Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father) (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

S
ARAH
STOOD
before the bathroom mirror, a pair of kitchen shears in her right hand. The reflection before her had red eyes, a swollen red nose and chapped lips. She caught the end of her braid with her left hand and held it out horizontally. She imagined the feel of the scissors cutting through the thickness of the braid. Her neck would feel bare. Empty.

Bereft? No, she was not bereft. And, regardless of what Matthew had said, it had to be this way. Coming back to Port Hamilton, expecting to just pick up the threads of her old life, had been naive. But she could put all of this behind her. Just as she’d done with Ted. She would call the agency, tell them she was ready for another assignment. Reinvent herself.

She held the braid between the scissors blade. One quick cut and it would be done, a symbolic way to end this chapter of her life and to begin another one.

Okay. She brought the scissors down on the hair. The braid was surprisingly tough to cut. She opened the scissors, closed them again, but after the first small cut, they wouldn’t close down on the entire braid. She put them down in the sink and checked the braid. The scissors had cut about a fourth of the way through, but not in the clean, incisive way she’d imagined. Rather, it was as though it had been chewed by a dog.

In the kitchen, she found the butcher’s knife and, without even looking in the mirror, applied it to the braid. Still, it wasn’t exactly doing the job. She considered unbraiding her hair, then taking the scissors to it, although it didn’t promise quite the dramatic satisfaction she’d had in mind—of watching the braid drop to the floor.

She kept hacking away.

The doorbell rang.

She froze. Matthew. He couldn’t see her like this. She glanced around the kitchen, eyed the window as a possible escape route.

But wait! Maybe this was exactly how he should see her. Crazed, a butcher’s knife in one hand. An image that would burn in his brain, drive home the knowledge that he should thank his lucky stars he hadn’t thrown in his lot with her.

Brandishing the knife, she threw open the door.

Lucy screamed.

“Oh, Lucy,” Sarah said. “I thought it was your dad.”

Lucy’s eyes widened. She looked ready to bolt.

“This isn’t quite the way it looks,” Sarah said. “I was just cutting my hair—”

“With a knife?”

“Well, I started to use scissors, but they wouldn’t work.” She looked at Lucy, still wide-eyed but slightly less apprehensive, and wondered why it suddenly seemed important to reassure the girl. “You want to come in?”

“Oh, that’s okay.” Lucy shifted her weight. “I kind of wanted to talk to you about my dad. He’s going to Central America and—”

“Your dad’s going to Central America?”

Lucy scuffed her foot against the doorstep. “Yeah.”

In the months since Sarah had met Matthew’s daughter, she’d never felt an inclination toward physical demonstrations of affection, but looking at Lucy now, head bowed, Sarah put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and led her inside. Leaving the door open just in case Lucy still harbored fears for her safety.

She sat next to Lucy on the futon. “You want to tell me about it?”

“Dad said he wanted to work with you but you didn’t want him and CMS doesn’t want him so now he’s going to Central America.” She sniffed. “And I really, really don’t want him to go.”

Sarah realized she was still holding the butcher’s knife. The braid, still half attached, hung down over one shoulder. Her brain was buzzing with questions, the foremost being whether Matthew had set this up. If he had, it was diabolically clever of him, she had to give him that. As she mulled this, she realized Lucy was watching her.

“I cut my mom’s hair for her sometimes,” Lucy said.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Lucy eyed Sarah’s hatchet job. “Yours might be a little harder to do, but I could try to work on it, if you want.”

Sarah smiled. “You know, that might be a really good idea.”

“Okay.” Lucy bit her lip, her gaze still directed at Sarah’s braid. “I’m sorry I was mean to you.”

M
ATTHEW
HAD
RUN
the length of Lopez Hook and was headed back into town thinking about getting some breakfast when he ran into a woman in a green track suit jogging in the opposite direction.

Head down, short auburn hair gleaming in the sunlight, she snarled something about idiots who didn’t look where they were going and started to pass him when he realized who it was. In one quick move, he grabbed her by the arm, yanked her around to face him and saw Sarah’s familiar triumphant grin.

“Ha-ha, fooled you,” she said.

He smiled. “Well, obviously you didn’t.”

“Too clever by half, Cameron.” She smiled right back at him. “Sending your daughter to plead your case.”

“Had I known about the butcher’s knife,” he said, “I might have thought twice before enlisting her.”

“You know, it’s funny, I’ve always had this problem knowing what to say to people who cut my hair, but Lucy and I got along famously. Had a great talk, cleared up a lot of things.”

“It looks very nice,” he said.

“Really?” She ruffled it with her hand. “I feel naked, but it’s also very liberating. There must be some scientific explanation. Hair absorbs negative energies, all the old emotional baggage. Cut it off and you effectively rid yourself of all that junk.”

Matthew hadn’t stopped smiling since they collided. “I would suggest conducting more research before submitting that to the
New England Journal.
”

“But would it work for you, Matthew? If I told you that all the neurotic garbage I spouted was eliminated with my haircut?”

“I’ve bought more preposterous ideas from you in the past,” he said. “Like the time you convinced me that the ferry pilings were actually planted there as saplings.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Matthew, don’t make me grovel. So, will you ask me again? To marry you?”

“How do I know the crazy ideas won’t come back as your hair grows?”

Sarah glanced at her watch. “You have two minutes. You want to marry me, or not?”

“I was thinking you could ask me this time,” he said. “Just to even things up.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “Down on one knee?”

“Come here, you.” He held her face between his hands, kissed her eyes, her mouth. It had taken so long to come to this, such a circuitous route, but here they were, back in the place they both knew so well, ready to start a new adventure together. “I love you, I’ve always loved you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

O
N
THE
SMALL
BEACH
, where they had played together as kids, on a sunny July day with gulls floating like toy ducks in the water and the waves lapping behind them, Sarah looked into Matthew’s eyes as she slipped the ring on his finger. In that very moment, she realized perfection was, in fact, possible.

* * * * *

ISBN: 9781459223844

Copyright © 2011 by Janice Macdonald Seib

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