or something. She’s totally skinny and her boobs are
huge
!”

“Trust me, you don’t want huge boobs.” Hannah gave her daughter a quick jiggle, hoping she could make Emily laugh.

“How do
you
know what I want?”

Hannah sighed, then turned to face her daughter, pulling Emily’s attention away from the mirror. She set her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and met her eyes with a determined gaze. “I know that you’re beautiful exactly as you are right
now
. And I know it’s tough to see your body get a little heavier before you get taller and even it all out. It was like that for me, too, Em. You just wait. In six months, you’ll look in the mirror and see something entirely different.”

Emily’s blue eyes lit up when Hannah said this, filled with hope. Only her daughter never got to see her body change. Now, Hannah’s mind flashes to the image of Emily on the day of her accident, her limbs twisted on the pavement, her daughter lying motionless in the hospital bed. She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the memory. She focuses on throwing the black protective cape over Maddie, fastening it around her neck. “Too tight?” she asks, and Maddie shakes her head, too. “Okay, then. What are we going to do for you today?”

Maddie barely lifts one of her shoulders, still keeping her eyes on the floor. Hannah looks to the girl’s mother, eyebrows raised.

“She had a rough day at school,” the woman says, apologetically. “I was hoping a new look might lift her spirits. We got your flyer, so we thought we’d come give you a try.”

Hannah returns her gaze to Maddie’s reflection. “Eastside Prep?” It was the high school closest to the salon, attended by the children of only the most elite families in Seattle.

“Yeah,” Maddie says, like she’s tasted something sour.

“You’re a freshman?”

Maddie shakes her head. “Junior. I’m sixteen.”

Hannah must look confused because the woman jumps in to explain. “Maddie’s had some health issues, so she’s a little petite. She’s been tutored at home since she was nine. School is . . . an adjustment.”

“I’m sure nobody wants to hear the boring details of my life,
Olivia,
” Maddie says, but there is a small spark of levity in her voice, and Hannah suspects that she must be close to her mother in order to tease her like that. Emily had called Hannah by her first name instead of Mom a few times, mostly in the months before the accident, and only when she was frustrated. Hannah read somewhere that this is a normal thing for teenage girls to do, a way they test out being separate beings from their mothers. A first snip at the proverbial apron strings.

Peter returns from the back room, where he’d grabbed his coat. Always the impeccably dressed hipster, today he wears black skinny jeans and turtleneck sweater paired with funky, red-rimmed oval glasses. His blond hair is spiked up, and his cowboy boots click-clack on the hardwood floors. “Good night, ladies!” he says, then blows us all a kiss. “Stay fabulous!”

“I like his glasses,” Maddie says, after he closes the front door behind him.

Hannah smiles. “He’s an original, for sure.” She looks over to Veronica, who is just hanging up the phone, looking irritated. “What’s up?” Hannah asks.

“My five o’clock just canceled.” Business has been good since opening, but for stylists, time is money, so each time a client cancels at the last minute it’s like having your paycheck docked for an offense you didn’t commit. She sighs. “Is it okay if I go? I already cleaned my station.”

Hannah nods. “Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turns back to Olivia and Maddie. “Sorry for the interruption.”

“You’re the boss?” Maddie says, perking up again.

“I am,” Hannah says, smiling. “My best friend, Sophie, is my business partner, but she runs our downtown salon.” She gently lifts up Maddie’s hair, examining the strands. “So, I think we need to get rid of these split ends first, don’t you? It will really give you more body on top if we lose about four inches.”

“Okay,” Maddie says. “It’s like, totally stringy, right?”

Hannah’s heart clenches hearing Maddie insert the word
like
in her sentence, a verbal tic Emily had picked up from her friends at school. She manages a smile. “I wouldn’t say ‘stringy.’ I would say ‘volume challenged.’ ” Maddie giggles, and so encouraged, Hannah continues. “Let’s cut it to just above your shoulders, okay? Once we get some of the weight to stop pulling at the roots, it will automatically thicken up. And then we’ll add some layering, and maybe deepen the color a bit, to bring out your eyes . . .” She looks to Olivia, who is watching their interaction from where she stands a few feet away. “If that’s okay with Mom.” Olivia nods, relief palpable in her expression. Hannah notes that she is quite beautiful, though with her dark eyebrows, Olivia isn’t a natural blonde, she suspects.

“Can I go
red
?” Maddie asks, twisting her head back and
forth, finally reviewing her reflection. “Like, flaming, Jessica Rabbit red?”

Hannah laughs. “I think that might be a little extreme for your skin tone. Not to mention hard to maintain. The best way to bring out your natural beauty is to go just a few shades darker or lighter than your own color, which I assume this is? Or have you colored your hair before?”

Maddie shakes her head. “I’ve never even been in a salon.”

“Well, then,” Hannah says. “I feel privileged you’re here.” She hesitates a moment before putting her hand on Maddie’s shoulder—other than the hugs from Emily’s friends at the funeral, Hannah hasn’t touched a child since she last held Emily in her hospital bed. She’s a little worried she’ll burst into tears when she does. But then her hand finally drops, and there’s no electric sensation as Hannah had feared, no devastating jolt throwing her to the floor. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you shampooed.”

Hannah takes her time washing Maddie’s hair, giving her the full-on “relax” massage treatment. Pushing the tips of her fingers in steady circles on Maddie’s scalp, Hannah remembers the many times she washed Emily’s hair at the other salon; her daughter would sometimes fall asleep under Hannah’s touch. Maddie’s eyes close, and she even lets out a quiet, contented groan. Olivia sits down in the shampoo chair next to the one Maddie is in and watches them.

“Have you been busy since you opened?” Olivia asks as Hannah finishes rinsing the shampoo from Maddie’s head and then applies a thickening conditioner.

“Yes, thank goodness,” Hannah says with a smile. In fact, they’ve been busier than Hannah thought they’d be over the
past month, though that has a little to do with the fact that Cerina, the other stylist she hired, quit her first week, deciding that she’d rather work for Gene Juarez. “Your highlights are beautiful. Where do you get them done?”

Olivia’s shoulders twitch, like she’s uncomfortable receiving the compliment. “Henry DeLong’s, in Mercer Island. Do you know it?”

“I do.” Henry is one of Ciseaux’s chief competitors, in business for well over twenty years, with a focus on high-end services and excellent client care. “You’re dark haired, naturally?” Olivia nods, and an odd look appears on her face, as though she is recalling an unpleasant memory. Hannah rinses the conditioner from Maddie’s hair, pats it dry, then they all relocate to Hannah’s station. “Can I get you something to drink, Olivia? Coffee or tea? Water?”

“I’d love some water.” She looks at her daughter. “Baby, it’s almost time for your afternoon meds, too, isn’t it?”

“Mom!” Maddie exclaims. “I know! It’s programmed into my
phone
. You don’t have to
remind
me.”

Olivia looks a little hurt, and Hannah starts to head toward the kitchen, but Olivia stops her with a hand on her arm. “Please, let me get it.”

Hannah tells her where to find the chilled bottles of Perrier and Evian, then turns her attention to cutting Maddie’s hair. She carefully runs a wide-toothed comb through the strands. “So . . . tough day at school, huh?” The words catch in her throat a bit; she thinks of the many times she asked Emily the same question.

Maddie nods. “Being the new kid sucks.”

“I’ll bet.”

Maddie glances up at Hannah in the mirror, watching as she combs long strands upward and snips off four inches. She looks like she’s deciding whether or not to say more, so Hannah keeps quiet, a skill she’s learned over the years that works well with her clients. A good stylist is part artist, part therapist, part priest.

“I just want to be tutored at home again, but my dad says no way and my mom won’t fight him on it.” Maddie glances toward the kitchen, where her mother went, then looks back at Hannah, suddenly looking worried. “Don’t tell her I told you that, though, okay?”

Hannah smiles and takes another snip at Maddie’s fine hair. “Okay.”

“Thanks,” Maddie says, obviously relieved. She watches Hannah work, and Olivia returns with their waters. Without saying a word, she hands a bottle to Maddie, along with a few pills from her purse. Maddie sighs, but takes the medicine.

“Do you mind if I ask why you were out of school so long?” Hannah says, checking to make sure her cuts are even on both sides of Maddie’s head.

Olivia looks at Maddie, waiting for her to be the one to decide if she’ll answer the question. “I have immunosuppressant hepatitis,” she says, then screws up her face. “
Had,
I guess. I got a liver transplant last year, so I’m better. But I still have to take a bunch of stupid medicine, and now the kids at school all know and they basically think I’m a freak.”

No.
Hannah’s breath seizes in her lungs. Her fingers lose hold of her scissors, and they clatter to the floor.
It couldn’t be
.

“Honey, I’m sure they don’t think that.” Olivia reaches out and squeezes her daughter’s hand, and Hannah squats down
to pick up her scissors, taking a moment for a couple of deep, controlled breaths.
Is it possible this is the girl Zoe mentioned? The timing is right—a year ago. Is Emily’s liver the reason Maddie is sitting in front of me right now?

She’s often thought about the lives Emily saved—the person who can see because of her corneas; her daughter’s heart beating in another child’s chest. It was the only part of losing Emily that was bearable, knowing that other families were able to avoid the kind of debilitating grief Hannah now endured. Over the last year, through Zoe, the transplant coordinator, she’s received notes from many of the parents of the recipients of Emily’s organs, but Hannah hasn’t been able to bring herself to read them. Like going through her daughter’s things, she isn’t sure she would survive it.

Now, her pulse thuds wildly inside her neck, flooding upward into her head, making it almost impossible to hear what Maddie says next.

“That boy called me
Frankenstein,
okay, Mom? I
told
you it would be like this. I just want to stay home.” She lifts her chin and looks away from the mirror again. Her bottom lip trembles, and she bites it.

Olivia sighs, then looks at Hannah, who has managed to straighten herself behind the chair. “Do you have children? Do they give you a hard time, too?”

Hannah’s throat closes and her mouth goes dry.
What can I say?
Should she avoid the question? Tell the truth? She coughs, fluffing Maddie’s hair to stall a moment. Finally, she looks at Olivia. “My daughter died.” She says the words quietly, but inside her head, they bounce around like an echo. And then, she can’t help it. Her eyes grow blurry and a single tear slips
down her cheek. It’s the first time she has made the statement out loud to a stranger.

Olivia’s hand flies to her mouth, and Maddie freezes in her seat. “Oh god,” Olivia says, dropping her arm back to her side. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Hannah shrugs, a minute gesture, then wipes the tear away. “No need to be sorry. It’s a natural question. I just don’t talk about it much.” Her voice shakes, and she grinds her molars together to keep from completely breaking down.

Olivia stands unexpectedly, and the next thing Hannah knows, she is being hugged. She immediately tenses, unused to spontaneous affection from strangers, but then slowly relaxes into the warmth of Olivia’s embrace. “We came so close to losing Maddie,” Olivia murmurs. “I can only imagine . . .” She pulls back and searches Hannah’s face with clear, practically amber eyes. “How old was she?”