Rose. I know you are depressed. But a comb!
“Your hair is so—”
“Don’t say tangled.” Rose’s eyes flicker a darker color, flashing dangerously in the light as she glares at Luisa. “It’s not tangled. My hair doesn’t get tangled. It’s just gotten messed up. That’s all.”
Luisa nods once, slowly, her lips pressed together, and then says, “It’s gotten really messed up, Rose. When was the last time you brushed it?”
Rose doesn’t say anything.
“Do you remember?”
Rose still doesn’t say anything.
That doesn’t bode well.
“Rose, it can’t stay like this! It’s all matted and rough. A bird wouldn’t even live in this mess!”
“But it’s not tangled,” Rose says again, very firmly. She stares at Luisa. “You try to get through a whole fake your death by falling through the ceiling onto a statue’s sharp tail and then having your body burned without getting your hair fucked up like this.”
Luisa’s eyes narrow, and she stares just as hard back. “You weren’t even really there. That wasn’t even you.”
Rose takes a deep breath, and her lips spread into a mirthless smile. “How many months did I spend in jail?”
“They give you combs in jail!” Luisa places her hands on her hips. “And I saw you in jail and your hair was never this bad!”
Rose crosses one leg over the other and breaks their eye contact. “There were a few months there where you didn’t visit me at all, right at the end.” Her words are softer then. “I didn’t know where you were. I was…I wasn’t scared. Not for me. But I felt so…so horrible.” She turns her head to glance at Luisa again, briefly. “I didn’t think you were really leaving me, but there was a good chance—”
Her voice fades away, and she looks away again.
It’s been months since Rose faked her death. Luisa had known at the first that the person holding Jane hostage wasn’t her, was a plant, a fake, a something else that wasn’t Rose – although she hadn’t been able to tell exactly over the phone, she’d known as soon as she’d seen her. It’d been an act. She hadn’t cared, and she certainly hadn’t pushed her. That had all been part of the act – Rose falling, Rose dying, Rose burning – but she couldn’t tell Rafael or Jane or any of them any of that. They’d finally believed Rose was gone. Dead. Like she had, so many years ago, before Susanna – not Susanna – had pulled off her mask and revealed who she really was.
Only this time, there was no Michael to figure it out. There was no wonderful lady detective planting herself into their investigation. And there was certainly no criminal who left powdery fingerprints on a vending machine to get powdered donuts to charm her girlfriend.
…notably there had been powdered donuts after they met again, but Luisa had been the one bringing those in the form of an olive branch.
Rose hadn’t gone to her island the way Luisa thought she might, and maybe that was smart of her, given that Luisa had, in fact, told the Miami police department where that island was. Even if they believed Rose was dead, there was always the chance they might go look for her there.
Still – it’s been months since the event, months since the two lost contact, and…less than months since that contact was regained. This isn’t the first time they’ve met, necessarily, but it’s the first time they’ve been really, truly alone and Rose has been…well, the Rose Luisa remembers. Sort of.
But every time she tries to run a hand through her hair, it hits a snag!
“You can’t cut it,” Rose says, giving Luisa a strong look as Luisa continues to try and brush her fingers through her snaggled hair. “You can’t cut it. Or shave it. Or—”
“I’m not going to cut it.” Luisa leans over and kisses Rose’s cheek and it’s as easy as it’s ever been except that it’s not. “It’ll take a while to get all of this out, but I can....” She smiles, almost. “I remember when Rafael was a kid. Elena had just left us, and he had this gorgeous long hair. He cut it all off a few days later because she used to always tell him it was gorgeous and he was four years old and he was full of spite because that’s what you are when you’re four years old and he wanted to hurt her for leaving him except she didn’t really care, you know?”
Rose blinks and waits for Luisa to finish.
“Anyway.” Luisa gets up and gestures for Rose to follow her as she continues. “He grew it out again later because it really was gorgeous and my grandmother – Alegria, you mentioned her once, the one Papa named the vacation house for – was so sad about him cutting it and we really did love her– He grew it out again, is what I’m saying, but he was always getting it tangled—”
“It’s not tangled,” Rose says as they make their way into the bathroom.
Luisa thinks that maybe tangled is Rose’s crazy. She doesn’t like the thought. “I know yours isn’t tangled, but his was,” she corrects. Then she nods to her. “Strip, please.” Then, just as quickly, “Not because we’re going to do anything, because we’re not until your hair is better and you promise to brush it and comb it and not let it get this way again, but because I need you in that bathtub, and you can think I’m pampering you all you want, but you will rethink that once I start combing all those…all of that out.” She presses her lips together and turns away from Rose as the other woman slowly removes her clothes, instead focusing on the bath and the faucet and making sure it’s the proper heat because she knows Rose hates cold water, hates it with a passion, but she’s also not going to let the water be boiling hot either because if she wanted a shiny bright red skinned Rose, she would take her to a beach.
Of course, then Rose would be sunburned and groaning about being in pain all the time, which she doesn’t like either, but at least there’s the additional lathering with sunscreen and then lathering with aloe lotion and Rose stays in bed and doesn’t move so can’t be killing anybody. Which, on the whole, seems a lot better than a Rose who will be complaining about the pain in her head and who might be on edge enough when they’re done to go kill somebody.
Rose doesn’t kill people anymore.
She knows this.
It’s an exaggeration.
A joke.
She has to joke about it.
It’s easier for her when she jokes about it.
Rose slips into the tub, and Luisa begins to slowly knead her hands through what she can of her hair. “You’re not going to wash my hair, are you?” Rose asks as one of her long legs slowly creeps over the other edge of the freestanding tub.
“When I’m done, maybe. You’ll want it.” Luisa takes a comb and slowly starts to move it through Rose’s hair, holding the first knot in her hand so that she doesn’t pull on it too terribly. “Rafael’s hair was never quite this bad.”
“Rafael was a child who wasn’t dealing with faking his death so that the love of his life could leave him and be with his family. A family who, I might add, doesn’t really—”
Luisa gives a sharp yank on Rose’s hair. “Don’t say it because it isn’t true.”
Rose leans her head back just enough to glare at her, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. Luisa knows what she would say.
They fall into silence between them, Rose’s hands moving to grip the edges of the toilet as Luisa gets to the knots closer to her scalp, and as Luisa notices that she’s in more and more pain, she begins to hum and then, eventually, to sing. She doesn’t do it very often – she hasn’t in…in over a year, it feels like, since long before Rose went to jail that first time. She hasn’t had a reason to. And she remembers that whenever she’d sung before, Rose would laugh a bit, because she was so out of tune. She had a nice voice, she knew, but she couldn’t get the tunes right. They sounded right to her, but they weren’t. Not really.
This time, she doesn’t really sing a song she knows. Rose can’t say she’s out of tune if she doesn’t know the song. And she’s softer. And, eventually, she begins to sing one she does know, one her mother used to sing for her so very long ago that she doesn’t quite remember all of the words.
The comb clatters on the tiled floor next to her feet, then, and Luisa slowly begins to move her fingers through Rose’s hair, making sure that each of the knots and problems are gone, and when she notices that they are, she begins to work her fingers along Rose’s scalp, massaging the skin she knows must hurt terribly after all of that.
Rose begins to hum. She relaxes, leaning back, and closes her eyes – and for a moment, just a moment, Luisa can forget that everything else has happened. It’s not much, but she leans forward again and brushes a kiss against Rose’s forehead. She missed this.
It almost doesn’t feel real.