Violet Evergreen's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

Violet woke before the alarm. The room was cold. She dressed in the dark and went down in her socks. The kitchen light was already on. Danny stood at the counter in a coat. A silver thermos sat by his hand, capped tight, steam gone. "Tea," he said. "I didn't know if you drank coffee first thing." He pushed it toward her. "There's a problem. The shed's locked and I can't find the key. My mother kept it somewhere I haven't figured out yet." Violet looked out the window. The yard was white. Every bed she and Danny had covered last night was a lump of frozen cloth. The sun was still low, but the light was coming. Once it hit the plants under the covers, the frost on the leaves would burn them from the inside. She needed to lift the covers slowly, from the shaded side first, without tearing the cloth or snapping the stems. She needed a soft, long-handled brush to sweep the ice off the top before she pulled anything back. Her greenhouse had a whole shelf of them. Danny's shed had, maybe, a garden rake behind a padlock. "We don't have time to find the key," she said. "Do you have any brushes? Paint. Dust. Anything soft." He thought. "Upstairs. My mother painted. There's a box in her room." "Bring it." He came back with a wooden box. She opened it on the table. Tubes of dried paint. A palette. On top, a wide flat brush with a dark wood handle and sable bristles, clean, barely used. Violet lifted it out. The bristles were soft against her palm. "This," she said. "This will work." They went out. She handed him the thermos and kept the brush. At the first bed she knelt and swept ice from the tarp in slow, even strokes. The frost lifted off in a fine dust. She peeled the corner of the cloth back an inch at a time, working from the north side, where the sun hadn't reached yet. The leaves underneath were green. Green stems. Green buds. "They're alive," Danny said. "Keep them shaded another hour. Then we lift the rest." They moved down the row. She brushed. He poured tea into the cap and passed it to her between beds. Her hands stopped shaking. The sun climbed. Every bed she opened was green underneath. At the last one, she sat back on her heels. Danny was crouched beside her, holding the empty thermos, watching her hands and not the plants. "We saved it," he said. "You saved it. I just knew what to do." He shook his head. "No. You did." She set the brush down on the frozen grass. Nineteen years ago she had written him a letter and waited for him to answer it. This morning she had walked into his mother's room through him, picked up a tool that wasn't hers, and used it to keep something alive. She had not asked permission. She had told him what to bring. She stood up. "I need to go home for a few days," she said. "I have to close up the greenhouse for the season. Then I'll come back." He looked at her. "Okay." "Okay," she said.