“I usually do.”
Over the next thirty minutes, Peter hacked away at everything that wasn’t healthy hair and then set to work styling what little was left. He’d been modest—the man was a wizard with a pair of scissors. They talked while he worked, and for a short time, Con let herself believe that life was normal again. She was just out getting her hair done like a million other women. It helped that Peter didn’t look at her funny or ask questions about being a clone. She guessed that working for Vernon Gaddis, it just wasn’t that interesting a subject anymore. It felt good to talk about ordinary things. She asked how long he’d worked for Gaddis, and he said that he’d started a year after the plane crash. That had been in ’35, so that meant nearly four years.
“Where’d you learn to cut hair? That part of the standard majordomo package?” she asked.
“My dad owned a barbershop. Worked there from the time I was seven years old.”
“Where was home?”
“Madison Parish. Little town called Tallulah,” Peter said.
“You’re from Louisiana?” She’d gotten hints of a Southern accent, but she’d never have guessed Louisiana.
Her surprise must have shown because he grinned at her and let his true accent emerge for a moment. “Not a lot of demand in these parts for a Cajun majordomo, cher. I was trained to adapt.”
“Whoever it was trained you well.”
“Hooah,” Peter grunted.
“You were army?” The clothes had thrown her off, but now that she knew, it explained everything about his bearing and manners.
“Seventeen years.”
“My dad was army,” she said to her own surprise. She never talked about her father. “He was killed in action.”
“Mr. Gaddis told me he was a Ranger. I’m sorry for your loss,” he said as seriously as if it had happened only yesterday.
“It’s okay. I was just a kid,” Con said with practiced deflection.
“It’s never okay, especially when you’re a kid.”
The way he said it, Con could feel his pain just below the surface. She said nothing, leaving space for him to go on if he wanted, but instead, he asked her father’s name.
“Corporal Antoine D’Arcy. Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “It’s a big army. May I ask where?”
“Central America. Mexican-Guatemalan border.”
“Operation Southern Vigilance,” Peter said with grave familiarity. “That was a cluster from start to finish. We lost a lot of good people down there.”
The subject put a damper on their conversation, and Peter worked on in silence. Con rarely thought about her father; he was more an idea than a person to her. She’d only been six when he died, and even before that, he’d been gone more than he’d been home. It didn’t help that shortly after Con had gone to live with her grandmother, her mother had purged all traces of Antoine D’Arcy from her house. Con had stopped by to pick up a few things one afternoon when her mother should have been at work, only to find a bonfire raging in the backyard and Mary D’Arcy curled up in a broken-down lounge chair, reading the Bible.
When Peter was finished, he stepped back and held up a mirror. Con caught her breath at the transformation. She had her grandmother’s straight black hair but had never worn it this short before. She’d been afraid she was going to wind up looking like a new recruit, but Peter had managed to give her something approximating a pixie. It worked better than she could have hoped. She looked, dare she say it, almost cute. More important, for the first time, she looked like someone. Not herself, not exactly, but someone. Like if someone glanced her way, she wouldn’t worry anymore that they were wondering what species she was. To both their surprise, she threw her arms around Peter and hugged him gratefully.
“So I passed?”
“You have no idea. Thank you so much.”
“I’m happy you’re happy,” he said, extracting himself from her grasp.
“Peter, can I ask you a question? Off the record? What’s your boss like, for real?” Maybe it was na?ve of her to think Peter would give her a straight answer. He worked for Vernon Gaddis, and cutting her hair didn’t make them buddies. Still, she found herself trusting him, and that meant something. She rarely trusted anyone this fast.
“Well, that’s a complicated question. But I assume you mean can he be relied on?”
“Something like that.”
“He can. Does that mean you should? Not sure that’s my place to say, really. The man saved my life, so I might not be objective on the subject.”