CHAPTER ONE

Emily
I don’t care who you are, when you live in a town the size of your
thumb, if you don’t like the way your hair turns out at the salon,
you stuff it deep down and never acknowledge it.
And that’s exactly why I prefer to take matters into my own
hands and not allow circumstances to ever reach that point. I tend
to speak my mind, and have it bite me in the ass too often, so I
know if I tell Virginia that I hate my hair after this appointment,
she’ll never forget it. By noon, she’ll have told everyone in our zero
stoplight town that I’m her pickiest, most unappeasable client. The
roasting and poking will start immediately, and by five-thirty when I
go to The Diner, someone will pop up out of nowhere and say, Are
you sure that booth is good enough for you or would you like the
one we reserve for the queen?
And it won’t stop there. From that day on, they’ll put a plaque on
the table that reads TABLE RESERVED FOR QUEEN EMILY, and nothing I do
or say will get them to remove it.
And if it seems like I’m overreacting, please know this is the very
same town that started a petition last year, complete with smear
campaign, to encourage my youngest sister (who was twenty-six
years old at the time, mind you) to stop dating Will Griffin because
they thought she was too good for him. He won them over in the
end (Annie + Will forever), but the petition with the final tallies is
framed and hanging in The Diner alongside the picture of Dolly
Parton posing with the town. And I do mean the majority of the
town. They heard she had stopped in for lunch while passing
through, and one person called another who called their cousin who
called their best friend who called their aunt’s boyfriend, and they all
showed up for one huge group photo.
Moral of the story: Never underestimate what the town of Rome,
Kentucky, is capable of.
The smell of bleach singes the insides of my nostrils as Virginia—
one of only three stylists in the area—combines the powder lightener
with the creamy developer right beside my face. She’s mixing that
stuff so slowly a baby could do it faster, but I keep this thought to
myself by picturing the terrifying treasure chest I’ve created in my
mind where I lock up all my most antagonistic thoughts. It’s made of
black steel and has sharp metal prongs all over it. The thing is
deadly and made for keeping the peace in my day-to-day life.
“Well—I don’t like to gossip,” Virginia begins, weighing in on the
conversation beside us that Hannah (the other stylist) and her client,
Shirley, are having about the reason our packages have all been
delivered late this week. Shirley has been the receptionist at the
elementary school where I teach for over twenty-five years. She eats
gossip like multivitamins.
Virginia continues, “But I did happen to see a certain someone
leaving Brad’s house the other morning.”
Brad is our mailman, if it wasn’t obvious.
Everyone other than me in the salon gasps. I’m too busy staring
at the bowl of lightener that’s not going to mix itself as Virginia lazily
sways it in front of my face. The sassy grin aimed at the other ladies
tells me she has no intention of putting any sort of hustle into my
highlighting process.
“You don’t mean…?” Hannah taunts, pausing with scissors in one
hand, and in the other, a thin section of Shirley’s white hair, held at a
ninety-degree angle—pre-snip.
“Yes,” Virginia states meaningfully with a vicious small-town
twinkle in her eye. Take a picture right now and this would serve as
the perfect image to describe Rome, Kentucky.
“But she’s married.”
“Not for long. When Hayes gets wind of what his wife has been
doing with the sexy mailman, I expect we’ll see Evelyn’s clothes
flung all over the yard and the neon boxers Brad is always giving us
a
peek of strung up the flagpole.” She pauses and frowns.
“Truthfully, though, I don’t think Brad and Evelyn would make such a
bad match.”
As fun as this is (and I don’t mean that sarcastically because I
can get down with some juicy gossip along with the best of them), I
happen to know that the lightener already painted on the back of my
head and tucked into foils is getting dangerously close to frying the
hair right off my scalp. I need Virginia to get this second bowl
applied ASAP so she can start rinsing out the back while the front
processes. I’m naturally a dark-blonde and prefer my highlights to
blend seamlessly—not shine so bright they signal extraterrestrials.
The bowl weaves in front of my face again, but I intercept it this
time and balance it in my lap to whisk the hell out of this cream. As
all good and unbearable perfectionists know, if you want something
done right, you mostly have to do it yourself.
Virginia doesn’t even spare me a glance. She’s used to me by
now. The whole town is. When they see Emily Walker coming, they
hand whatever it is they’re doing over to me and dive out of the
way. Usually with a smile because they know I’ll do it in half the time
and with the precision of a military special ops agent.
I finish mixing and hand the bowl over my shoulder to Virginia,
who is knee-deep in speculation about what could have caused
Evelyn to stray in her marriage. My next victim: the stack of messy
foils on the workstation. I pre-fold each piece, handing them up one
by one as Virginia paints the last of the lightener onto the front of
my hair. There wasn’t much left, so thankfully she finishes quickly,
and while the front processes, she spritzes water into the back foils
and towels them off.
I tune out as the salon talk show moves through the lives of
various town citizens, airing everyone’s dirty laundry with a bit of but
it’s not my place to judge sprinkled on top just in case the good Lord
is listening.
Madison, my sister just below me in age who is currently living in
New York working on her culinary degree, will be angry that I’m not
paying enough attention to relay all of the tasty on-dits to her later,
but I’m too lost in my head, thinking of all the tasks I can get done
now that I’m officially out of school for the summer and no longer
have a class full of spunky—yet delightful—second-graders to teach
every day. I don’t like to leave loose ends, so I cleaned out my
classroom on the last day of school even though most of the other
teachers will clean theirs out over the next few days. In the past I
would go and help them, but I’m not allowed to anymore. They
banned me after last year, saying they didn’t need a drill sergeant
with a clipboard telling them how to efficiently pack up their rooms.
Fair enough.
So with the school year officially behind me, I can focus on tasks
closer to home:
Help Mabel repaint the porch railing on her inn
Finish writing the last chapter in my romance novel
Contact the city about the pothole on Main Street
Call Annie’s Internet provider and haggle for a lower price
The last one is more fun than chore for me. Annie, the most
tenderhearted out of us four Walker siblings, mentioned the other
day that she was dreading making that call, so I gleefully offered
myself up as tribute. There’s nothing I love more than going head
to-head with a salesperson.
And believe it or not, I’m not the oldest sibling of our bunch.
That title belongs to Noah—but part of me wonders if my parents
were too sleep-deprived somewhere along the way and forgot that I
was actually born first based on how laid back he is in comparison to
me. Too bad my parents are dead, so I can’t ask them. Actually
there’s no one I can ask about my family history now because as of
November, my grandma—the woman who raised us after my parents
kicked the bucket—died too. Everyone is dead. Dead, dead, dead.
And yes, I do like to throw startling little facts like those into
conversation whenever I can because shock is always preferable to
pity.
The last guy I dated seemed really freaked out when I delivered
the dead-parents line with a smile on my face. But these days, I’m
happily single by choice. (There’s also a chance that I’m single
because I’m an unlovable porcupine and got tired of the constant
rejection…but that thought is terrifying, so I slip it inside my Metal
Treasure Chest of Doom and leave it there right next to the memory
of my first and only love shattering my heart.)
Virginia tips my head back into the million-year-old plastic salon
sink to rinse and shampoo my hair. Rather than relaxing, I spend the
entire time convincing myself my neck isn’t going to snap. And it’s
not until I’m back in the salon chair and Virginia is plugging in her
blow-dryer that I hear the name that has me doing a mental spit
take.
“Well, I’ve got my own bit of news to share. Did y’all hear about
Jack Bennett?” I doubt Shirley realizes that with that one name she
has successfully stopped my heart.
“The sexy teacher from the elementary school where you both
work?” asks Virginia, her eyes a little too bright. They’re downright
zesty.
Jack Bennett, aka my archnemesis since college who moved
away four months ago, is supposed to be getting married today to a
woman who I happen to think is completely wrong for him. But
that’s beside any sort of relevant point.
“Yes. Well, turns out, he’s not getting married today after all. The
entire wedding was canceled a few weeks after he moved away with
her! How strange is that?