She gasped through the stinging and blinked the water out of her eyes. Blood ran in trails down her arms and neck. The sink was stained pink with it. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from her crown, which she couldn’t see and couldn’t bear to touch. She groped in her plastic toiletry bag for a compact and held it up at an angle, turning away from the sink mirror, terrified of what she would see. A patch of skin, perhaps the size of poker chip, had been torn away with the hair.
She grabbed a hand towel and, too gingerly at first, dabbed at the wound. She cried out at the pain and pressed the towel harder to her head. She was going to pass out, she knew—already there were dark flashes wherever she looked—and then she would bleed to death. She leaned against the bathroom wall and lowered herself all the way to the floor, back flat. She braced her legs against the vanity and pushed back until her head was against the tiled wall, the balled up towel smashed between them.
Later, she went back into the bedroom and picked up the ponytail by its tip, trying not to look at the root. She wrapped the ponytail in toilet paper, the better part of the roll, until she couldn’t see any part of it, and then she dropped it in the wastebasket.
What hair was left hung around her face in jagged shards. Her hands shaking, she found her scissors, little pointy things for hangnails and loose threads. She held the ragged ends of her hair gently and cut the rest of it off.
? ? ?
Hanna was watching her. “I got a little roughed up,” Grace said, shrugging. “But I’m here.”
“My God,” Hanna said.
“They could still turn me in,” Grace said. “One word, you know? Everything would come unglued.”
“It’s already unglued,” Hanna said.
They looked up at the sound of the studio door. Jacqueline started at the sight of them sitting together at the worktable.
“What are you two doing working so late?” Her voice was overly friendly as she recovered herself. “I can’t pay overtime on that thing,” she said, nodding toward the centerpiece.
“We know,” Grace said. Hanna said nothing.
Jacqueline paused at her office door. “Julie, a moment.”
Grace followed her.
Jacqueline smiled nervously. “Good,” she said, as if Grace had answered some question.
She opened the black velvet box before her to reveal another ring, this one an Edwardian engagement ring. Grace thought it was beautiful. The ring’s setting was empty around the center solitaire. The four sockets were darkened with age. Jacqueline handed her a packet of four stones, emerald cut, probably from her bag of zircons.
“Do it here,” Jacqueline said.
“In your office?”
“Yes, now.”
When Grace went to fetch her tools, Hanna was staring distractedly at the centerpiece.
Grace sat down in Jacqueline’s chair and took up a loupe. She saw the sharp, bright track marks in the sockets where someone had crudely plucked out the stones. She nestled the first stone in its square socket while Jacqueline, sitting on a file box of papers, watched her. Grace glanced up and saw her boss’s mouth set tightly, a white rim around her lips.
Grace set the first two stones on either side of the solitaire. When she sat back and looked at the ring under the light, she nearly laughed at how bad it looked. The center solitaire was an antique, old mine cut. It glowed softly and looked almost buttery in the light. Jacqueline’s blowsy zircons looked like cheap sequins next to it.
Jacqueline was biting her lip, and Grace waited for her to say it, that the ring looked bad, that it would never pass, but Jacqueline nodded. She couldn’t tell.
Grace set the remaining two stones, feeling sorry for the ring’s owner. Jacqueline had gotten sloppy, making these lousy substitutions that she didn’t have the eyes to understand. She was going to get caught. But if Grace told Jacqueline that she knew, she’d be gone in ten seconds.
And then what? Back to being a chambermaid? An “English tutor”?
“It’s good to have something to fall back on,” that man had told her three years ago, zipping up his fly before he paid her at his door. “For when times get tough.”
What wouldn’t she do with no one watching? Grace remembered thinking then. What wouldn’t she do, now that she didn’t know who she was anymore? Her sense of self had quickly turned to vapor. Whom was goodness for, when you were all alone?
Grace handed the finished ring back to Jacqueline and left, closing the door behind her. Hanna had left.
25
For the next two days, Grace and Hanna worked in near-silence on the centerpiece. Grace glued woolen snow to the winter ground. Hanna curled the string hair of the new shepherdess beneath her bonnet to match the old shepherdess. They spoke only about the materials in their hands. When Hanna stood up each day to go aboveground for lunch, it was clear that she did not want Grace’s company.
On the third day, Hanna cleared her throat, startling Grace, who was edging the fall quarter with piles of painted paper leaves.
“The quiet ones always surprise you,” Hanna began. “I was the fourth in a family of five daughters. Everything was always filthy, and we all looked at our mother and swore we’d rather die than have a life like hers. Klaudia, my second-eldest sister, was the one who waited on her when she was sick or pregnant, took care of the babies, cooked. Never made a fuss.
“When Klaudia was sixteen, she told my parents she was leaving the next day to go to Austria with a man who’d come to town to bury his mother. He was twenty years older than she was—she had met him at our father’s grocery, working there. My parents said no, of course, and then Klaudia told them she was pregnant. That was that.” Hanna perched the shepherdess on a metal spike and gently adjusted her arms. “We never saw her again.”
Grace grimaced.
“I was thinking about her, because, like you, Klaudia didn’t really like the man. She got pregnant on purpose, to get away from us and never be able to come back. I don’t know what or who she thought she’d find when she left.”
“I loved him, Hanna. I was young and very stupid, but I did love him.”
“No,” Hanna said. “I don’t think you know what love is, not the kind that makes you forget yourself. You were always out for you.”
“I didn’t want them to rob the Wynne House,” Grace said, knowing how feeble it sounded. “I told them not to.”
“Because you wanted the painting. How kind. I don’t think you’re sorry. You’re just pissed you couldn’t pull it off.”
Grace crossed her arms over her chest.
“It’s the way you kept lying to them—over such a long time! My ex did that. She would grow a lie and tend it like a houseplant. But you’ve never stopped, have you? You’re probably lying to me right now, but I’ll never know, so what’s the point of even wondering? It’s not like I would ever trust you.”
How could she explain lying to someone who didn’t know it already, through and through, deep in her bones? Lies charged compound interest. You tried to fix what you had broken before you were found out, making little payments as you could afford to, just enough to keep the whole weight of it at bay. But the lie kept growing and growing. You could never pay it off, not without losing everything. The cost was total.
“You want me to judge you, Julie. You’re hungry for it. You don’t judge yourself harshly enough and you know it.”
When Grace had first arrived in Paris, she’d thought about confessing. Mrs. Graham went to confession every week, and when she came back she always looked less harried, relieved. And once, when her husband had teased her about it, Mrs. Graham had said, “I don’t get spa days, dear, and Father Tilton has a pay-what-you-wish program.” Grace had thought it would feel good to confess to a stranger, someone professionally obligated to forgive. Like throwing up, or taking out the trash.
“He could have picked up his life right where he left it when he got out,” Grace said. “He could have had the life he wanted, finally. He could paint the Wynne House! People would love it. He’s so forgiven, Hanna. He always has been. Prison probably would have been good for his career.” His art would seem more interesting, even if it hadn’t changed at all. “Now he’s gone and ruined his chances to do anything.”