There was a calendar on the wall of her room. Grace hadn't noticed it the first day she was there, but she looked at it every day now. She counted the days from her spot on the bed. Two weeks. Fourteen days. Almost half a month since her world was turned on its head and she had left. Run away. Perhaps it wasn't the grown up, adult thing to do, but it was what she had done.
She'd left this room very little the first few days. Food was an afterthought, and it was only the visits form Dr. Ryan that made her think to eat. She'd gone to the small general store and bought the necessary toiletries, but that was it.
In the weeks that had passed, she'd started moving through the town. At first she just sat out in front of the diner on a bench and watched the cars go by. The bus, she discovered, only came by on Mondays. It made her wonder how long it was that she drove around the California Mountains not knowing what was going on or where she was going. She'd not really paid attention to when she'd gotten off the bus.
The week after she got there, she'd moved off the bench. The tiny town didn't have many roads, but she walked them all. She didn't pay much attention to the houses or other buildings that she passed, but she did notice the way that the sun filtered through the trees leaving a dappled pattern on the sidewalks and streets. The play with the light and shadow exemplified how she was felling.
She was in her room now, lying on the bed. The quilt felt homemade, and without realizing she started thinking of home. Her grandmother had made all of her grandchildren quilts for Christmas one year. They were made out of fabric scraps, and Grace remembered the hours spent with her sister looking over their quilts and pointing out the fabric with which their grandmother had made outfits for them before.
Grace didn't want to think about her sister; she tried not to. Even before all of this had happened, she didn't want to think about her. She missed her. And it hurt, that she hadn't told her what was going on. That her sister hadn't confided in her about the pain she was feeling. Grace wondered idly if anyone on the team felt that way: if they felt hurt or betrayed because she had run away instead of staying in a place that had caused her so much pain.
Rigsby she knew would want her to come back. But she wasn't going to date him. She didn't want to open herself up to anyone right now, and she knew that if she were to come back—to go back to Sacramento—that it would be the first thing on his mind. He wouldn't think that she was hurting; he wouldn't think that she was in pain, that she was just betrayed by her fiancé; he would only think of himself. He was like that. Even when they were dating before. And she just couldn't put up with that.
Jane wouldn't miss her. Not really. She was someone to mess with, someone to torment and tease. The way that all little boys do on the playground. Besides, if he'd really missed her, Grace was sure that Jane could have found her by now.
Cho, he wouldn't look. Her problems didn't directly influence him, and he was the closed off type. While he was kind and probably considered her a friend, they had never been very close and had never hung out outside of work.
Lisbon though, Lisbon she felt bad about. The woman was shot by Craig. Lisbon was shot by the man that Grace thought was in love with her. That she was weeks away from marrying. And what did she do? She ran away. Sometimes she thought that she should go back, for Lisbon's sake, but she couldn't.
It was still painful. It still hurt. To think that she had been the one to put the team at risk. That her trust had been betrayed again. If this was the first time, she thought, the team might forgive her. But this was the second time that someone she was with, someone she was dating, had tried to hurt them. And this time it was worse than Jane being temporarily blind.
She stood up and walked towards the bathroom. She didn't look in the mirror. She hadn't really looked in a mirror since the first day she was there. Since the day she saw the sunken faced pale woman staring back at her. And she couldn't bear to see that again. When she showered, she didn't wipe the fog off the mirror. When she brushed her teeth, she closed her eyes. She didn't know why she had been avoiding her reflection, but she decided to look now.
Her hair was flat, more so than usual. She was pale, and her eyes looked tired. She had no makeup—not that she would put it on if she had any—and her face looked odd to her without it. She picked up a brush and ran it through her hair. The ends floated up, dry and charged with static electricity.
She'd always had long hair, since she was young; she'd only ever trimmed it. Her sister's hair, however, had changed the style the way some people changed clothes, but it had always been beautiful. Grace had never been that brave. But today she decided that she was done. Done with the long hair. Done with the safe styles. Done with being plain, safe, predictable Grace.
She knew that there was a barber shop in town, right next door to the diner. She didn't know if the man who ran it would be able to cut a woman's hair, but she didn't care. She'd cut it herself if she had scissors. She just wanted a change.
She walked down the stairs towards the diner. She didn't pay attention to the people who were there eating their lunch; she didn't care if they looked at her. She didn't care that in this small town her appearance and apparent physical and emotional distress had become a topic of gossip. She just didn't want to go home. And she didn't want to be the way she had been when she was younger.
The barber shop was dark and dusty. There were a few older men who were sitting along the wall; most of them were bald, which almost made her smile. She looked around, hoping that one of the men would start to talk, just so she wouldn't feel so awkward.
"Can I help you?" a man wearing a blue jeans and a cowboy shirt asked, standing up. He had a white apron wrapped around his waist with a comb sticking out of the pocket.
"Um, yes, I'd like a haircut." She said, surprised at how timid her voice sounded.
"What did you have in mind? A few inches off the bottom or something else?"
Grace looked around at the men. Most of them were trying not to look at her, but failing miserably. She wanted a transformation; she wanted to change what was most recognizable about herself.
"I want it all cut off." She said, taking a seat in the chair that the man indicated.
"So you want to look like those guys?" He said gesturing to the men behind them.
"No, just, I want something different. Something new." She looked at her reflection in the mirror in front of her. Noticed the barber standing behind her, hands hovering in the air near her shoulders. She watched as he picked up her hair and let it float down.
He nodded and looked at her in the mirror before he swept a gown over her clothes. She looked in the mirror one more time and shut her eyes, saying a silent goodbye to the woman she used to be: the woman who had needed a man to feel complete, a woman who was willing to let a man walk all over her for love. When she opened her eyes again it would be the beginning of a new life, of a new woman who would stand on her own two feet and not let anyone take advantage of her.