into untidy rolls in order to slide her feet into those suds, not this one. Not Kitty's mother, who wore sleek cropped pants below a fitted blouse.
In six months, this was the closest Kitty had ever been to Samantha. It might seem unbelievable that in such a tiny town they hadn't run into each other before, but that was because Kitty had run the other way whenever she'd spotted her mother.
It was too late for that now.
Inhaling a deep breath, Kitty averted her gaze and turned to approach the trio of chairs on her right. "Hi, Aunt Cat." She smiled at the hairdresser, Lisa, arranging her aunt's silvery hair. "Hi, everybody." Kitty nodded to include hairdresser Rita and her client, Olive, as well as the women beneath the dryers: Teresa Ha, Virginia Sanger, and Alice Lynch.
Lisa's eyebrows were hidden beneath her short fringe of bangs, her eyes were so wide. "Go ahead and sit down, Kitty," she said, nodding toward the free chair beside Aunt Cat. "It'll be a few more minutes."
As if she didn't have a care in the world, Kitty hopped onto the vinyl seat, ignoring the sick rush of awkwardness invading her belly. Her eyes met her aunt's in the mirror.
"Are you okay?" the older woman asked quietly.
"Fine, fine," Kitty hastened to say, aware that not only every eye but every ear in the place was turned her way. She tried to meet Aunt Cat's gaze in the mirror again, but Samantha was reflected there too, her perfect profile, her shoulder-length blond hair.
Kitty's chair squeaked as she rotated a half-turn to avoid the sight, but there was another mirror plastering this wall as well. In it Kitty had a perfect view of Nellie Sanderson holding up a bottle of nail enamel for Samantha's approval.
Ironic that they should meet over nail polish, Kitty thought. When she was a little girl, studying the photos in Aunt Cat's house, she'd pictured her absent mother as some exotic combination of Rapunzel and San Francisco flower child. She'd had the requisite long golden hair and dreamy, sad eyes. Though there'd never been any doubt that Samantha was her mother - Aunt Cat, as a true Wilder, had been plain-spoken in matters pertaining to sex and procreation - Kitty had regarded Samantha with the status of a mysterious, beautiful big sister.
In fifth grade, the girl who sat beside Kitty had a sister who was a trans-Atlantic flight attendant. She'd showered Kitty's classmate with foreign dolls and unfamiliar candy. Best of all, after her big sister's visits, the other girl would come to school smelling of sophisticated perfumes and showing off shiny silver tubes of cast-off lipsticks.
Kitty would inhale the delicious scents and gawk at the creamy colors rising out of the elegant tubes, all the while imagining that any day her beautiful big sister-mother would bring her gifts too. Or even send them. The idea of a package in the mail would cause her heart to pound. Inside would be something only this glorious creature would know Kitty longed for, before she even knew it herself. A two-layer makeup kit, perhaps, complete with a dozen tiny brushes and a rainbow of nail polishes. Maybe a bazooka-pink phone for her very own or a fancy curling iron to make waffle waves in Kitty's stick-straight hair.
Of course, the gifts never arrived. Occasionally she'd talk to Samantha on the utilitarian beige phone in Aunt Cat's kitchen, but after a while she avoided the stilted conversations. Aunt Cat never pressed, accepting Kitty's decision in the matter. It was another Wilder custom not to censure others' choices, because, Kitty guessed, they'd never wanted anyone to censure their decisions to become prostitutes, bootleggers, and the like.
Chair squealing again, Kitty swung back toward Aunt Cat and caught the entire shopful of people staring at her. She saw them all reflected in the mirror, including Rita, whose scissors remained poised over her client's iron-gray hair, and Teresa, Virginia, and Alice, who had abandoned their celebrity magazines for the more interesting event-in-progress. Even Nellie had one eye on Samantha's nails and one eye on Kitty.
Only Samantha wasn't looking.
Kitty faked a smile. "What's up?" she said to the room at large.
Nobody looked away. Lisa flushed, however, and made some comment about the previous busy weekend in Old Town.
"We're expecting even more visitors next week," Kitty called out, her voice bright. The shop's not-so-subtle study didn't ease, however. She suspected everyone was cataloging similarities between her and her mother.
There were some, she acknowledged, surreptitiously