My Wife Is Missing(44)

She picked up a spray bottle of B-Crazy!! temporary hair color. There were four spray cans of dark brown to choose from.

Natalie scooped up the box of brown hair dye.

“Dyes aren’t for kids, they’re not safe, but these spray-on colors are fine to use. It’s going to be so fun.”

You just can’t look like you anymore, she held back from saying.

“Wait, are we really dyeing our hair?” asked Addie.

“Well, it is family makeover day. We have to go all in, or else it won’t be any fun. And I have real, big girl makeup to put on you, too. It’ll be like coloring our Easter eggs, only this will be our hair and faces. You’ll look so beautiful, like a real princess.”

Natalie had never put on a smile that felt so forced, and Addie didn’t seem at all convinced of the promised fun.

“Will it hurt?”

“No darling. It’s just a spray.”

“What color can I have?” she asked, seeing only brown. There was a hint of trepidation in her voice, but not as much as Natalie had feared.

She handed Addie the bottle labeled Cinnamon Shimmer. “We’re all going to be a family of brunettes.”

“But I don’t like that color,” said Addie.

A mantra ticked away in Natalie’s mind like the countdown to an explosion.

Move. Move. Gotta keep moving. Don’t stay in one place too long.

An anxious feeling welled up inside her, and she raised her voice sharply.

“Well, you don’t have a choice,” she said. “We’re all going to have the same color hair, and we’re going to do it right now before we leave here.”

A sick feeling came over Natalie when she caught the pain in Addie’s eyes. Would she spend her time on the run hurting everyone she loved the most—first her parents, now her kids? She vowed to make amends, but later. Their picture was everywhere now, and she and the children had to look different for the remainder of the trip, so a family of brunettes they’d become.

“Sweetheart,” Natalie said, taking Addie’s hand, softening her tone. “I promise, we will have so much fun changing our hair color. And then we can show Daddy. He’ll be so surprised.”

She stroked Addie’s long, straw-colored hair, using her fingers like the teeth of a comb, tugging gently on the roots. In the photograph making the rounds on social media it was obvious that Addie had long hair, so that was going to have to change, too.

“Another part of family makeover day is that we’re going to have to cut your hair shorter, maybe to here.”

Using her hands, Natalie lifted Addie’s hair to the new, shorter length that she had in mind.

Addie’s eyes sprung open, wide and filled with fright.

“No,” she said, pulling away. “I’m not cutting my hair.”

Natalie wasn’t going to push the issue. She didn’t want to scar her children. She was trying to save them.

“Then you’ll have to wear your hair in braids for a while, okay? But let’s color it!”

Natalie clapped her hands together as if that made the whole idea that much more palatable.

“I’ll go first, okay? You can help me?”

Addie left her bottle of spray-on brown on the bed as she followed her mother into the tiny bathroom. Bryce stayed put, oblivious to what was going on, happily gorging on cartoons.

Natalie hadn’t washed her hair in the last forty hours, knowing the natural oils would help the dye stick to her follicles. Because she was an adult, Natalie opted to use the far messier real dye rather than the spray-on kind. She placed a towel on the floor and another draped around her neck like a cape to catch any dye that might drip off her hair in the process.

Addie helped brush Natalie’s long, chestnut-colored hair that would soon become a much deeper, darker brown. With careful precision, Natalie applied a coating of Vaseline to her hairline, ears, and neck to make it easier to wash off any dye that got on her skin. Gloves came with the kit she’d bought, along with a bowl to mix the dye with developer. Once that was done, she separated her hair into four sections, then applied the dye to each section, careful to follow the instructions. Afterward, she put on a shower cap and set a timer for thirty minutes.

Watching her mother’s process made Addie ready to move forward with her own makeover.

“Do me next!” she begged, clapping her hands delightedly.

Natalie obliged, but not in the bathroom. Chemical aerosol would fill the tight space like tear gas and could trigger an asthma attack. She might have been utterly exhausted, but she wasn’t entirely out of it, which again made her think of that knock on the door. She was feeling more certain now than before that it wasn’t all in her head.

But who would it have been?

She had no good answer. She considered going outside to do the spray, but that felt too exposed. Cars zoomed past the motel en route to the highway. An off-duty police officer could be riding in one of them, someone trained to be observant, who’d see a mother coloring her child’s hair. It would be an odd enough sight for them to backtrack and have a second look.

A voice in Natalie’s head rose up sharply.

Hurry. Hurry.

“Cover your eyes,” she instructed Addie, who sat on a chair they dragged next to an open window. She was draped in a sheet Natalie had bought at Walmart for this very purpose. Addie covered her eyes as instructed.