Part 7 – “The Waiting Chair”
The next morning, the barber chair by the window sat empty, sunlight warming its cracked red leather like a blessing from the past. Silas stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at it the way someone might look at a gravestone they hadn’t visited in years.
Maisie came in just past nine, holding two paper bags from the diner down the street—eggs, toast, and something sweet she claimed was a doughnut but looked suspiciously like fried cornbread.
“You okay?” she asked, watching him from the doorway.
Silas didn’t answer right away. His eyes stayed on the chair.
“That was Daniel’s chair,” he said. “Even when he stopped talking to me, I’d catch him walking past outside. Just a blur at the corner of my eye. Never came in. But sometimes he’d stop and look in through the glass—always at that chair.”
Maisie set the bags down on the counter and crossed the floor. She stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, eyes tracing the faded seams of the leather.
“What do you think he was looking for?” she asked.
“Forgiveness. Or maybe proof I missed him.” Silas shook his head. “I don’t know.”
She nodded. “What if it’s time someone else sat there?”
Silas looked at her sharply.
“I mean,” she said, “you’ve got three other chairs, and Clip’s already claimed the barber one. Seems only fair.”
He gave a soft grunt, the closest thing he had to laughter that morning.
Maisie moved to the waiting chair and sat down. She leaned back, crossed her legs, and looked out the window. The sunlight caught her cheekbone, and for a split second, Silas saw Ruth there. The same quiet strength. The same kind of light that didn’t try to be noticed, but always was.
“You ever think about what happens when this place closes?” Maisie asked.
Silas walked behind the counter, opened the drawer, and pulled out a rag to wipe down his clippers.
“Some days I do,” he said. “Other days, I pretend I’ll drop dead with the scissors still in my hand.”
Maisie smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You don’t have to pretend anymore.”
He stopped mid-wipe.
“You’re not alone here,” she added, voice steady. “Not anymore.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of things he might say, could say—but chose instead to hold close, like a stone you keep in your pocket not for luck, but because it’s real.
Just then, the door jingled open.
It was Jimmy Packard, mid-50s, mailman since the ‘90s, and always a week late on his cuts.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Jimmy said, seeing Clip on the rug and Maisie in the chair. “Looks like this place has gotten friendlier.”
Silas raised an eyebrow. “You here to chat or to lose some weight off that mop?”
Jimmy grinned. “I’m due. My wife says I look like a sheep in the wind.”
He sat down, and Silas draped the cape over him, hands moving slower now but still sure. Maisie stayed in the waiting chair, sipping her coffee, watching.
Clip gave a snore from his spot near the heater vent.
“I saw your granddaughter at the diner,” Jimmy said as Silas clipped away. “Didn’t even know you had kin still around.”
Silas paused.
“I didn’t either,” he said. “But sometimes life circles back, like a dog who remembers the way home.”
Jimmy nodded solemnly. “Good thing you didn’t lock the door.”
By afternoon, the shop felt different.
Maisie had swept the floor without being asked. She’d reorganized the shelf with the shaving brushes and finally convinced Silas to toss the stack of faded Reader’s Digest magazines from 1998.
“You ever think of painting in here?” she asked, eyeing the yellowed ceiling tiles.
“This place is history,” he muttered. “Not a canvas.”
But even as he said it, he was watching the light bounce differently across the floor, how the red wagon glowed in the corner like it had always belonged there.
Before she left for the day, Maisie turned at the door.
“I’ve got something,” she said. “Something of Dad’s I want to give you. Not tonight. But soon.”
Silas only nodded.
“You’ll want to sit for this one,” she added with a crooked smile.
When the door shut behind her, Silas stood a long while by the window, watching the town move on without him. Cars passed. Someone whistled. A kid on a bike threw a paper that missed the porch entirely.
Clip groaned and lifted his head.
“You remember that chair too, don’t you?” Silas asked him.
The dog thumped his tail once. Slowly.
Silas looked at the photo of Daniel again—the boy in the wagon, the grin too big for his face, the sun in his hair.
Then he turned the barber chair slightly, just a few inches toward the window.
“Let’s give him a better view,” he murmured.
Part 8 – “The Tape in the Drawer”
That evening, the shop sat in hush.
The sun had dropped low behind the hardware store, casting long slants of golden light across the checkered floor. Clip lay curled near the red wagon, nose twitching in dreams. Silas stood behind the counter, staring at a drawer he hadn’t opened in years.
Bottom right.
The one Ruth used to keep stamps in. And later, after she passed, the one where he dropped things he didn’t know what to do with.
He opened it.
Receipts. A comb with missing teeth. Two yellowed Polaroids. And beneath those—tucked in a small plastic bag—an old cassette tape.
No label.
Just a piece of masking tape on one side with a faded “D” in Daniel’s handwriting.
Silas held it carefully. It felt warm, like it had been waiting.
Maisie knocked on the back door just before dusk.
He let her in without a word.
She had a small boombox tucked under her arm.
“I thought you might not have one,” she said, brushing hair from her face. “And this… this needs to be heard.”
Silas nodded. Held up the cassette.
“You knew?”
Maisie shrugged. “I found it in his sock drawer after the accident. Thought it was music at first. But when I played it…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.
Silas placed the tape into the player. Pressed it in slow. His hands trembled.
Click.
Then static.
Then Daniel’s voice.
Low. A little rough. Older than Silas remembered, but undeniably his.
“Hey. If you’re hearing this, I guess… I guess I’m not there anymore. Or maybe you finally decided to dig through the mess I left behind.”
Silas sat down hard in the barber chair. Maisie stood in the doorway, arms folded tight across her chest.
“I didn’t know how to fix what we broke. I thought time would patch it. But years passed and the patch never came.”
A pause. Clip lifted his head.
“I messed up. Plenty. But you did too, Dad. You were always better with blades than words. And I guess I needed the words.”
Silas clenched the arms of the chair, eyes glistening.
“I used to watch you in the shop. After I moved out. I’d walk past and think, ‘He’s still cutting hair like nothing ever happened.’ And I’d wonder how you did that. How you just kept going.”
Maisie blinked back tears, lips pressed thin.
“I never said this, and I should’ve every damn year: I admired you. For sticking. For not running. For holding that place together when everything else fell apart.”
Another pause. Then quieter:
“If I go before we fix this… I want you to know I love you. Always did. I just didn’t know how to show it without making it worse.”
Click.
Silence.
The tape ended.
The shop didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Then Clip gave a soft whimper and laid his head on Silas’s foot.
Maisie crossed the room and sat beside her grandfather, close enough that their shoulders touched.
“I listened to that tape more times than I can count,” she said. “But I didn’t understand it until I met you.”
Silas swallowed hard. He looked over at her, blinking like a man waking up from a long, hard sleep.
“I wasn’t a good father,” he said.
Maisie shook her head. “Maybe not. But you’re trying now.”
He stared at the radio.
“I don’t know how to start.”
Maisie reached down, picked up the tape, and placed it back into his hand.
“You just did.”
Later that night, the two of them wheeled the red wagon outside again, this time to the front sidewalk. They placed the old photo in the center. A tiny vase of wildflowers Maisie had picked that morning. The cassette player, too—silenced now but sacred.
And then Silas added something he hadn’t planned on.
The scissors.
His oldest pair. The ones he’d used when Daniel got his very first haircut at age three. Slightly dulled. Still sharp enough.
He laid them gently in the wagon.
“A shrine?” Maisie asked.
“No,” Silas said. “A promise.”
They stood there in silence as the last pink of day faded behind the hills.
Clip sat nearby, breathing slow, tail flicking occasionally, as if keeping time with the memories.
And across the street, the barbershop window glowed amber and still.
A light left on—for someone who might still come home.