Satisfied, she scurried back to the mantel and stood on her tiptoes to reach one of the urns, which looked heavy but was surprisingly light. She pulled it down and set it gently on the floor. She attempted to lift the ornately carved lid from it, but it was stuck. She tugged harder, to no avail. She tried turning it, in case it was screwed on, but it didn’t move. Curious as to what she was doing, Barney put his nose on the lid. She gave the dog the side-eye. “You’re no help,” she said, and pushed his wet nose out of the way.
She was wrestling with the urn, her determination overriding her common sense, when she heard a car pull into the drive. She leapt up and put the urn back where it belonged. She frantically searched for somewhere—anywhere—to stow the money before her granddaughter walked into the house and found her holding it. Desperate, she shoved the bag underneath an overstuffed leather recliner in the corner of the room and raced out the front door, coming to a stop just beside a large pumpkin on the front porch. She attempted a pose that looked rested and serene, instead of frenzied and fearful. She held the pose as she waited for her granddaughter to say her goodbyes. She could just make out a little hand waving from the back seat and recalled Allen’s comment about Violet’s presence disrupting his happy little second family. What a douche.
When Violet turned away from the car, Polly got the first glimpse of her granddaughter’s face in fourteen years. The last time Polly had seen her, she’d been a chubby toddler with grubby hands. Now she was a slender wisp of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Though they shared some features, she did not look like Norah. When Violet was a baby she had looked exactly like Norah’s baby pictures. Polly would’ve bet she’d grow to be the spitting image of her mother.
But instead Violet looked like someone else, someone also familiar to Polly, someone she barely remembered: herself at fifteen years old. She recognized the burgeoning beauty that was not quite there yet and the uncertainty in her eyes that Polly recalled in an instant: the fear that she was never going to get there. That she would always be skinny and gawky, unsure of the right things to say or do around a boy, and overwhelmed by a world that seemed to come at her instead of waiting until she was ready to come to it.
As Violet drew closer, Polly had to resist the urge to rush forward and take the girl into her arms, to tell her all the things she needed to know, to warn her and to encourage her, to promise that though she’d been absent from her life for far too long, now she was here. That she would never leave her again. This was her granddaughter. Her flesh and blood. But she didn’t want to overwhelm the girl. So she kept her arms crossed in front of her. It looked like she was hugging herself, when really she was imagining the day when it would be comfortable, natural, to hug this child she did not know, but knew very well just the same.
Violet
She stepped out of her stepmother’s car to see the older woman—her grandmother, she supposed—standing on the porch beside that pumpkin, watching her. She blinked at the woman a few times, then turned away. She craned her head back inside the car to look over the headrest at her two half siblings strapped into their car seats in the back. “Bye, you guys,” she said, feeling a sadness as she said it, a finality that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the last time she was ever going to see them.
The baby waved her chubby fist in the air in a gesture that was half wave, half fist bump. Violet took it as a sign of solidarity, a baby way of saying, “You got this, girl.” She thanked her stepmother’s profile for the ride, then grabbed her bag and walked away. Behind her she heard the car shift into reverse and speed away. With her stepmother gone, there was no escaping. She wanted to turn around, chase the car down the street hollering, “Wait! Don’t go.”
She kept walking toward the stranger waiting for her on the porch. The woman crossed her arms and squinted into the sunlight as Violet slowly closed the distance between them with faltering steps. She couldn’t believe this was her life now, that this was reality. She glanced over her right shoulder at Micah’s house, wondering if by some miracle he was watching this scene unfold, wishing she’d spot him in his driveway. She wanted a witness to this moment, and he was her best bet due to proximity. Not out of real interest. She knew better than that.
She climbed the few steps to where her grandmother stood and dropped her bag at her grandmother’s feet, right in front of the pumpkin. The two of them silently blinked at each other a few times. Finally, Violet extended her hand. “I’m Violet,” she said.
Her grandmother gripped her hand and, when the smile bloomed on the older woman’s face, Violet saw it was her mother’s smile, as plain as day, like a magic trick. If it was possible to reach out and grab hold of a smile, Violet would have, just to take hold of something that was familiar. Instead she only smiled back.
The woman let go of her hand and said, “You have her smile.”
“Whose?” Violet asked.
“Norah’s,” she said. She corrected herself. “Your mother’s.”
Violet rolled her eyes. “Hardly,” she said.
She’d grown accustomed to deflecting any comparison to her mother. Her mother was beautiful. Violet was not. She had accepted this long ago. Any comparisons between them were just something people made out of obligation. But Violet did not have whatever beauty her mother, and apparently her grandmother as well, possessed. She was different from her mother and from her grandmother. She hoped Polly would not be too disappointed that her granddaughter hadn’t inherited the family beauty gene.
“I’m Polly,” her grandmother said. Violet had wondered what to call this woman. One of her friends called her grandmother Nana, and one called hers Mimi, and one called hers Honey. But none of those names would fit the still young, still quite beautiful, not at all grandmotherly-looking woman who stood in front of her. Violet supposed that Polly would do just fine.
“Nice to meet you,” Violet said, and wondered if she should hug her grandmother. Didn’t grandmothers like hugging? But Polly didn’t look like the hugging type. So she gestured to the front door, which stood slightly ajar. Her mother would not like that. She always yelled “Close the door! Flies are going to get in!” whenever Violet left it open. “Do you want to go inside?” she asked, inviting Polly in, taking ownership of her house even if Polly had apparently already been inside. Violet wondered who had let her in. She pictured that detective from the other day, his foot propped up on their pumpkin possessively. It had probably been him, brandishing the keys like he owned the place.
Polly nodded and motioned for Violet to go in ahead of her.
“Those police didn’t clean up after themselves very well, even though that detective promised they did. The kitchen and living area are OK, but your mother’s room—and yours, I’m afraid—are a mess,” Polly said from behind her. “I wanted to tidy up while I waited for you. But I’m not sure where some things go. I figured you could tell me?”
The question hung in the air as Violet took in the scene. She could tell that the police had tried to put things right after the search, but in spite of their efforts, everything felt off-center, as if the whole house had been picked up by a giant and shaken. They hadn’t made it the way it was before. Violet supposed no one ever could.