Caroline gasped. “You look amazing.”
Eryn bounced in her chair, clapping. “Holy shit, Lily, you’re gorgeous. You’re always gorgeous, but this color brightens you up so much. This is you.”
Even Missy beamed, her eyes triumphant.
I reached up, fingers shaking a little, and touched the new hair. It was soft, lighter than I expected. I looked up at my friends, who were smiling like I’d just won the lottery.
“Wow,” I said, and it came out as a laugh. “It’s . . . really different.”
“You love it,” Eryn said.
I hesitated. Then, looking at my reflection, I realized she was right. I did.
“I love it,” I said, and meant it.
Caroline pulled me into a hug. Eryn joined in, arms winding tight around both of us. I swear, I never hugged so much until I became friends with these girls. I laughed, and it didn’t sound awkward or forced. It sounded like relief.
For the first time in years, I felt like the world might have a place for me that wasn’t just “the girl who was beaten down,” or“the girl who survived.” I was just Lily. And maybe, for the first time, that was enough.
I left the salon to pick up Noah with twenty minutes to spare. The streetlights shined on my hair and the scent of coconut clung to my collar. As we walked down Main Street, his stroller gliding in front of me, I caught my reflection in every window, and each time, it startled me a little less.
Each time, I smiled a little more.
Eight
Ford
Imade it as far as the hardware store before the day went sour.
Whittier Falls Hardware was wedged between the fly shop and the taxidermist, a narrow shotgun of a building with a hand-painted sign that hadn’t been repainted in at least three decades. The front window was stuffed with bags of water softener, a half-assembled wheelbarrow, and a pyramid of ant killer. If you didn’t know it was open, you might have figured it was abandoned, but there was a steady stream of trucks and battered SUVs out front every morning. Most of the town’s actual work got done with supplies from this place.
Inside, the light was thin and yellow, filtered through years of bug-streaked glass. The floorboards creaked and stuck underfoot, worn smooth by a thousand pairs of boots. It smelled like old sawdust, galvanized steel, and whatever chemical finish they used to keep the paint wall from peeling. There was a rhythm to the place: every few feet, a pegboard bristling with hardware, a shelf of battered caulking guns.
I grabbed a blue plastic basket by the door and started down the main aisle, keeping my eyes forward. Paint section first. I was going to tackle the living room—get rid of the nicotine yellow and the weird, ancient floral borders. I grabbed anassortment of brushes, then a bag of cheap rollers, the kind you can use once and toss. The handles made a plasticky rattle in the bottom of the basket. Next up: tools. I had a set back at the ranch, but I’d need some extras for small stuff, and I didn’t exactly feel like unpacking every goddamn box just to find a flathead screwdriver.
I cut past the outdoor supplies—lawn seed, weed killer, animal traps. At the end of the aisle, a pair of old-timers blocked the way. Both wore flannel, both had white facial hair, both regarded me with the blank appraisal of men who’d spent their whole lives seeing through people. They didn’t move as I walked up. I waited.
One of them—thicker around the gut, with a nasal septum that’d been broken and reset crooked—leaned in and muttered to the other, loud enough for me to hear, “That’s the Brooks boy. You know, Waylon’s boy.”
The second man grunted, never taking his eyes off a display of fencing pliers. “Heard he’s back. Figured he’d stay out west, with the rest of the trash.”
The first man made a little click with his tongue. “Should’ve stayed gone, after what happened to Ty Higgins.”
My hands tightened on the basket. I kept my eyes on the shelf, but my pulse was a train in my ears.
“Whole town knows he did it,” the first man went on, voice picking up. “No way that Higgins kid just drove himself off a gorge after fighting with this one.”
The second guy shrugged. “Cops never proved a thing.”
“Cops don’t need to. Ain’t nobody but a Brooks that mean.”
They laughed, not hard, not friendly. I could feel them watching for a reaction, for the snap or the smartass comeback. Instead I sidestepped them and moved down the aisle, plucking a package of utility blades from the hook and tossing them intothe basket. They let me pass, but their eyes stayed on my back. I felt every inch of it.
People here had no problem being overt in their gossip, even when it involved something as morbid as death.
At the end of the row, I turned and found the paint swatches. The wall was crowded with them, rows and rows of colors with names like “Dover Mist” and “Wyoming Twilight.” I picked out three neutrals, not because I couldn’t decide, but because the act of comparing them gave my hands something to do. The whole time, I could hear the old guys at the end of the aisle, now joined by a third man with a red cap, debating the best way to sharpen a chainsaw blade.
I kept my head down, but the gossip followed me.
