Violet Evergreen's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

Violet stepped out of the bathroom with the frame against her chest. The hall was short. She could hear Megan in the kitchen still, running the tap, asking Danny about a neighbor's dog. Violet walked toward the sound before she could think herself out of it. Danny stood at the counter with two mugs in front of him. He turned when she came in. He was thinner than she remembered. Gray at the temples. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and did not know what to do with them after. "I brought you something," Violet said. She held out the frame. He took it. He looked down at the picture of himself as a boy beside his mother in her garden. Violet had bordered the photo with pressed flowers from her own greenhouse, a small careful arrangement of blue and yellow and pink. Danny did not speak. His mouth moved once and closed. Megan set her towel down and stepped back toward the hall, giving them the room without saying so. Violet had planned a speech in the bathroom. She had planned to say she was sorry about his mother. She had planned to say the flowers were from her own beds. Standing here, the speech felt like a costume. "I didn't know her the way you did," Violet said. "I only met her a few times. But she was kind to me when I was seventeen and scared of everything. I wanted you to have this." Danny kept looking at the frame. A tear went down the side of his nose and he did not wipe it. He set the frame carefully on the counter, face up, and pressed his palm flat beside it. "She kept your letter," he said. Violet's stomach dropped. "What letter." "The one you wrote me the summer you left for your aunt's. I found it in her dresser last month." He opened a drawer under the counter and took out a folded envelope, the paper soft at the creases. "She kept it. I don't know why." He held it out. Violet did not take it. She had written that letter at nineteen. She barely remembered what was in it, only that she had meant every word and then spent two decades trying to unmean them. "Danny." Her voice held. "I came here to say I'm sorry about your mom. That's all I came for." "I know," he said. "But it's here. And you're here." He set the envelope on the counter next to the frame. Two things between them now. The picture she had chosen. The letter she had forgotten. Megan called softly from the doorway that the coffee was getting cold. Nobody moved. Violet looked at the letter and understood the reunion had just changed shape. She had come to give one thing. She was going to have to answer for another.