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And then he cut off everything below Elliot’s jawline.

I had to swallow a couple times and blink a lot more than that.

Elliot loved his hair.

Which, I guess, was the point. He wasn’t chopping it off as a fashion statement.

Tears ran down his broad cheekbones, the knuckles on his hands white as he pressed his palms into the counter. I reached across and put one of mine over his, and he turned his hand to grip mine.

I had to swallow a couple times before I could ask the next question. “Do you—should I, too?”

He looked up at me, his eyes brimming, and nodded, a couple more tears tracking their way down his cheeks to splash on the counter.

And then I shot a guilty look at Taavi, because I knew he loved my hair.

But there was nothing judgmental or disappointed about the set of Taavi’s features. He just nodded once, then finished evening out Elliot’s hair. It wasn’t stylish, just a simple, straight line, but it also didn’t look like it had been attacked by a maniac scissor-wielding elf, so that was a definite improvement over what I would have done.

“Come sit over here, please.” Taavi’s voice was soft, gentle.

Elliot didn’t let go of my hand, so I awkwardly moved around the kitchen island to sit next to him so that Taavi could brush through my hair—using Elliot’s brush—after pulling it out of its braid. I knew it would be back to halfway down my spine in a couple months or so anyway, but I’d been letting it grow out because I knew Taavi liked it.

But Taavi’s hands were steady as he cut through the thick, white strands, smoothing them again, then cutting. Smoothing, then cutting.

My mother busied herself sniffling and finding a broom and dustpan to deal with the fact that there was now a bushel of hair—black and white—all over the kitchen floor.

My dad just leaned against the counter, drinking his coffee, his face tight and sad. Not about the hair—my dad didn’t give a shit about hair. But he understood what it meant, probably better than I did.

“Done,” Taavi said softly, and I tried to catch his eye, to thank him silently again, to promise him somehow that I’d make up for this, to tell him I loved him.

But he didn’t look at me, instead picking up his coffee cup and taking a sip, his eyes focused anywhere but on Elliot and I.

“You boys should go get dressed,” my dad suggested softly, and Elliot nodded and let go of my hand to pad back to his room.

I tried again to catch Taavi’s eye, but he wasn’t having it, so I followed suit, grabbing the garment bag Dad had brought and going back into the tiny guest room to make myself somewhat presentable, my now-jaw-length hair making my head and neck feel naked and exposed.

* * *

Taavi stayedwith my parents to work on setting up the house while I took Elliot to the funeral home. I wore my usual funeral suit—every cop has one—black, with a dark grey shirt and a slightly patterned black-on-black tie. Elliot wore a combination of a modern suit—black slacks, a black button-down—and Mamaceqtaw traditional clothing—a black vest with elaborate embroidery and beadwork running down the sides, an embossed circular pendant-style necklace close to the collar of his shirt taking the place of a tie. Under it, I knew he wore both his parents’ wedding rings on a chain around his neck. Beaded earrings dangled from each ear.

I pulled into the funeral home in Elliot’s truck, careful to take the corner slowly so that I didn’t damage the spirit house in the truck’s bed. The last fucking thing I wanted to do at this point was cause any more grief.

Taavi had cut my hair too short to fit into a ponytail, much less a braid, so it hung around my jaw—Elliot’s was the same. It rubbed on my ears and neck, itching more because it was something I wasn’t used to than because it actually bothered me. Give it a couple days, and I’d be fine with it, but right now… I suppose that was part of the point. You didn’t cut your hair out of mourning because you wanted to. It was a reminder, to you and to everyone else, that something was missing.

As though any of us needed it.

Then again, maybe the point wasn’t to increase your discomfort, but to help you deal with the fact that everything was different. If everything had seemed to be unchanged despite the gaping hole that had been created in the world with Gregory Crane’s death—that would have been worse. I could only imagine that sense ofwrongnessthat I felt was amplified at least by ten for Elliot.

I could deal with a fucking too-short haircut.

We didn’t bring the spirit house inside the funeral home with us—it would be placed over the grave itself—but we did bring a small bag of things to place inside the coffin: bread I’d baked last night, a container of maple syrup, a beaded necklace that had been Naomi’s that Gregory had given her, the carved badger from Elliot that had been in his office.

As we got out of the truck, another pickup, this one white and ancient, pulled in a few spaces down.

Elliot and I waited as Henry Lamotte climbed out of the driver’s side and slowly came over to us, an old man picking his way across the slightly slick pavement in full traditional dress, moccasins, beaded tunic and embroidered blanket, three heavy circular pendants like Elliot’s one, and suede pants with beadwork. He carried a basket on one arm that held more beadwork and several sprays of feathers—probably headwear for Gregory, himself, and Elliot.

Henry didn’t say anything, just pulled Elliot into a one-armed hug that lasted for a long time. None of our eyes were dry when he let go of Elliot and turned to me, pulling me down for a hug of my own.

I held on—Henry might be in his eighties, but he’s a tough old bastard, and his grip on me was tight—giving myself permission to breathe in deeply, drawing the scent of Henry’s pipe tobacco, whatever old-school aftershave he used, and the distinct scent of menthol from the arthritis salve Gregory made him into my lungs. I knew that smell. It was familiar, comfortable. One of those smells from childhood that you associated with safety and comfort—even standing in a cold, frozen-over asphalt parking lot on the December morning when we were going to bury my best friend’s dad.