Mari still harbored the weary hope that people were essentially good, even though she had seen that many were not. Appearances seldom impressed her because she had grown up in a neighborhood where the phrase “all style and no substance” was the battle cry of most of the women as they ran to their BMWs, charge cards in hand, to race to the latest sale at Nordstrom’s. She had no aspirations to fame or fortune and dreamed mostly of a quiet place where she could fit in unnoticed.

Their differences had only served to balance their relationship. They had shared a lot in those late-night beer and bullshit sessions. Then Lucy had come into some money, chucked her job, and moved to Montana, and while the bond between them hadn’t broken, it had been stretched awfully thin.

The intervening year had been a long one. Mari had missed her friend. Neither of them was good about writing letters, and time slipped by between phone calls. But she knew the friendship would still be there. Lucy would welcome her with that same kind of casual amusement she turned on every other aspect of her life. All Mari would have to do would be to step out of her car, shrug her shoulders, and say, “It started out as a bad hair day and went downhill from there.”

Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, betraying her as the tide of depression tried to rise again inside her. She frowned at the state of her wild, streaky blond mane. Who was she kidding? Her whole life had been a series of bad hair days.

While her two sisters had inherited their mother’s champagne-and-satin locks, Mari had been given a tangle of rumpled raw silk with dark roots that turned nearly platinum at the ends. It was an unmanageable mess, and she wore it sheared off just above her shoulders in a bob that somehow never lived up to the description of “classic” or “stylish.” Long ago she had decided her hair was a metaphor for her life: she was wilder than she ought to be; she didn’t match the rest of her family; she never quite lived up to expectations.