Harmony Day Spa was downtown on Main Street in a white house with light blue shutters and a hedge of pink hydrangeas out front. Stepping into the reception area, with its green and white décor, and inhaling the fresh scent of mint and eucalyptus, I felt confident this was where I’d find the new me.
“We’ve got you with Danielle for your color and Jen for your cut,” the girl behind the counter told me, adding that Danielle was Mom’s colorist.
I sat down, silently thanking my mother, and was greeted a few minutes later by a tiny woman no older than thirty. Her short, pale pink hair was tucked behind her ears. “I love your mother,” she said, her voice an octave higher than most people’s.
I thanked her, although I’d never been quite sure about the correct response to that. She led me into a room where several clients were having their hair colored, the salon employees brushing dye over squares of foil, dabbing at roots with paintbrushes.
“So, what can I do for you?”
I took a seat in Danielle’s chair, wishing I could tell her the truth the way I would have with my colorist in Chicago: that I wanted to win back my former beau and I needed to look spectacular to do it. But she knew Mom, so I couldn’t go there. “I need a new identity,” I told her. “I want to look different, become someone else.”
She raised the chair a few inches and draped a plastic cape over me.
“A new you. Okay, I can handle that.”
I liked her smile, her confidence.
“Is this for something special, like an event? Or are you just tired of what you’ve got?”
“Honestly,” I said, “it’s more a matter of necessity. It’s complicated.”
She ran her hands through my hair, revealing a rose tattoo on the underside of her arm. “Well, I see you’ve got highlights, but they look a little faded.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to look faded.
Danielle pulled a lock of hair between her fingers. “Your natural color is light brown. Which is pretty…”
Her voice trailed off. My natural color wasn’t pretty. I knew that. It was the reason why I’d been highlighting it all these years.
“But you could do with a little more spark.”
Ah, now we were talking. “Yes, spark sounds good.”
“Have you got anything in mind?”
I did have something in mind. I scrolled through my cell phone and found the photo of Carter and Mariel. “I like this style, with the layers and everything, but I don’t want my hair this short or this blond. Could you do something not quite as light? Maybe just a shade lighter than what I have now?” I’d be going in the direction of something Carter liked.
Danielle looked at the picture and then studied my reflection in the mirror. “Sure, I think that would look good on you.”
She went to mix the colors and I skimmed through some e-mails. Change orders to supplier contracts for the fall directors’ meeting. A reminder from Accounts Payable that I’d neglected to attach the hotel receipt to my last travel voucher. A chain letter (were people still sending those?) for single women, which I deleted.
Danielle returned with two plastic bowls of acrid white dye and a couple of paintbrushes. “So what’s it like, having Camille Harrington as your mom?” she asked as she began brushing the dye on my hair. “Oh God, I’m sorry.” She let out a nervous laugh. “Everybody must ask you that. You must hate it.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, although she was right—lots of people asked. “She’s pretty much the same as any other mother. She made my sister and me do our homework, do chores, keep our rooms clean.”
Except that she wasn’t like any other mother. Living with Mom could sometimes be like living with a tornado. She could suck all the air right out of a room with her energy and her theatrics. And she didn’t always understand how to treat children. She thought nothing of asking one of my friends where she saw herself in ten years. When the girl was seven. She took Mariel and me to see Cabaret when we were in grammar school. All those musicians and dancers in their bawdy costumes, Mom trying to explain what cross-dressers were. I used to tell my friends I was adopted.
“I guess my mother’s been coming to you for a while,” I said.
Danielle dipped her paintbrush into one of the bowls. “Four or five years. She’s a lot of fun. I could listen to her stories all day.”
Her stories were all the same to me. Or maybe they’d just blended together over the years. The writers and directors, the actors and composers. The places she’d been. I’d tuned the tales out ages ago. Or maybe she’d stopped telling them to me. I picked up a copy of Travel and Leisure and began to page through it, stopping to glance at an article about young, up-and-coming architects.
“I love to hear about all the stuff she’s done,” Danielle said, dabbing at my hair. “Being in all those plays. Meeting so many cool people. And when she talks about who she hung out with…wow. Bernadette Peters, Diane Keaton, Jeff Bridges. She told me your dad even knew Frank Sinatra.”
“Well, he met him a few times,” I said as I flipped ahead to a piece about a newly refurbished hotel in St. Barts. “They weren’t really friends.”
“Yeah, but Frank Sinatra. I mean, you know…”
She seemed young to be so familiar with that generation of entertainers. But maybe her parents got her interested in them, like mine had.
“Danny?” A woman walked toward us, her dark hair in a twist. “Can I see you for a minute?”
The owner, Danielle mouthed. She disappeared for a few minutes, and when she returned, she brought another bowl of dye. I read the article about the hotel and studied the before-and-after photos as Danielle continued to cover my hair with white paste. I was well into an article about luxury barge trips when her assistant told me it was time for a shampoo.
I closed my eyes and relaxed at the sink while she washed away the bitter-smelling dye and massaged my head. With my hair clean and in a towel, she escorted me into the next room, where stylists were snipping away with scissors and hoisting blow-dryers to new cuts.
“This is Jen,” she said, introducing me to a girl with bright red lipstick.
“I hear you want a different look,” Jen said in a hushed voice as I took a seat.
Was this supposed to be a secret? “Yes, I need a new image.” I showed her the photo of Mariel. “I want this style, but I don’t want it this short. I’d like it a couple of inches below my chin.”
Jen looked at the photo and back at me. “I think it’s a good place to start. With your situation, though, I’d suggest going a little shorter.”
“My situation?”
Her eyes swept the room. “I just thought, because you said you needed to look different…”
That was true. I did need to reinvent myself. T minus four days and counting until the wedding. I was wasting time debating this. “Okay, I guess I could go a little bit shorter. If you think it would look good.”
“Oh, I do.” When she took the towel off my head, I was disappointed. My hair was wet, but I should have been able to see some difference in the color. It didn’t look much lighter than before. Maybe Danielle had been too conservative. I hoped not. I needed Carter to really notice me.
I flipped ahead in Travel and Leisure to an article on the Greek isles. Brilliant white buildings with white roofs and blue domes were pressed into hillsides, the ocean swirling in the background. I was mesmerized by a story about the five hundred and eighty-eight steps people climbed to reach the village of Fira on Santorini when I heard the blow-dryer go on and felt a blast of heat against my scalp. I looked up.
Inches of my hair were gone, lying in tufted puddles on the floor. What remained was much shorter than what I’d expected and layered like the steps on Santorini. And now I saw that Danielle had been anything but conservative with the color. I’d gone from light brown with faded highlights to three shades of blond: light, lighter, and platinum. It was Mariel’s exact hairstyle. I’d turned into my sister.
“Oh my God.” I stood up, barely recognizing the image in the mirror.
Jen was biting her nail. “What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”
For a moment I couldn’t form the words. “I didn’t want it this blond or this short. I told you.”
“I think it looks great,” Jen gushed, but what could she say? She had to defend herself—and Danielle, who was quickly walking toward us. They exchanged nervous glances.
“You told me you needed a new identity,” Danielle said. “And you showed us the picture.”
“But that was a picture of my—” I kept touching my hair, still not believing what I was seeing. “I told you what I wanted. I didn’t want this.”
“We, uh, we thought you needed more.”
“More what?” A few of the other clients had turned to look at us.
“Well,” Danielle said, “when Alena, the owner, showed me the picture of you, I put two and two together and realized—”
“What picture of me?”
“In the Review.”
There was a picture of me in the Review? I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck.
“You haven’t seen it?” Danielle walked to a table of magazines and returned with the Hampstead Review. In the top right corner of the front page, the place reserved for the most important story of the day, the headline read: “Suspected Baked-Goods Bandits Freed—for Now.” Underneath were the photos from the Eastville Police Station, the mug shots of David and me. My mouth went dry.
Two people suspected of being the Baked-Goods Bandits were seen leaving the Eastville Police Station late Sunday night after being questioned by detectives, according to an anonymous source. At least one of the suspects has ties to Hampstead. David Cole, of New York City, and Sara Harrington, originally from Hampstead and now living in Chicago, were interrogated by Eastville detectives about the rash of baked-goods thefts affecting Eastville that has recently spread to several other towns in the county, including Hampstead.
The source confirmed, however, that no arrests had been made. “They were questioned but released. We didn’t have enough evidence to hold them.” The source noted that the Eastville Police Department is committed to protecting the safety and property of all residents within its borders and that these criminals will be caught and brought to justice.
So now I had my sister’s hairstyle, and my mug shot was in the paper. I squeezed my eyes shut and moaned.
“Uh, are you okay?” Jen said. “You look a little—”
“I could use a drink.”
“We have coffee.”
“Something stronger.”
“Espresso?”
“Forget it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Danielle said. “I thought you wanted a disguise because you were arrested. And you said you needed a new identity. I just assumed…”
What would Mom say? And, oh Lord, Carter. All that nonsense about stealing food. I couldn’t imagine what his reaction would be. At least David was in Manhattan. He’d be furious if he saw this.
I pulled off the cape. “I’ve got to go.”
“Wait,” Danielle said, wringing her hands. “I’ll fix it.”
“She’ll fix it,” Jen said. “Don’t go.”
Everyone was staring. “No, no. I need to leave. I have to get out of here.” I dropped the newspaper and dashed toward the lobby, my mind disintegrating. How could this have happened? How did the Review get those photos and our names? The cloying sounds of a flute and a waterfall emanated from speakers in the lobby. I slapped my credit card on the counter and scrawled a signature on the receipt.
I had to get a hold of myself. This was a crisis, but I could handle it. I’d figure out a way through. I just had to stay calm and come up with a plan. Maybe hire an attorney. Or maybe not. It might be better to let the thing die a natural death. Once tomorrow’s news came out, today’s news would be old. Nobody would care anymore. That’s what I’d remind Mom. And Carter. Oh, Carter. He had to know I wasn’t a thief. That I could afford to buy my own cookies. Four days to the wedding and I’d become the joke of the town. It couldn’t get any worse.
Except it did.
I ran outside and saw that almost every store on Main Street had the same poster in the window, white with blue lettering and a graphic underneath. They might have been for an upcoming event, like the high-school summer-theater production of Into the Woods or the Lyme Disease Symposium or the Garden Club’s plant sale. But when I looked at the poster in the window of Harmony Day Spa, I saw it wasn’t for any of those things. The words printed in blue said FREE THE BAKED-GOODS BANDITS! LET THEM EAT CAKE! And beneath that were blowups of the mug shots of David and me.