Violet Janeson's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Violet had been cutting lavender since the dew burned off, and her hands smelled like a thing she wanted to keep. Three weeks ago she had walked into town with one bag and no plan, and Dahlia Wright had looked at her once across the porch and said she could stay if she worked. Violet worked. She learned the angle of the shears, the depth of the cut, the way Dahlia's old hands moved through a row without bruising a single stem. She told herself, again, that if she was useful enough, no one would ask her to leave. Rose came down the row with a basket on her hip and a smear of flour on her cheek. "You're cutting too high," she said. She knelt beside Violet and showed her where. "Lower. Like this. They'll come back fuller next year." Violet copied the cut. Rose watched, nodded, and moved on. It was the kindest correction Violet had ever been given. At the end of the row Dahlia was teaching them both to feel for the plants that were tired — a hand laid flat above the bloom, eyes closed, waiting for something Violet could almost catch. This afternoon, for the first time, she had caught it. Dahlia had said, "Good," and kept walking. Violet had stood in the row a long time after. They ate supper on the porch. Rose talked about the bakery and a man who wanted six jars of honey he hadn't paid for. Dahlia said he would pay. Violet laughed at something and then was surprised she had. After, she helped Rose stack the plates and carried the scraps to the compost while the sky went pink behind the rows. Dahlia sat in her chair and watched the tree line the way some people watched the road. Violet didn't ask what she was watching for. She went up to the small room under the eaves that had been empty when she arrived and was hers now, more or less. She sat on the edge of the bed with her boots still on. The window was open and the lavender smell came in with the cold. She thought about the cut Rose had shown her, and the word Dahlia had said, and the plate Rose had set for her without asking. She thought about every place she had lived before this one, and how each time she had felt this exact kind of quiet right before she did the thing that ended it. She had run from the last house in the middle of the night with a bruise on her jaw and a name she was trying to leave behind. If anyone here learned the name, or the rest of it, they would be right to send her down the road. She pulled off her boots and set them by the door, lined up, ready.