Ashley did not come to the salon the following Thursday.
I checked the appointment list twice.
Her name was still there.
Two o'clock.
I had prepared the station out of habit.
Fresh towel.
Clean combs.
Water bottle.
At two fifteen, I moved on to my next customer.
I told myself I was relieved.
I didn't have to look at Ashley's face.
I didn't have to wonder whether she had argued with Dale or whether she believed his version of what happened.
But when the front door opened, I still looked up.
It was a woman asking whether we had any openings the following week.
I answered her question and returned to work.
The afternoon passed slowly.
I kept thinking about the ring.
I kept thinking about the white Lexus and the condo on the north side.
I kept thinking about the way Ashley had described Dale's wife as a woman who didn't care.
She had not known she was talking about me.
That did not erase what she had said.
It did not make me hate her, either.
I was too tired to decide what I felt about Ashley.
I was more concerned about the documents.
Patrice had asked me to preserve my notes and write down what I remembered as accurately as possible.
I had begun doing that each evening.
I did not add guesses.
I did not turn my fears into facts.
I wrote what I knew and marked what I could not confirm.
The appointment book was becoming a record of more than Ashley's visits.
It was a record of the moment I stopped accepting Dale's explanations without question.
At four, I cleaned my station.
I placed the combs in their container and folded the towel.
I checked the certificate beside my mirror.
The frame still had the same scratch.
Nothing about it had changed.
I had.
The next Thursday, Ashley arrived at two five.
She came through the door without the smile she usually wore.
Her white Lexus was parked outside.
She carried her handbag in one hand and kept the other closed around something.
I greeted her as I would any customer.
"Afternoon, Ashley."
She looked at me.
"Can we still do my hair?"
"Of course."
She sat down.
I wrapped the cape around her shoulders and fastened it.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
I combed through her hair and checked the ends.
She watched me in the mirror.
"I suppose you hate me now."
I set the comb down.
"I don't hate you."
She looked unconvinced.
"You have every reason to."
I returned to her hair.
"I'm not going to pretend those conversations didn't happen."
She lowered her eyes.
"I didn't know you were his wife."
"I know."
She swallowed.
"He told me you didn't care about him anymore."
I sectioned her hair.
"What did you think that meant?"
She was quiet for a while.
Then she said she had believed him.
She had believed that his marriage was finished in everything but paperwork.
She had believed that I knew about the business problems and had no interest in helping.
She had believed that the condo and the boat account were part of a future he had earned.
I listened without interrupting.
She was not telling me anything I had not already heard.
But this time, she was saying it to the person she had been describing.
"He made it sound like you didn't want to know what was happening," she said.
I met her eyes in the mirror.
"Did you ever ask him why he was still married?"
She looked down.
"He said he was waiting for the right time."
I thought about the years I had spent waiting for the right time to ask questions.
The right time to discuss money.
The right time to tell him I was worried.
The right time to ask whether his long hours were taking him away from our marriage.
There had always been a reason to wait.
I began applying the color.
Ashley watched my hands.
"Did you know about the ring?"
"Not until you showed me."
She closed her eyes.
"I was so proud of it."
I kept working.
"I understand."
"No, I mean…"
She stopped.
I waited.
"I thought it proved he was serious about me."
I looked at her in the mirror.
A ring could prove that somebody had bought a ring.
It could not prove what he had promised.
I did not say that aloud.
Ashley took a breath.
"He's furious with me."
I separated another section of hair.
"Why?"
"Because I told you about the money and the papers."
I looked at her.
"Did you tell him you knew I was his wife?"
She nodded.
"He said I should have known better than to talk about his private life."
For a moment, I felt something close to anger on her behalf.
Then I remembered the way she had laughed about my second job.
I let the feeling pass.
Ashley reached into her handbag.
She took out a twenty-dollar bill.
She held it between her fingers but did not place it on the counter.
"I know this doesn't fix anything."
"No, it doesn't."
She nodded.
The honesty seemed to hurt her more than a comforting answer would have.
I finished applying the color and set the timer.
The salon hummed around us.
Somebody at the front desk answered a telephone.
A dryer started in the next station.
Ashley looked at her reflection.
"I don't know what happens now."
I folded my arms.
"Neither do I."
She looked at me.
For the first time, there was no confident smile, no story about Dale's generosity, no talk of the life she expected him to give her.
There was only a woman sitting in a salon chair with color in her hair and a twenty-dollar bill in her hand.
I did not ask her to leave.
I did not promise that we could be friends.
I finished her appointment as professionally as I could.
When I rinsed her hair, the water ran over the ends and into the bowl.
I watched until it cleared.
Then I dried and styled it.
Ashley examined the result in the mirror.
"It looks good."
"I'm glad."
She placed the bill beside my comb.
I did not reach for it immediately.
Then I put it in the drawer with the other tips.
She stood and took her handbag.
At the door, she turned back.
"Carol, I'm sorry."
I believed she meant it.
That did not mean everything was forgiven.
"I heard you," I said.
She nodded and walked outside.
Through the window, I watched her unlock the white Lexus.
She sat behind the wheel for a while before starting the engine.
Then she drove away.
I returned to my station and opened the appointment book.
I wrote down the date of her visit.
I recorded what she had told me, keeping her words separate from what I knew myself.
The twenty-dollar tip sat in the drawer beneath the counter.
I had accepted one every Thursday for months.
Now it seemed like the smallest object in a story that had become much larger than either of us understood.
I closed the appointment book.
Then I turned off the light above my station and went back to work.
Click here to continue reading: PART 13: Patrice Told Me to Separate What I Feared From What I Could Prove, and I Finally Began Looking at My Marriage Differently
The Woman Who Kept Coming Back Every Thursday, Never Knowing How Much Her Casual Stories Were Costing Me
Part 12 of 24
