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“I’ve been ordering from places that will deliver, but I feel like they’re all frozen, and I think Noah could probably do with something fresh.”
“That’s so sweet of you.”
“Well, you know, I don’t live there full-time anymore, but I still care about all of you.”
When our call ends, I re-emerge from my office with a smile on my face. I love Patty Duke.
“I think it’s so great you are still so close to your ex’s family. A little weird, but it’s great.” Kara’s comment stuns, and all I can do is look at her. There’s really no response to that.
“Was that Patty Duke?” her client asks, stopping me in my tracks. I don’t even know the woman in the chair, but she pieced together from that conversation who I’d been talking to?
“Yes, ma’am,” I respond in my most polite southern dialect.
“How is she?”
“Doin’ good.”
Bianca, our stylist-in-training—meaning she mainly washes hair, runs the register, and answers the phones—pipes in. “I heard Ian is in town.”
Her statement confuses me. “Ian who?”
“The surgeon.” She looks at me like I’ve asked for mayo on my fries. “The youngest brother.”
“Ian Duke is in town?”
“Yeah. Marley saw him in the parking lot at the Dollar General.”
All right. This is a case of mistaken identity. “He lives in Houston.” I state it like that proves she has her information wrong.
“You’re still friends with him, right?” Kara asks. “You’re friends with the whole family. But you and Sam don’t speak?”
All the women stare at me, and it feels like I’m a performer and there’s a spotlight over my head. “Sam and I still speak. I just don’t see him often. He lives in Connecticut.”
“It’s gotta be hard,” Kara says as her face morphs into the pity face. The timer beeps, and she lifts a flap of foil to check the color.
I stand there, flustered, torn between clarifying exactly what she means or just letting the sleeping dog lie.
“There he is. Told you,” Bianca says then leans over the trashcan and promptly spits out a piece of gum.
I can’t stop staring at Kara. What, exactly, is so hard that I deserve the pity face?
The salon door opens, and the man of the hour strides straight to me, completely ignoring the other women who are all gaping as if he sprung from the pages ofGQ.
“Hey. You guys close soon?” he asks.
“Yeah, we close at five. What’re you doing in town?”
“Had a meeting in Austin. Figured I’d stay in town for the night. You don’t have work tomorrow, right?”
“We’re closed on Sunday and Monday.” The wheels churning in Kara’s brain are so loud I can’t even look her way. “Did you come to check on Noah?”
Ian’s brow crinkles. No one speaks, because everyone is listening to us. He nods as he looks in Kara’s direction, the first sign he’s aware there are others in the room.
“That’s really so sweet of you. Since you’re home, can you run an errand for your mother?”
“My mom?” he asks as I gently guide him out of the salon and to his car.
“Yes, she called. She needs something picked up.”
