The door to her room had been left open, though she remembered closing it—having to push hard to force the swollen boards past each other. Could it have swung ajar as the building settled? She chewed her lip and spread her sleeping bag over the door she’d salvaged for a mattress. As she went to pull her door shut, she noticed the wall by the doorway was bare. Heat flared from her chest to her throat. Had Ash searched her room? She stomped to the closet to throw her pack inside.

There, on the shelf, sat the picture—right back in the exact same space in the dust.

Laurel took it out again and hung it back on the nail.

“She can’t have the antiques.” She ran her fingertips over the glass, tracing the hair stitches. “She may have everything else, but she can’t have those.”

I could nail a board across my door. That would keep her out. But I’d probably burn to death when this place goes up in the night.

Laurel slid fully clothed into her down sleeping bag.

She swore she could still hear Ash whispering. Was that even possible? She must have called someone, or she was reading her tarot cards. Ash sounded happier with her gone. Everyone was always happier after she left. She bet Tyler missed her, though. Good.

She pulled the sleeping bag up to her chin, closed her eyes and drifted off to the sound of the wind slamming boards against the empty window frames.

***

She felt a sharp pain in her scalp. A tug on her hair and the digging tines of a comb against her skin. The sting of hairs plucked and yanked, the ice-cold steel of scissors, the warm spread of blood down her neck. She heard her mother’s voice. This is what happens, stupid. You ruined your hair. Now see how ugly you are? She heard Ash’s quiet sobs from behind the bathroom door, remembered the smell of burning hair, the curls dropping around her in piles to the floor, the strawberry-red blister on Ash’s mouth where she’d bit down on the curling iron—how it stood out against the terrified blanch of her face.

She ran her fingers through the hair trailing from the picture on the wall, pulling the stitches free, clearing the tangle of knots, untying all those memories. Long strands in every hue wrapped around her wrists in silky curls. Let’s play hair salon, Ash said. I’m going to make you beautiful. She braided the hair from the picture in a long plait that trailed from the frame as though from Rapunzel’s tower. White crossed over red, red over yellow, yellow over black . . . I’m going to make you beautiful.

***

Laurel opened her eyes to darkness, unsure in her windowless room if morning had come or not. There was a scratching at her door. A hiss of nails against wood.

“Coffee?”