Cutting Away the Past

The first cut dropped like a wet ribbon onto white marble.

Théo stood behind Wren with silver shears in one hand, his other hand gloved and steady at her shoulder. The hair-rope had resisted the blade for a second, then given way in a heavy slice that thudded beside the basin.

Wren flinched anyway.

“Easy,” Adrian said.

She sat on the chair with her fingers locked around the armrests, shoulders caved in. The salon had gone so still that even the blow dryers seemed to have paused. No one had touched the sinks or the foil trays since he set the black envelope down.

Théo worked in sections. Cut. Lift. Cut again.

The mass slid to the floor in slabs, gray at the roots, brown at the ends, packed with dust and street grit. With each pass, the shape of her head changed. A neck appeared. Then the line of one ear. Then skin at the nape, pale under the grime.

Wren kept her eyes on the mirror wall, but not on herself.

“Do you want water?” Théo asked.

She shook her head once.

“Then we continue.”

More hair fell. A thick coil dropped over the chair leg and dragged across marble when one of the stylists nudged it aside with a gloved hand. The sound made Adrian’s jaw tighten.

When Théo reached the last layer, he switched from shears to comb and scissors, trimming close to her scalp. Hair kept coming. It piled at his feet and in a dark strip along the chair base. It looked heavier than it should have. It looked like a body had been set down and broken into pieces.

Then Théo turned the faucet on.

Water ran into the basin, brown at first, then the color of old tea. He rinsed, wrung, rinsed again. The stream never cleared for a long time. It took almost an hour before the water stopped dragging soot with it.

Wren sat through all of it without speaking. Her hands had started to shake. When Théo tilted her chin to wash behind her ears, she pressed two fingers to the scar at her collarbone, through the collar of Adrian’s coat.

The dirt thinned. Then it vanished from the skin at her jaw.

A face emerged under the last streaks of grime.

Porcelain skin. A mouth set in a hard line. Wide eyes with a dark ring at the iris that the water seemed to sharpen. Not the face of a street shadow. Not the face the salon had judged five minutes ago.

Adrian saw the memory before he named it.

A summer terrace. A silver spoon in a teacup. A girl with her hair pinned back, turning at a voice he hadn’t used in years.

His hand pressed his ribs.

“Genevieve,” he said.

Wren’s head snapped toward him.