I had brushed my daughter’s waist-length hair the night before. By five the next day, it was gone. She was crying, Grandma knew why, and neither of them would give me an answer.
Sunday nights in our house had a rhythm I could set my watch to.
The living room lamp glowed soft and gold, the TV murmured some quiet show neither of us watched. My daughter, Emily, sat cross-legged on the carpet between my knees while I dragged a soft brush through her hair.
Her hair was the kind strangers stopped to compliment in grocery lines. Thick, chestnut, spilling past her hips like something out of a storybook.
“Don’t. It’s Sunday.”
“Never cutting it, Mom,” she said that night, tilting her head back against my knee. “Not ever.”
“Not even a trim?”
