by Nora Roberts
VIOLA STARTED OUT doing hair for fun, doing up her sisters’ or her friends’ hair in fancy dos like they saw in magazines. She told the story of how the first time she took the scissors—and her granddaddy’s straight razor—to her sister Evalynn’s hair, she escaped a hiding because it looked as fine as what Miz Brenda down at Brenda’s Beauty Salon charged good money for.
She’d been twelve, and from that point on, in charge of cutting everybody’s hair in the family, and styling the girls—her mama included—for special occasions.
When she’d been carrying her first, she’d worked for Miz Brenda, and had done some side business out of the tiny kitchen in the double-wide where she and Jackson had started out. When Grady had been born—with her still four months shy of her seventeenth birthday, she added on manicures, and worked exclusively out of the two-bedroom house they rented from Jack’s uncle Bobby.
By the time her second followed close on Grady’s heels, she squeezed in cosmetology school with her mother minding the babies.
Viola MacNee Donahue had been born ambitious, and wasn’t afraid to give her husband a few prods in the same direction.
By the time she was twenty, with three children and the loss of one that had broken off a piece of her heart she would never get back, she had her own salon—buying Brenda’s place when Brenda ran off on her own husband with a guitar player from up in Maryville.
It put them in debt, but while Viola wasn’t one to agree with the preacher saying how God would provide, she believed He’d look kindly on those who worked themselves sweaty.
She did just that, spending often eighteen hours a day on her feet while Jack worked just as hard and long at Fester’s Garage.
She had a fourth child, worked herself steadily out of debt, then dived right back into it when Jack started his own car repair and towing service. Jackson Donahue was the best mechanic in the county, and he’d been carrying most of Fester’s business as Fester was stumbling drunk by noon five days out of seven.
They made their own, raised four children, and bought a good house.
And with the nest egg Viola tucked away, she bought the old dry goods, expanded, and had the town talking when she put in three fancy pedicure chairs.
Business stayed steady enough, but if you wanted more, you figured out how to get it. Tourists wandered through the Ridge here and there, looking for quaint or cheap, or picturesque in a quieter setting than Gatlinburg or Maryville.
They came to hike and fish and camp, and some to stay in the Rendezvous Hotel and ride the white water. Those on vacation tended to be looser with their money, and more apt to take a few indulgences.
So she took the leap, expanded yet again. And yet again.
The locals called her place Vi’s, but the tourists came into Viola’s Harmony House Salon and Day Spa.
She liked the sound of it.
The latest—and, Viola claimed, the last—expansion added on what she billed a Relaxation Room, which was a fancy name for waiting area, but fancy it was. Though she enjoyed bold, rich colors, she’d kept the tones soft, added a gas-burning fireplace, banned all electronic devices, and offered specialty teas made local, spring water, deep-cushioned chairs and plush robes with her logo embroidered on them.
Since the expansion, this latest and last, had been in the works while Shelby had been moving from Atlanta to Philadelphia, Shelby hadn’t seen it all done.
She couldn’t say it surprised her when her grandmother led her through a locker room/changing area and into the room that smelled lightly of lavender.
“Granny, this is amazing.”
She kept her voice down as two women she didn’t know sat in oatmeal-colored chairs paging through glossy magazines.
“You try some jasmine tea. It’s made right here in the Ridge. And relax some before Vonnie comes to get you.”
“This is as nice as any of the spas I’ve been to. Nicer.”
Amenities included shallow dishes of sunflower seeds, a wooden bowl of sharp green apples, clear pitchers of water with inserts holding slices of lemon or cucumber, and hot pots for tea clients could drink out of pretty little cups.
“It’s you who’s amazing.”
“It’s not enough to have ideas if you just let them sit around. You come see me when Vonnie’s done with you.”
“I will. Would you . . . could you just check with Mama? I just want to be sure Callie’s behaving.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Easier said than done—or so Shelby thought, until Vonnie, who couldn’t have been more than five-three, had her on a warm table in a dim room with soft music playing.
“Girl, you’ve got enough rocks in these shoulders to build a three-story house. Take a deep breath for me now. And another. That’s the way. Let it go now.”
She tried, then she didn’t have to try. She drifted.
“How’re you feeling now?”
“What?”
“That’s a good answer. I want you to take your time getting up. I’m going to turn the lights up a little, and I’ve got your robe lying over your legs.”
“Thank you, Vonnie.”
“I’m going to tell Miz Vi you could use another next week. It’s going to take a few times to get you smoothed out, Shelby.”
“I feel smooth.”
“That’s good. Now, don’t go getting up too fast, you hear? I’m going out and get you some nice spring water. You want to drink a lot of water now.”
She drank the water, changed back into her street clothes and made her way out to the salon area.
Four of the six hair stations were working, and two of the four pedicure chairs were occupied. She saw two women getting manicures and glanced at her own nails. She hadn’t had her nails done since right before Christmas.
While the Relaxation Room stood as a sanctuary of quiet, the salon rang with voices, the bubble of footbaths, the whirl of dryers. Five people called out to her—three beauticians, two customers—so she got caught up in conversations, acknowledged offers of sympathy and of welcome before she found her grandmother.
“Perfect timing. I just finished doing Dolly Wobuck’s highlights, and my next appointment canceled, so I’ve got time to give you a facial. Go put a robe back on.”
“Oh, but—”
“Callie’s fine. She and Chelsea are having a tea party, with costumes. Ada Mae said they hooked together like two links in a chain and reminded her of you and Emma Kate.”
“That’s good to hear.” Shelby tried not to think of that cool look in the eyes of her childhood friend.
“She’ll have your baby home in a couple hours. That’ll give you time for a facial, and us time to talk.” Viola tipped her head, and the light through the front window tipped gold in the red. “Vonnie did you some good, didn’t she?”
“She’s wonderful. I don’t remember her being such a little thing.”
“Takes after her mama.”
“She may be little, but she has wonderfully strong hands. She wouldn’t let me tip her, Granny. She said Mama had seen to it, and anyway, we’re family.”
“You can tip me by giving me an hour of your time. Go on, get a robe on. The facial rooms are in the same place. We’ll be in the first one. Get!”
She did as she was told. She wanted Callie to make friends, didn’t she? To have someone to play with, to be with. It was healthy and right. And foolish to feel so anxious because she was spending the day at her grandmother’s salon.
“I’ve got just the thing for you,” Viola said when Callie came in. “It’s my energizing facial. It’ll give you and your skin a boost. Just hang that robe on the hook there, lie down here and we’ll tuck you up.”
“This is new, too. Not the room, but the chair, some of the machines here.”
“If you want to be competitive, you’ve got to keep up.” Viola took out a bib apron and tied it over her cropped pants and bold orange T-shirt. “I’ve got a machine in the next room that works on lines with electrode pu
lses.”
“Really?” Shelby slipped under the sheet onto the inclined chair.
“Only two of us trained to use it for now, that’s me and your mama, but Maybeline—you remember Maybeline?”
“I do. I can’t remember a time she didn’t work for you.”
“Been some years, and now her girl’s working here, too. Lorilee’s got the same good touch on nails as her mama. Maybeline’s training on the new machine now, so we’ll have three can use it. Not that you have to worry about lines for some time yet.” She laid a light duvet over the sheet, then banded back Shelby’s hair. “But let’s have a look at things. Your skin’s a little dehydrated, baby. Stress’ll do that.”
She started out with a cleanse, her hands soft as a child’s on Shelby’s face.
“There are things a girl can tell her granny she might not say right out to her mama. It’s that safety zone. And Ada Mae, she looks at bright sides, she’s blessed with that outlook. You’ve got trouble, and it’s not grief. I know how grief looks.”
“I’d stopped loving him.” She could say it out loud, with her eyes closed and her grandmother’s hands on her face. “Maybe I never really did love him. I know now he didn’t love me. It’s hard knowing that, hard knowing we didn’t have what we should have and he’s gone.”
“You were young.”
“Older than you were.”
“I got awful lucky. So’d your grandpa.”
“I was a good wife, Granny. I can say that and know it’s true. And Callie—we made Callie, so that’s something special. And I wanted another baby. I know maybe it’s wrong wanting another when things aren’t the way they should be, but I thought maybe it’s just how it would be, and it was all right. It could be good if there was another baby for me to love. I had such a hunger for another baby, such a yearning in me.”
“I know that hunger well.”
“And he said that was fine. He said it’d be good for Callie to have a brother or sister. But it didn’t happen, and it happened so easy and fast the first time. I had tests, and he said he had tests.”
“Said he had?” Viola repeated as she worked a gentle exfoliant into Shelby’s skin.
“I . . . I had to go through all his papers, and his files after. There were so many things to go through.”
Lawyers and accountants and the tax people, the creditors, the bills and debt.
“And I found a doctor’s receipt or invoice, whatever. Richard, he kept everything. It was from a few weeks after Callie was born, the time I brought her home, her first visit, and he said he had a business trip. He was so good about us coming home, he made all the arrangements. Private plane and a limo to get me to it. But he went to a doctor in New York and had a vasectomy.”
Viola’s hands paused. “He got himself snipped and let you think you were trying to make a baby?”
“I’m never going to be able to forgive him for that. Out of all of it, it’s that I can’t forgive.”
“His right to decide if he wanted to make another baby, but not his right to get fixed and not tell you. It’s a terrible lie. And a man who could tell that terrible lie, live with that terrible lie, had something missing inside him.”
“There were so many lies, Granny, and finding them after he’s dead?” There was an emptiness left there, Shelby thought, that could never be filled again. “I feel like a fool, I feel like I lived with a stranger. And I don’t understand why he married me, why he lived with me.”
Despite what churned up inside her, Viola kept her hands gentle, her voice calm. “You’re a beautiful girl, Shelby Anne, and you said you were a good wife. And you’re not to feel like a fool because you trusted your husband. What else did he lie about? Were there other women?”
“I don’t know for certain, and can’t ask. But I have to say yes, from things I found, yes, there were other women. And I find now I don’t care. I can’t even care how many—he took so many trips without us. And I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, got tested in case . . . He didn’t give me anything, so if he had other women, he was careful. So I don’t care if he had a hundred other women.”
She worked up her nerve while Viola slathered on the energizing mask.
“The money, Granny. He lied about the money. I never paid much attention to it because he said that was his business, and mine was to run the house and Callie. He—he could lash out like a whip over that without raising his voice or his hand.”
“Cold contempt can be a sharper blade than hot temper.”
Comforted, Shelby opened her eyes, looked into her grandmother’s. “He cowed me. I hate admitting it, and I don’t even know how it happened. But I can look back and see it so clear. He didn’t like me asking questions about money, so I didn’t. We had so much—the clothes and the furniture and the restaurants and the travel. But he was cheating there, too, and running some sort of scam. I’m still not clear on all of it.”
She closed her eyes again, not in shame—not with Granny—but in weariness. “Everything was on credit, and the house up North, he hadn’t made even the first payment on the loan, and he bought it back in the summer. I didn’t know a thing about it until he told me in November we were moving. And there were the cars, and the credit cards, and the time payments—and some debts in Atlanta he left behind. Taxes unpaid.”
“He left you in debt?”
“I’ve been sorting it out, and setting up payment plans—and I sold a lot off in the last few weeks. There’s an offer on the house, and if it goes through, it’ll take a lot off.”
“How much did he leave you owing?”
“As of right now?” She opened her eyes, looked into her grandmother’s. “One million, nine hundred and ninety-six thousand dollars and eighty-nine cents.”
“Well.” Viola had to draw in breath, let it out slow. “Well. Jesus Christ in a rocking chair, Shelby Anne, that’s a considerable sum of money.”
“When the house sells, it’ll cut it back. The offer’s for one point eight million. I owe a hundred and fifty more than that on it, but they forgive that with this short-sale business. And it started out around three million. Some over that with the lawyers’ bills, and accounting bills.”
“You paid off a million dollars since January?” Viola shook her head. “That must’ve been one holy hell of a yard sale.”
7
A massage, an energizing facial and coming home to find her little girl bubbling over with happiness, those went a long way toward lifting Shelby’s mood.
But the biggest lift had been unburdening herself to her grandmother. She’d told her everything—about finding the safe-deposit box and what was in it, the private detective, the spreadsheet she’d created, and her need to find a paying job as soon as she could.
By the time she’d given Callie her supper, her bath, tucked her in for the night, she felt she knew all there was to know about Chelsea—and had made a promise to have Chelsea over as soon as she could.
She went back down, found her father stretched out in the La-Z-Boy recliner he loved, watching a basketball game on his new TV. And her mother sitting on the sofa crocheting.
“She go down all right?”
“Out like a light before I’d finished her bedtime story. You wore her out today, Mama.”
“It sure was fun. The two girls were like tadpoles swimming in their own pond, hardly still a minute. Suzannah and I talked about taking turns, having Chelsea come here, then taking Callie there. And I’ve got Tracey’s number for you, right in on the kitchen board. You ought to call Chelsea’s mama, honey, make a good bridge there.”
“I will. You gave her a happy day. Can I ask you for a favor?”
“You know you can.”
“I ran into Emma Kate today.”
“I heard about that.” Fingers still working yarn and needle, Ada Mae glanced up with a smile. “It’s the Ridge, baby. If I don’t hear about something ten minutes after it happened, I know I have to have your daddy check my hearing. Hattie Munson—you remembe
r she lives across from Bitsy, though they’re feuding about something half the time. They’re feuding now because Bitsy’s getting a new kitchen and didn’t take Hattie’s advice about the new appliances. Hattie’s boy works for LG, but Bitsy bought Maytag, and Hattie took that as a personal insult. Of course, Hattie Munson takes offense if she sneezes in her own kitchen and you don’t say Gesundheit from yours.”
Amused at the way her mother found a way to wind through a story, and how her father cursed at the ballplayers, the referees, the coaches, Shelby eased a hip on the arm of the couch.