She didn’t care about the hair. It would grow, or it would not, if she decided she liked it this way. She’d cut it before. She was hardly like one of those girls who thought they wanted to be fashionable and then bawled their way out of the barbershop.

But the irrational action—that bothered her.

Willa put the scissors down and leaned over until her head was next to Margot’s, their faces sharing the reflection. They looked nothing alike—Willa’s hair was a fair brown, straight and silky, her nose flatter, her complexion that perfect English rose—but they were sisters. Love and Lukas had made them so, and it was the only reason Margot entrusted her with such an unsettling truth.

It was why she made no objections when Willa slid an arm around her shoulders. This sister of hers wasn’t much of a toucher. Only with those she loved best, and only in moments when it mattered. When Willa put her arm around her, Margot knew it meant something.

In many ways, they spoke the same language.

“Margot. I know you think it’s weak to give in to emotions. But you just lost your mother. That can’t go unanswered by your heart.”

“It hasn’t.” It wouldn’t. She would discover what had really made her mother fall and breathe her last. She would go over every minute of her last days until she had answers.

“It has. This isn’t something you approach scientifically, as a puzzle needing to be solved. This isn’t a matter for your head.” She lifted her fingers and rested them against the side of Margot’s head.

Margot drew in a breath. “Everything is a matter for the head. The mind controls the heart—or can. We do not have to be swayed by every emotion that comes along.”

“No. Not each one. But sometimes they crash over us, don’t they? Too strong for us to swim against, to fight off. And then we do illogical things like cut our hair off in the middle of a hospital corridor. Or go with someone into occupied territory to rescue his mother and sister.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. Worse, she couldn’t hold Willa’s reflected blue-green gaze. She looked down, even though she could count on one hand the times she’d ever been the first to avert her eyes in a conversation.

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.