Chapter 1 - The Bathroom Mirror
The marble was cold under my feet when I came through the doorway. I could feel every vein in the stone through my bare soles, and the cool daylight coming in from the tall windows laid itself flat across the floor. My robe moved around my ankles as I walked. The house was too quiet for a wedding morning. No hair dryer, no voices down the hall, no clink of coffee cups. Just my own breathing and the soft slide of silk.
And then the mirror caught me wrong. The gold frame, the sconces on either side, all that familiar luxury — and a woman in a cream nightgown and robe who didn't look like herself. The light hit the side of my head first. Bald. Shining. Red. I stopped in the middle of that big empty bathroom with my hands still at my sides because my mind wouldn't let me lift them yet.
That morning I was supposed to be Michael's mother getting ready for his wedding.
I didn't remember going to bed like this. I remembered brushing my hair out in this same bathroom last night, the weight of it over my shoulders, the way the ends caught on the silk of my robe. I remembered turning off the sconces. Now under those same lights my scalp burned a raw pink in profile, irritated in patches, with dark stubble left behind where the razor had missed. I lifted my right hand slowly and touched it. The skin was hot and tender and bumpy under my fingertips, and a sharp sting ran down behind my ear. I turned my head a fraction to the left and saw it clearer in the side mirror — the redness, the uneven shadow of what was left.
She shaved my head.
I didn't say it out loud at first. It formed behind my ribs and stayed there while I kept touching, pressing one finger then another to different spots to make sure it was real. It was real. My hair was gone from the pillow, gone from the drain, gone from the floor. Someone had taken it in the night and cleaned up after. My stomach went hollow and my throat closed, and for a second the cool air on my naked scalp felt like a hand still holding me down.
I stared at my own eyes in the mirror and tried to find another explanation. Could I have done this myself? Had I been sleepwalking? Was this some reaction, some sickness that took it all at once? No. My scalp hurt in lines. This was a razor. This was someone standing close to me while I slept.
May you like
Sabrina.
Her name came out barely louder than my breathing, cold and flat in that marble room. I watched my lips tighten around it. Today, she marries my son. She was down the hall in the guest suite at her peak, hair and makeup scheduled, white dress bagged on the door, everyone ready to look at her. And I stood barefoot in my nightgown with my head shaved raw, listening for a footstep that didn't come.
