My name is Melanie Williams. I am twenty-six years old. The morning I am describing was the morning before my sister Ashley’s wedding, the wedding I had spent six months helping plan, the wedding for which I had hand-lettered a hundred and fifty invitations and built custom centerpieces and driven an hour each way to pick up a dress I did not like because it was the one my sister felt comfortable with. My waist-length auburn hair had been, by any honest accounting, my most commented-upon feature. People stopped me on the street about it. Clients at my design firm mentioned it. It was the kind of hair that photographs beautifully and takes a decade to grow and cannot, once cut, be replaced by anything except time.
It was gone. Chopped in uneven chunks, some sections barely chin-length, others cut so close to the scalp that the pale skin underneath showed through.
I found the evidence in the hallway trash bin before I went downstairs. Long auburn strands stuffed beneath tissues and an empty toothpaste tube, disposed of like yard waste.
My parents were at the kitchen table with their coffee, sitting in the ordinary posture of people who have done nothing worth discussing.
“What did you do to me,” I said from the doorway.
My mother looked up. “We knew you wouldn’t agree if we asked.”
