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“So, no real contractions?” I ask. “Nothing a little rest didn’t fix.”
“Not that I know of. But Mel is one of those quiet achievers, right? She works hard, she keeps her head down. She’s a people-pleaser. So she gets on with things and deals with a lot in silence. The only reason I know she had any contractions at all wasn’t because she was complaining, but because she was excited. But that also means, if a few biggies snuck up on her and rest didn’t fix it, chances are, she kept her trap shut and got on with her work.”
“Can you tell us about Melissa’s ex-boyfriend?” Fletch rests his ankle on the opposite knee and uses his leg as a table for his pad and pen. “Stanley Mathouson. He’s the father of her child, right?”
“He wasn’t her boyfriend.” She says it so easily, so offhandedly, it only confirms what Melissa’s mother already said. “They hooked up once. It was a fun night, they did their thing, they went separate ways. That was the end of it.”
“Have you met Stanley?”
She shakes her head instinctually. But then she stops and nods. “Once. She brought him in here one time to say hello. That was the day she told him she was pregnant, I believe.”
“When they came in here, was that before or after she’d told him?”
“After.” Going back to work, she paints the woman’s hair a little more. “Definitely after, because she made a joke while they were in here. Something about how he can probably get a family discount on haircuts now, if he wanted them.”
“How did he seem?” Fletch asks. “Angry? Sad? Put-out? Excited?”
“He was a little quiet.” She shrugs. “Shy isn’t the right word. But he wasn’t super outgoing, either. Frankly,” she chuckles under her breath, “I’d say he was in the middle of a mental crisis and working through the shock of finding out he was going to be a father.”
“You work with people every single day,” I muse. “You meet them. You probably become therapist to a lot of them while they sit in your chair. What were your impressions of the guy? Did you like him? Dislike him? Feel uncomfortable?”
“Honestly?” Foil. Paint. Fold. “I liked him. I could tell immediately why she’d gravitated toward him inside the club. He looked good. His eyes were intense—almost silver, and very sexy. His body was nice. Tall. Muscular, but he seemed gentle too. He’d just been told he was going to have a baby with a stranger, and still, he humored her and let her show him around the salon. “I mean,obviouslyhe didn’t give a shit about what we have here, but she wanted to share something about herself, so he went along with it. He spoke to her with respect. He didn’t hurry her out. He met each of us, shook our hands, made eye contact. He was polite. And the next day when Melissa came back to work, she said he was so sweet that day.”
A million thoughts run through my mind as I try to fill out the picture forming.
“Did they continue to hang out throughout the day?”
“Not all day, I don’t think. They grabbed a meal, which is where she told him. The place is near here, so that’s probably why she brought him by. Then the next day, she said he’d made sure she got home. He was a gentleman the whole time.”
“Had she kept contact with him throughout the pregnancy?”
“Mel texted,” she answers easily. “She wanted to keep him updated.”
“Did he reply?”
“Not that she told me. But she wasn’t mad about it, either. He told her from the get-go he probably wouldn’t stick around. His honesty was refreshing for her, so although it kinda seemed to me shewishedhe would stick, she wasn’t bitter that he didn’t.”
“Alright.” Flipping the page in his book, Fletch looks up. “Talk to us about Anton Creed.”
Instantly, Trudy’s lips curl back in disgust. “If we describe Stanley as tall and handsome and gentle, I would say the opposite of Anton. Short. Little man ego. He wasn’t the best-looking in the bunch, and he was always here.” She sets her brush down and places her hands on her hips. “Always. Here. It felt like he was checking up on her.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“I didn’t have a specific reason not to. He did nothing to directly offend me. But like you said, I read people. I get a feel for who they are. And Anton was…” She pauses for a moment. “Obsessed. A lot of women might be into that; to have a man focused solely on her. A man who wants to see her all the time. Who watches every step they take, and is constantly coming to her work with sweet little treats. But no. I didn’t like him. It felt like a show he was putting on for us, to appear like the perfect husband, but directly beneath that veneer was a man who wanted to control a woman’s every move.”
“How did Melissa describe him?” Fletch asks. “How did she feel about her marriage?”
“The fact she asked for a divorce kinda says it all, doesn’t it?”
Tapping her client’s shoulder, she nods toward the long row of basins and heads that way to help the woman get comfortable. Turning on the water, she slowly begins peeling back the foil at the very top of her head, the older foils.
“She felt smothered by him,” Trudy speaks over the sound of running water. “She wasn’t, like, abused or anything. Not that she ever told me. But she definitely felt watched. Some days, she seemed to love how attentive and kind he was. But other days, she felt like she could barely breathe.
“When their anniversary was coming up, Anton was planning this massivething. He wanted to go away for a week to some vineyard. Secluded. No cell service, no wi-fi, no outside world. Just a married couple and wine and a cabin in the woods. He told her only a week or so before they were supposed to go, and when Mel said she couldn’t just dump her clients or rearrange her schedule like that, he got all whiny about it.
“‘Why don’t you appreciate the things I do for you?’” she mimics his voice. “‘Why don’t you want to celebrate our anniversary? Don’t you want to spend time with me?’She kept saying she couldn’t do it, and he kept insisting she figure out her schedule and make it happen.”
Cutting the water, Trudy smirks. “Mel is a people-pleasermostof the time. But when she digs her heels in about something, that’s the end of it. Once she’d decided, she wasn’t going on that damn trip, even if she could set fire to her schedule.”
