Page 40 of The Number of Love
It wasn’t wrong to feel emotion. She knew that. Especially in something like this.
But it was dangerous. So dangerous. Emotions didn’t obey the rules. They existed somewhere outside the set of axioms that governed the rest of her life. They confused her.
Chatter and feminine laughter in three different tones filled the hallway. Were it anyone else giggling, she would have gone tense again, but Willa’s sisters she knew well. And knew that they deserved every lighthearted moment they could find or create. They’d lived hard lives, all of them, before the war had set their family of orphans on a different path.
Elinor was the first to enter, looking as though she stepped from an advert, in a smart suit and with perfectly coiffed hair. She held something in her hand that she brandished like a weapon, held aloft to rally the troops. “I bring curlers and wavers!”
Margot would have leapt from the chair if Willa weren’t holding her down. “No. Absolutely not. I only wanted you to trim it—and how did they even know?”
“I told Lukas to telephone them.” Willa narrowed her eyes at her. “Sit still and stop squirming like a child, Margot. You’re as bad as Jory. This isn’t about fashion—this is about blending in.”
“I fail to see—”
“She’s very right.” Rosemary edged over to the dressing table and set down a bag of her own. “Something we learned long ago: Look right, and you’ll drawlessattention, not more. If you’re going to have short hair and you don’t want everyone ogling you for it, you have to style it like the other girls are doing.”
Margot groaned. She certainly hadn’t thought ofthiswhen she picked up those scissors, or she would have come up with a less bothersome way to snarl at the matron.
“We’ll put it in terms you can understand. That’s why we brought Lina along.” Elinor motioned to the auburn-haired completion of the trio. Evelina wasn’t a direct adoption into their family—she’d married their eldest brother, Barclay, two years ago. “She understands mathematics better than the rest of us.”
Evelina made a show of cracking her knuckles. “I’ve borrowed Fergus’s text so I can get my phraseology right. We’re talking about waves, Margot. So let’s think in terms of amplitude and altitude, all right?”
Elinor nodded and unfastened the bag she’d brought. “Now, you’regoing to want to start with these clips. I’ll show you how, but for tonight we’re going to use one of those Marcel heated curling irons.”
It took a ridiculously long time for the sisters to finish their instructions, though that was largely because they were constantly interrupting one another. But Margot thought she was a pretty good sport about it. She took note of how wide each section of hair needed to be, the volume each clip could hold, what diameter she needed in an iron, and which direction to rotate either an iron or a clip to get the desired effect—though she still wasn’t sure she actually desired the effect. She practiced a few times on her own, and she didn’t say what she was thinking about how difficult it would be to get the back into the silly little curlers by herself.
She wasn’t going to point out that she now lived alone. Shewouldn’t.
She’d remember the process, though, and do what she could with it. At least since she could simply go to bed with her hair wound around the pins at night and take them out in the morning. A bit of pinning and, according to Elinor, she’d be finished. At least since she’d solidly refused the offer of the pomade the blonde had brought.
At last, they deemed the style complete and let her face the mirror again.
Margot wrinkled her nose at her reflection. “It isn’t me.”
“It is now.” Willa smirked and smoothed down a tuft of her daughter’s hair. Zurie had at some point abandoned Lukas, it seemed. “Unless you want us to make you match your niece.”
Right on cue, Zurie lunged for Margot, chanting, “Go-Go! Go!”
A game board flashed before her mind’s eye. A strange man in the park, playing it. He’d been there a few more times, though not regularly.
Zurie’s fingers found her new waves and latched ahold of them, earning a laughing reprimand from the others. Margot didn’t much care if the style was destroyed, but she also didn’t object when Willa took the little one back. She liked Zurie, and she would like her even more as she grew up a bit and could carry on a conversation. But she never experienced whatever tug these other young womenmust feel, to make such silly faces and coo over each new addition to their family.
“Let’s show Lukas.” Rosemary tugged her to her feet and gave her a helpful push toward the door. “You know, Go-Go, I could work wonders with that dress, too, if you let me—”
“No. And you’re not allowed to call me that if you’re over three years old.”
Rosemary gave an exaggerated sigh. “You’re hopeless. But we love you anyway.”
A minute later, she stood obediently in front of her brother while he regarded her with lifted brows. His silence stretched long enough that Margot’s fingers curled into her palms. “What? I know it looks strange, but—”
“Non. Ce n’est pas ça.” He shook his head, blinked rapidly. “It isn’t that at all. You look ... you look likeMère.”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” She’d always taken after their father, not their mother. And Maman had certainly never had short hair. Though shehadoccasionally styled the sides in waves, for special occasions. It had been years since Margot had seen her make such an effort. Before Papa died.
“Look.” Lukas reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. From within it, he slipped a small photograph. “I had it with me in Paris. Before the invasion.”
She took the thick paper, her throat going tight when she looked down at it. Maman, smiling at the camera, looking beautiful and polished. She remembered the portrait—it was what Papa had wanted for his birthday the year before he died. But she’d thought all the prints of it were gone, like everything else from her past.
“I didn’t know you had this.” Each feature was so familiar. So beloved. The darkest hair. The sparkling eyes. The perfectly proportioned face, symmetrical and unequivocally beautiful because of it. And waves on the sides of her hair.
