I attempted a smile. It felt like I’d overstepped. “Sorry,” I said.
She laughed. “There’s no reason to be sorry, honey. I know how Maureen can be. Hell, I’ve been doing her hair for thirty-five years so I know all the stuff she pulls when she wants something her way.”
I fell silent after that, wondering what debt of gratitude Gina owed my grandmother.
“I guess I’ve just never seen her be kind,” I said. Maybe that was bold of me, but it was true.
Gina, however, was nodding as she swept the cool color through my hair.
“I’ve only seen her express some genuine kindness once,” she said. “But it was the most incredible gift anyone had ever given me, and it came at a time when I needed it most.”
Silence followed as I mulled that over, curious. Finally, I worked up the courage and asked. “What was it? What’d she do?”
Gina exhaled. “She was there for me when my daughter died,” she said. “At a time when no one else in this damn town showed me any sympathy, your grandmother was there for me. She probably even saved my life.”
“Wow,” I said, stunned. I couldn’t understand how anyone could deny a grieving mother some sympathy. “I’m sorry about your daughter.”
“Me, too, honey.”
I searched for something appropriate to say. Nothing came to me. “How old was she?”
“Eighteen.”
That shocked me. I’d imagined a toddler or an infant, not a girl my age.
“What happened?” I asked, knowing I was probably out of line, but unable to resist the temptation to know.
Gina smoothed the brush over more of my hair with an almost cool detachment.
“She was murdered,” she said.
I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh, Gina…” I said, now really ashamed of myself. “I’m…that’s…God, I’m so sorry!”
How was it possible that this small, quaint town had seen so much violence? This was the second murder I’d heard about in just a few hours.
“It’s okay,” Gina said, lifting her gaze to look at me. “Really. I’ve had thirty years to get strong enough to talk about it.”
“Did they catch who did it?”
“No,” she said. “They never did.”
She didn’t elaborate any further, and I let the topic drop. No way was I gonna press her for more details, and I still felt bad for even bringing it up. And yet, I wondered what specifically it was that my grandmother had done for Gina during that time.
“I’m really glad my grandmother was there for you,” I said at last.
A faint, sad smile played at the corners of Gina’s lips. “Maureen used to come to my home, you know. After my daughter died, I was so depressed I spent nearly a year in bed. I lost my salon, my husband left me, and all my clients found other stylists to do their hair, and I didn’t even care. And then one day your grandmother shows up at my door, demanding that I get out of bed and do her hair.”
My mouth fell open, but Gina laughed and shook her head.
“She saved my life,” she said. “I mean, that day I wanted to sock her in the mouth, but she acted like barging into my home and demanding I take care of her was her God-given right as a Bennett. So, just to shut her up and get her out of my house, I did her hair. It came out awful, but she went on and on about how gorgeous she looked, and then she left.
“The next day, one of her friends from that snooty country club shows up and says that she’s got some sort of hair emergency. And the next day, two more friends of hers came by. Pretty soon, I didn’t go a day without doing some friend of Maureen’s, and then after about two months of that, she presented me with a deed to this place.”
“She gave you this shop?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine Grandmother being so generous—unless of course there were strings attached.
“She did,” Gina said, but then laughed again. “Oh, it didn’t look like this, though. No, it looked like something that should’ve been condemned. It was an old house that’d been commercially zoned before the last tenants abandoned it, and Maureen said she wanted it off her books because she couldn’t sell it or rent it out, so she deeded it over to me. After seeing it for the first time, I didn’t think it was much of a gift, but Maureen called me the next morning and said some people were waiting for me here. When I arrived, there were two trucks fully loaded with supplies, from paint to tile to drywall, and a crew of volunteers to help me whip this place into shape. It took a long time to fix it up, but all that hard work was really good for me. It helped me through the grief and gave me my life back.”
Gina’s story stunned me in a way that made me feel ashamed all over again. Had I pegged my grandmother all wrong?
Gina switched the topic over to me, asking me about Richmond and school there, and I found myself telling her things that normally I’d keep private. I confessed to losing both my best friend and my boyfriend at the end of the previous year, and she was nicely sympathetic. She also told me to hang in there at my new school.