Chapter 1 - The Strands at the Skull“Don’t touch her hair again,” the stylist said, her voice suddenly sharp.

The scissors stopped inches from my eight-year-old daughter’s neck. Lily sat frozen beneath the black salon cape while Jenna, the stylist, gently separated the damp strands at the base of her skull.

Then I saw them. Two pale rectangular burns hid beneath Lily’s thick brown hair. Around them were tiny purple marks, too evenly spaced to be scratches.

Jenna looked at me in the mirror. “Who has been putting prescription patches on your daughter?”

My stomach dropped. “No one.”

Lily had spent an entire week begging for a short haircut. She had claimed she wanted to look like girls in her dance class. Now her hands were trembling under the cape.

Jenna locked the salon door and told her receptionist to call 911. She had worked as an emergency-room technician before becoming a hairstylist. She said the marks looked like repeated adhesive injuries from a transdermal medication.

I knelt beside Lily. “Sweetheart, did someone put something on your neck?”

She stared at the floor.

The police arrived with paramedics. One officer asked whether Lily had been unusually sleepy, dizzy, or confused. I thought of the mornings after she returned from weekends with my ex-husband, Mark. She had stumbled at breakfast, forgotten conversations, and once fallen asleep while tying her shoes. I had blamed the late movies he let her watch.

At the hospital, a nurse sealed strands of Lily’s hair and swabbed the irritated skin. Detective Elena Ruiz asked Mark to come in immediately.

He arrived furious. “What did Claire do to her?” he demanded before anyone had accused me.

Lily flinched at his voice. Detective Ruiz noticed. She crouched beside my daughter and asked, “Lily, who put the patches on your neck?”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears. She looked directly at me.

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“Mom did,” she whispered. “At Daddy’s house.”

For one terrible second, everyone in the room believed her. But Lily’s next broken sentence revealed that someone had been wearing my clothes, using my perfume, and teaching my daughter exactly what to say if the marks were ever discovered.