The whine of the hair dryer finally dies, shocking us all with an abrupt moment of quiet. Which the woman in Renee’s chair promptly shatters, obviously unaware, at first, that she’s shouting.

“—believe something like that could happen in a town like Clifford!”

I know exactly what she’s talking about, of course. The glance Amira shoots me says that she knows too. We should leave. We should just get up and sneak out, so we can solicit donations from a business that isn’t a hotbed of small-town gossip.

I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea.

But I’m glued to my seat, both in fear of drawing attention to myself and because I want to hear what people are saying when they don’t know I’m listening.

I shake my head at Amira and pick up a magazine, watching the salon over the top edge while I pretend to read. Steeling myself for the inevitable.

“It’s a tragedy, to be sure,” the woman in the chair next to Renee’s client says, her focus glued to the mirror as her stylist trims her short gray curls.

Renee’s fifty-something client nods dramatically, earning a scowl from poor Renee, who’s holding a brush full of dark hair dye at the ready. “Karen, unless you want me to color your nose hairs by mistake, you’re gonna have to hold still.”

“Sorry, hon.” Then Karen shifts her focus, without moving her head, to the silver-haired woman getting a trim in the next chair. “It’s worse than a tragedy, Dana. It’s a crime. Even if that baby died from natural causes, it probably wouldn’t have if it had been born in a hospital. If the mother had gotten proper prenatal care.”

“How do you know she didn’t?” another woman asks from across the aisle, spinning her chair around. The timer on her station counts down the minutes until someone will have to check her color to see if it’s ready to rinse.

Karen shrugs into her mirror. “If the mother had been in the care of an obstetrician, the police would know who she was by now. I’m sure they’ve asked every doctor in town about any pregnant teenage patients.”

“Pshht.” The woman across the aisle rolls her eyes. “They know who the mother is. It’s the girl who ‘found’ the baby.”

She uses honest-to-god air quotes, and even though I haven’t done anything wrong, I find myself trying to melt into the couch cushions.

Amira gives me a pleading look, which I ignore.

“You know what they say,” the woman waiting out her dye timer says. “The guilty dog barks first. Or loudest. Or whatever.”