“Did you just get that dress?” she asked, as casually as she would if nothing at all had happened and we were still at home.
“Recently, yes.”
“Did Daddy buy two?”
“Hardly,” I said. “Why would he?”
She nodded, not even a small wrinkle at the corner of her lips. But I didn’t think she looked angry or even disappointed.
“When did you cut your hair?” I asked, not hiding my suspicions.
“Yesterday,” she said. At first, I thought she wasn’t going to sit. She gazed at herself in the mirror and brushed back what hair she had. “Does it look terrible? I only spent ten minutes on it.”
“You mean you literally cut it yourself?”
She spun around. “Attempted to. Someone else finished. They get hairstylists in training here to work on the poor jerks like me.” She started to circle the table. “Stand up. I want to see the dress.”
I did.
“Daddy bought you that without me whining for it or telling you to demand it?”
“I’m wearing it, aren’t I?”
“You don’t look bad at all,” she said, still trying to sound indifferent, but I thought I also heard disappointment. “Overall, you look very good. A little overly made up, maybe, but nice hairstyle. You would pass our famous Haylee inspection.”
“I did look bad,” I said. “Very bad. I’m wearing a wig. My hair was butchered—but not by a stylist in training.”
She shrugged and flopped into the chair across from me. “Whatever. It looks very nice, natural.”
“Whatever? It took me weeks to gain some of the weight I lost. There were times he starved me and times I couldn’t eat.”
She shrugged again. “I wouldn’t have noticed any weight loss if you hadn’t told me. I lost some weight, too.”
Her indifference triggered frustration inside me, frustration that felt like a hand tightening into a fist. “You lost some weight?” I said. “How unfortun
ate. Do you remember how long I was locked away?”
“Time is the stream I go fishing in,” she replied, following with a trickle of a laugh.
“What?”
“That essay on Thoreau we had to write—you had to write, I should say. I was so bored. I hated writing essays.”
“Essays? That’s what you’re thinking about now?”
“I can’t believe Daddy bought you that dress. I guess you’re his favorite now.”
“Can you blame him?”
She looked around and then directly at the mirror, but obviously not trying to see through it.
“I just woke up one morning and thought I should cut it,” she said, patting her hair again. “I was beginning to look too drab.” She turned back and stared at me a moment before she smiled. “You were always his favorite anyway, Kaylee. You didn’t know it, but I did. You were everyone’s favorite, even Mother’s. I learned that pretty quickly when you were gone.”
“Is that why you did it?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Why did I do it?”
“I don’t have a million dollars, but I’d like to know.”