A small deep growl left her throat as she looked out the window and saw something in the grass. Something pink, left by the fence in the high grass that should have been mowed long ago. Marissa could barely breathe, and she held a hand to her mouth as the realization sank in of what it was she was looking at.

It was her shoes. Emma’s pink shoes.

ONEBILLIE ANN

“You’re an impostor. A liar.”

I whispered the words to the woman staring at me from inside the mirror. To be honest, then I had no idea who she was anymore.

I was in my bathroom, naked after the shower, a towel still wrapped around my hair that had finally grown back to its old length. I stared at my chest and touched the scar where my left breast used to be. It felt strange. My right breast looked the same as it had always been, but I didn’t trust it anymore. Anything could be growing in there. I had learned that the hard way.

It was three years ago today that I had been declared in remission. My latest checkup had shown the cancer hadn’t come back. Still, the feeling never left the body. The first time they had told me it was cancer, it had come as such a big shock and had been so aggressive there was nowhere I really felt safe. No part of my body felt secure. It had deceived me. I had thought I was healthy, but my treacherous body had other plans.

It could come back. It could always come back. There would forever be that threat hanging over me. I was living with an expiration date. That’s how it felt. And that had made me want to change things.

I needed to stop surviving and start living.

I reached into the drawer beneath the sink, then pulled out my husband’s shaver. I took off the towel and threw it on the floor. Then I looked at the impostor with her long wet hair dangling from her head, sweeping across her shoulders.

It was time to get rid of her.

I turned on the shaver and placed it on the top of my head. I had done this once before, but for different reasons. Back then it had been because of the cancer, because I looked death in the eyes in the battlefield that was my body. Now it was because I had survived. I had won.

The shaver slid through the hairs like it was butter. It felt so satisfying, a smile grew on my face as I watched the big locks of curly blonde hair fall down into the sink. Last time I had seen that I had been so scared. Back then it had represented me losing control. Now I was taking it back.

And it felt great. No, it was more than that. It felt empowering.

I ran the shaver across my entire head, leaving just half an inch of hair all over. I wasn’t going for bald, just a buzz cut.

When I was done, I stared at the woman in the mirror and smiled again. “There you are,” I said to her, then cleaned the shaver and put it away. I studied my reflection once more and ran a hand across my head, feeling the short hair prickle the palm of it.

Then I got dressed. I found my black pants and button-down blue shirt, then put on my belt with my badge and my gun, that I retrieved from the safe. I looked at myself in the full body-sized mirror in my bedroom, and I felt good.

For once I looked like me.

I walked down the stairs, taking nervous but determined steps. I could hear my husband, Joe, and the kids in the kitchen. My heart throbbed for a second as I walked in and all their chatter stopped.

“Whoa,” my son, William, said. He had just taken a bite of his pancake and stared at me, mouth wide open. William was fourteen and as handsome as they get, but right then, he wasn’t showing off his best side.

I smiled as casually as I could.

“What did you do?” he continued.

I touched my hair, or lack thereof. “This? You like it?”

“I think it looks badass,” my sixteen-year-old daughter, Charlene, said, nodding her head acceptingly. “Buzz cuts are so in these days. You rock it, Mom. You look like Kristen Stewart in that movie we watched, where she’s underwater.”

“I think you look good too,” my nine-year-old son, Zack, said without even looking up from his phone. He grabbed his cereal bowl and took it to the dishwasher. The two others stopped staring as well, as the news of my hair became uninteresting, and they left the kitchen to get ready for school. Now it was just me and Joe, and our golden retriever, Zelda, left in the kitchen. Joe stared at me, fighting his tears. His upper lip wobbled slightly.

I smiled compassionately at him.

He shook his head. “Why? Why would you do this?”

I shrugged. “I thought it was time for a change.”

He nodded and looked down at the lunch boxes he was packing with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I bit my lip, feeling his sadness across the room. I approached him and touched his shoulder.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

He lifted his gaze, then touched my head gently, tears springing to his eyes. “You had just gotten all your hair back after…”

He paused.

“After the cancer. You can say it, you know?”

He nodded. “I know. But why would you cut it all off?”

“Listen, Joe. Change is going to come. For all of us.”

He bit back his tears. My stomach began to hurt. I hated seeing him like this. I loathed myself for doing this to him.

“So… you’re really going through with this?” he asked.

I exhaled. Tears were coming to my eyes too, but I fought them. “It’s not gonna go away. These things don’t go away.”

He started to cry. It broke my heart, and I pulled him into a hug. He whispered between sobs.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“Shh,” I said, holding him. His six-feet-two and two hundred and twenty pounds were shaking in my arms. “You won’t, sweetie. Things are going to change, yes, but I am still here. We have our kids together. We have been together for eighteen years. We’ll figure things out, okay? It’s a process. Both of us are in uncharted waters here. But there has to be a way.”

He nodded and pulled away. “I’m sorry. This can’t be easy for you either. I know it isn’t. I’m just… I just don’t understand. We’ve been married for this many years, we had a great life together, children, the works. I just keep thinking… how could you not have known that you were gay? Was everything we had just a lie?”

I sighed. This was all Joe had been able to focus on. “I guess I didn’t want to know,” I said, repeating the words he’d already heard me say. “Deep down I have always known. But I didn’t want it to be true. It wasn’t a lie, or maybe it was, sort of, but I was also lying to myself. That’s why it is so hard. Because I can’t ignore it anymore. I need to live out who I am. Be authentic. Life really is short. It’s not just a cliché. We’ve learned this the hard way these past few years. I need this now.”

He nodded again. I had told him all this the night before when I had sat him down over dinner for a talk. Just the two of us. It had taken me four years to get the courage to finally tell him this deep secret that I had kept from everyone my entire life. That I was gay. I was attracted to women and always had been. But growing up the way I did with my religious parents, it simply wasn’t an option. I had to marry a guy and have children. That was just the way it was. And so I did. I married a wonderful man who gave me three beautiful children. But I wasn’t happy. I had this deep feeling inside that I was in the wrong place. Something was missing. I knew I was breaking his heart. We had promised each other we’d stay together forever. But now I just wasn’t sure I had forever to give anymore. Time was running out, or so it felt at least. And I wanted to be me. Fully me. Even if it meant risking everything I had.

I needed this.

I’m gay. I’m a lesbian.

The words were still so hard for me to say, even to myself.

Once you let that toothpaste out of the tube, you can’t get it back in again. It’s as simple as that.

Even if it meant destroying everything I had built. My marriage, my family, maybe even my career. Would it be harder to climb the ranks? How were my colleagues going to react? Would they be disgusted by me and who I was? Cocoa Beach was a small beach town on a barrier island where everyone knew one another, and the locals were on a first name basis with many of the officers. Would I still gain the same respect among them? Among my coworkers? Or would coming out ruin all that?

My therapist had told me not to use words like ruin and destroy, because of their negative connotations. What I was doing was positive; I was finally becoming who I was meant to be. But it felt like I was ruining things. I had everything, and now I was throwing it all away.