Lily looked up at me.
“Can I come, Mommy?”
Something in my chest tightened, and I almost said yes. I almost grabbed her hand and walked out the door.
But Diane gently drew Lily back against the couch cushions by the shoulder, fingers still threaded in her hair.
“We’re in the middle of a braid, aren’t we, sweetheart? Grandma never gets you to herself.”
Lily gave me a small smile, the polite one, the please-don’t-make-a-scene one. And I told myself I was being ridiculous. I told myself Mark would sigh if he heard I’d dragged our daughter to the grocery store just to avoid leaving her with her own grandmother for one hour.
I bent down and kissed the top of her head, right where the braid started.
“I’ll be right back, baby. Be good.”
“I will.”
I picked up my purse and paused at the door. Diane was already turning back to the television, humming something under her breath.
I stepped outside into the afternoon sun with a nagging feeling I couldn’t name, telling myself one hour alone with Grandma couldn’t possibly hurt.
I spent longer than I’d planned comparing prices, then stood in the checkout line wondering if I should have brought Lily with me after all.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, I was already scolding myself for being so anxious.
The bag of groceries was still hanging from my wrist when I heard the muffled sob from the living room.
I dropped everything by the door and hurried in.
Lily sat curled into the corner of the couch, a blanket pulled up over her head like a hood.
“Sweetheart? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head under the fabric and pressed herself deeper into the cushions. I sat down beside her and gently reached for the edge of the blanket.
“Lily, honey. Let me see.”
When I moved it aside, my breath left me in a single hollow rush.
Her long, careful, sun-brown hair, the hair I had brushed every night since she was three, was gone. In its place was a jagged, chin-length crop, one side shorter than the other, tufts sticking out above her ear.
“Oh, baby.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” she whispered, and her chin crumpled. “I’m sorry.”
“No. No, no, no. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
I heard Diane before I saw her. Slippers on the hardwood, unhurried. She appeared in the doorway, drying a mug with a towel, as if she had been waiting for the door to open.
“Oh, you’re back.”
I stood up slowly, keeping my hand on Lily’s shoulder so she wouldn’t feel me leave.
“Please tell me you didn’t do this.”
Diane glanced at Lily and gave a small, tolerant sigh.
“She needed a haircut anyway. You were taking forever to get around to it, Rachel. I handled it.”
“You handled it… right.”
“Don’t say it like that. Honestly.”
Lily pressed her forehead into my hip and whispered, so only I could hear, “Grandma said you’d thank her later.”
Something inside me went very quiet.
I have felt anger before.
This was underneath anger, deeper down, in the part of me that remembered every time in my life I had been told I was overreacting.
“Diane. She is eight.”
“And she looked ridiculous with all that hair in her face.”
“It wasn’t in her face. It was in a braid that I did this morning.”
Diane rolled her eyes and set the mug on the side table with a small, deliberate click.
“You two are exactly the same. You make everything into a crisis. It’s hair. It grows.”
I walked Lily upstairs without answering.
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