Little Secrets(5)

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she winces as a sharp pain stabs her in the temple. She downs her Lexapro and a multivitamin with what’s left of her lukewarm water, and is in the shower within five minutes. Forty-five minutes later, she’s out of the bathroom, fully dressed, makeup on, hair clean and styled. She feels better. Not great—her child is still missing and it’s still totally her fault—but she does have moments when she doesn’t feel like she’s dangling by a rapidly unraveling thread. This is one of them. She counts it as a win.

The day passes quickly. Four haircuts, a double process, a balayage, and a staff meeting, which she attends but Sadie leads. She promoted Sadie to general manager with a huge salary bump right after she had the baby, and Sadie now runs the day-to-day operations for all three salons. Marin could hardly stand to lose Sadie before everything happened with Sebastian; afterward, the thought was unfathomable. Marin needed to stay home and fall apart, which she did, for a year, until Derek and her therapist suggested it was time to come back to work.

She still oversees everything—the company is, after all, Marin’s—but mainly she’s moved back to the salon floor, cutting and coloring hair for a select group of longtime clients known internally as VIPs. They’re all absurdly wealthy. More than a few are minor celebrities, and they pay six hundred dollars an hour to have their hair done personally by Marin Machado of Marin Machado Salon & Spa.

Because once upon a time, she was somebody. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Allure, Marie Claire. It used to be cool to be Marin Machado. You could google her name and photos of the three biggest celebrity Jennifers—Lopez, Lawrence, and Aniston—would come up, all women she’s worked on personally—but now articles about her work take a back seat to news reports about Sebastian’s disappearance. The massive search that went nowhere. Complaints about the special treatment she and Derek received from the cops because Derek is a somebody, too, and they’re an affluent couple with connections, a friendship with the chief of police (which was vastly overstated—they barely know the woman outside of seeing her at a few charity events over the years), and rumors that Marin tried to kill herself.

Now she’s a cautionary tale.

It was Sadie’s idea to put her back on the floor. Doing hair is good for Marin. It’s something she enjoys, and there’s no place she feels more herself than behind the chair, mixing colors and painting strands and wielding shears. Hairstyling is the perfect blend of craft and chemistry, and she’s good at it.

In her chair right now is a woman named Aurora, a longtime client who’s married to a retired Seattle Mariner. Her naturally brunette hair is going gray, and she’s been transitioning to blond for the past few appointments. Aurora is requesting face-framing platinum blond highlights that look “beachy,” but her hair is dry, fine, and aging. Marin decides to hand-paint the highlights in with a low-strength bleach mixed with bond rebuilder. When the woman’s hair lightens to a shade of pale yellow similar to the inside of a banana peel—a processing time that can take anywhere from ten to twenty-five minutes, depending on a hundred different factors—Marin rinses and applies a violet toner, which she leaves on for no more than three minutes, to create that perfect white-blond look the client is hoping for.

This process is complicated, but it’s something Marin can control. It’s extremely important for her to do things with predictable outcomes. Her first week back to work, she realized she’d have been better off coming back to the salon sooner, rather than spending all that time in therapy.

“So? What do you think?” she asks Aurora now, moving a few locks of her client’s hair around before misting the strands with a flexible-hold hairspray.

“It’s perfect, as usual.” It’s what Aurora always says, because she never seems to know what to say to Marin anymore. In the past, Aurora was very vocal about what she liked and didn’t like about her hair. But since Marin’s returned to work, Aurora has only showered her stylist with compliments.

Marin watches her client closely for signs of displeasure, but Aurora seems genuinely pleased, turning her head this way and that so she can see the highlights from different angles. She gives Marin a satisfied smile in the mirror. “I love it. Great job.”

Marin accepts the praise with a nod and a smile, removes the woman’s cape, and walks her over to the reception desk where Veronique is waiting to cash her out. She offers Aurora a brief hug, and the woman accepts, grasping her a little too tightly.

“You’re doing great, honey, keep hanging in there,” Aurora whispers, and automatically Marin feels claustrophobic. She murmurs a thank you in return, and is relieved when the woman finally lets go.

“Taking off?” her receptionist asks her a few minutes later, when she sees Marin come out of the office with her coat and purse.

Marin peeks at the receptionist’s computer to check the next day’s bookings. Only three appointments in the afternoon, which, after her therapy appointment in the morning, leaves a couple of hours before lunch for administrative stuff. She doesn’t technically have to do any of it, but she feels bad for dumping so much of it on Sadie.

“Tell Sadie I’ll be here in the morning,” Marin says, checking her phone. “Have a good night, V.”

She heads to her car, and is starting the ignition when a text from Sal comes in. These days, he seems to be the only person who can coax a smile out of her that doesn’t make her feel like she’s doing it out of politeness or obligation.