Chapter 1 - It's a Family Tradition
I was twenty-seven years old, standing in the middle of my own wedding reception, when someone cut my hair off with a pair of shears.
I want to tell this slowly, because everyone who hears the story asks me the same thing first — how does a bride let that happen?
The answer is that I didn't let it happen.
I never even saw it coming.
The ballroom was everything we had promised ourselves it would be.
Warm gold light, crystal chandeliers throwing little sparks across the ceiling, round tables in white linen, and two hundred guests in their best clothes who had flown in from six different states to watch us say one word to each other.
I wore a white lace gown, and my hair was in one long braid down my back, auburn red in that light, the way it had been every day of my life since I was old enough to sit still for it.
My new husband, Nathan, had just finished his toast.
I was holding a glass of champagne and laughing at something my maid of honor whispered, and that was the exact moment my mother-in-law stepped up behind me.
I heard the scissors before I felt anything.
One clean, loud snip, right beside my ear, like someone cutting ribbon at a grand opening.
Then the weight was simply gone from my back.
I turned around, and my hand went up to my head before my brain caught up with what my hand already knew.
More than half of my braid was gone.
My mother-in-law was holding it.
She is sixty-five, small and neat, with short blonde hair, an emerald green dress, and a pearl necklace she never takes off, even to sleep, or so Nathan once told me.
She lifted the cut braid into the air like a trophy and smiled at the room.
"It's a family tradition," she said.
Her voice was warm and bright, the voice of a woman announcing a christening.
Two hundred people went silent at the same time.
I stood there with my mouth open, holding what was left of my hair in both hands, and I could not make a single word come out.
My eyes burned, and I looked down at the floor, because I could not let myself cry in front of all of them.
Somewhere behind me, a chair scraped back.
Then Nathan was beside me.
He is thirty, dark-haired, and he had been smiling all night, but there was nothing warm in his face now.
He took the microphone from the bandstand and looked straight at his mother.
"There's someone very special I invited tonight," he said.
Then he turned his head toward the doors at the far end of the ballroom.
And I watched my mother-in-law's smile die.
She was still holding my braid in one hand and the shears in the other, and every trace of satisfaction drained out of her face, like someone had pulled a plug.
The doors began to open.
