After she died, there was no one left in that house but him and me and all the damage he preferred to call standards.
I touched my scalp again, lightly, then snatched my hand back as if I had touched a stove. Tears flooded my eyes, but they didn’t fall.
I had learned young that crying in my father’s house only fed him.
“Jesus,” I whispered. “What have you done?”
My phone started vibrating on the nightstand.
I turned and stared at it through blurred vision.
Mark.
For a second I couldn’t imagine answering. What was I supposed to say?
Good morning, honey. The father of the bride shaved my head in the night, and now I look like I escaped a military prison.
But the phone kept buzzing, and Mark wasn’t the kind of man you ignored on your wedding day.
I answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said, warm and calm and so normal that it hurt. “I’m ten minutes away. You ready?”
My throat tightened so hard it burned.
“Mark,” I said, and my voice cracked instantly.
He went silent. Not confused. Alert.
“What’s wrong?”
I looked at myself in the mirror again and felt panic rise like floodwater.
“My hair,” I whispered. “He shaved it.”
Another silence. Shorter this time, denser.
“Who?”
“My dad.”
The words came out with such shame you would have thought I was confessing my own failure.
