Violet Evergreen's Arc

Chapter 4 of 11

The six hours went fast and then all at once too slow. Violet pulled up in front of a small gray house at the end of a quiet road. She turned off the engine and sat with her hands on the wheel. The framed photograph rested on the passenger seat, wrapped in the dishtowel. She had rehearsed the drive, not the door. She tried the first line in her head. Danny, I'm so sorry about your mother. It sounded like a card from a rack. She tried another. It's been a long time. That was worse. Nineteen years was not a long time. It was most of a life. She got out of the car. The air smelled like cut grass. She reached for the frame and then stopped, because she saw a woman on the porch next door watching her over a mug of coffee. The woman lifted the mug. "You here for Danny?" "Yes." "He's been up since five. Cleaned the whole kitchen twice." The woman smiled without showing teeth. "Took him a pie yesterday. Berry. He hasn't touched it. I'd bring something he'll actually eat." Violet looked at her. "Like what?" "Cookies, maybe. His mother used to keep a tin on the counter. He'd steal from it standing up." The woman shrugged. "Store's a mile back the way you came." Violet thanked her and got back in the car. She drove to the store and bought a tin of cookies, the round kind with a painted lid. In the parking lot she also picked up a small basket of potted herbs from a rack by the door, rosemary and thyme and sage bunched together in wicker. Something for a kitchen. Something a man could use without crying. She drove back. This time she did not sit in the car. She carried the frame under one arm and the tin and the basket in her other hand and walked up the path before she could plan another sentence. She knocked. The door opened. The man on the other side had gray at his temples and a dish towel over his shoulder. He looked at her face, then at her hands, then at her face again. His mouth opened and did not make a word. Violet held out the tin first. "I didn't know what to say," she said. "So I brought you something to chew on while I figure it out." He laughed. It came out cracked, surprised, like he had not laughed in a while. He took the tin. He stepped back from the door. "Come in," he said. "The neighbor already brought pie." "I heard." She went in. The door closed behind her. She was inside his house now, with her hands empty of the frame he had not yet seen, and no plan for the next hour at all.