The Bride Who Ended Up in My Chair

“I’ve got eight girls here and no hair,” she said, “and a wedding at two.”

I sat there with the phone against my ear and looked at the green dress on the closet door.

People have asked me since why I didn’t just say no. Some of them meant it kindly. A couple of them meant she had it coming. I understand both.

Kendra had made her choice in front of fourteen people, and I had not asked to be anybody’s backup plan.

The only other salon in town, a place out on the highway, had closed for good that summer. The next nearest was forty miles down a closed interstate. There was nobody else. Linda knew it. So did I.

But that was not why I went, either. I went because it was my brother’s wedding.

Brandon was going to stand up in that church at two o’clock and watch Kendra walk toward him. I was not going to let him see her walk toward him crying, with her hair in a clip.

That was the whole reason. It was enough.

“I’ll be there in forty minutes,” I said. “Have the girls wash their hair if they haven’t. Squeeze it out and let it air dry. Do you have a good mirror?”

“There’s one on the back of the bathroom door,” Linda said. “I’ll take it off.”

“Take it off,” I said. “And Linda. Put the coffee on.”

I went down to the shop and turned on the lights. I packed three curling irons, a flat iron, my round brush, two cans of finishing spray, and every bobby pin I owned.

I packed my makeup kit, the one I use for prom girls, plus clean towels, two extension cords and a power strip, because farmhouse kitchens never have outlets in the right places.

Then, at the last minute, I reached behind the register, took Grandma June’s jar of lavender off the shelf, and put it in my coat pocket. I could not have told you why. I just did.

I put on my black salon smock and pulled my own hair into a high ponytail, because I would not have time to do anything with it later. I texted my mother I would meet her at the church.

My car is a 2014 Ford Escape with good snow tires, because I make my dad check them every October. The ice was a quarter inch thick on the glass, and I scraped for ten minutes.

Linda’s place is six miles south of town on a county road, then a mile west on gravel. The county had been sanding since five, so the paved part was slow but not terrible. I drove thirty with both hands on the wheel.

The gravel was solid glass from fence line to fence line. I drove that last mile at fifteen with my hazards on and passed a feed truck in the ditch. The driver waved me on. He was fine.

The trip took twenty-five minutes. Every window in Linda’s farmhouse was iced over, and the yellow kitchen light glowed through the glaze like the inside of a lantern.

Linda opened the door before I knocked. She was fifty-five, a small woman in a gray sweater with her reading glasses pushed up on her head, and her eyes were swollen.

She took both my bags out of my hands, and then she hugged me, right there on the porch in the cold. “Thank you,” she said into my shoulder. “Thank you, thank you.”