“Could I have a moment with my daughter alone?” Norah asked, looking from Jim to Polly, asking for permission from them both.
Polly rose in answer to Norah’s question. “Yes, but make it quick,” said Jim. Together, the two of them left the room. They stood outside the door awkwardly. Jim Sheridan looked at a door just down the hall. She knew what he was thinking.
“Do you want to get back in there so you can listen in on them? Make sure she doesn’t say anything to hurt her own case? You don’t have to stand here with me.”
He looked at her gratefully. “Do you mind?” he asked.
“Not at all,” she said. She gestured in the direction of the door, like a maître d’ saying “Right this way.”
“I hope this was beneficial,” he said. “Seeing her.”
“It was. For Violet.”
And because he was a defense attorney and was used to being lied to, he nodded along, then gave her shoulder a squeeze just as he’d done to Violet. He walked away and disappeared behind the door into a room where he would listen in on Polly’s daughter and granddaughter in their last few minutes together till who knew when.
Violet
When the door closed behind them, her mother wasted no time leaning forward, talking rapidly in an urgent tone. “Are you really OK with her? Tell me the truth.”
“With Polly?” Violet asked, as if there could be another her.
“Yes, with Polly. Is that what you’re calling her?”
Violet raised her eyebrows. “It’s her name.” She was being insolent on purpose. She wasn’t going to hand over the keys to her kingdom to a woman who’d betrayed her, even if she was still hoping her mother would give up the client list and she’d have a chance to help Micah, or Norah, or both.
Norah ducked her head again, but the penitent look didn’t suit her. Violet missed her strong, confident mother. This one scared her. It was like someone else pretending to be her mother. She looked like her, but she wasn’t her. “I don’t like you with her,” Norah said to the table, her voice low. “That’s the worst part of all this, that your flake of a father called her instead of doing his part.”
Violet thought about all the things she’d wanted to tell her mother about being at her dad’s, about her ridiculous stepmother and spoiled half siblings. She recalled how, when this had all begun, she’d truly believed that her mother would come home and they’d laugh—laugh!—about all of it. It would just be another amusing family anecdote. But of course, when this had all begun, Violet had believed they were a real family. She didn’t believe that anymore. But if they weren’t a family, then what were they?
“How come you never told me about the Beaucatchers?” she challenged, sensing that her mother wouldn’t like it and wanting to punish her for staying in jail to protect other people instead of coming home to care for her.
She saw Norah bristle in response and felt the little thrill of hitting her mark. Their relationship hadn’t been like that before, but, as Violet was coming to understand, their relationship had changed forever. She wondered if she’d ever trust her mother again, or if she was fated to feel about Norah the way Norah felt about Polly. If losing trust in your mother was part of the legacy just as much as attracting men.
“She told you about that?” Norah asked. She sounded tired. She looked beaten.
Violet nodded and Norah sighed, long and loud.
“Don’t listen to that, Violet,” she said. “Please. It’s nonsense. It’s not true. Just a bunch of Appalachian hillbillies making up their own kind of fairy tales. They told themselves something to make them feel better about where they were in life, which was nowhere. She raised me on that malarkey, and I vowed I’d be the last female in my line to have to hear it.” Norah shook her head and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe she told you that. I bet she couldn’t wait to poison you same as she poisoned me.”
Violet was quiet as she studied the woman who resembled her mother but was not her mother. Her voice was smaller than she wanted it to be when it came out of her mouth. “I liked it.” She sounded like a child, but she wasn’t a child anymore. She’d grown up in the last few weeks. She wanted to show her that. She cleared her throat, spoke louder. “I wish you had told me. I wish I had known Polly all along. I like being part of a line of women who are special.”
“It’s a fairy tale.”
“People love fairy tales, Mom.”
“But they don’t come true.” Norah looked around the room they were in, as if it were all the proof they needed.
“That legend didn’t get you here,” Violet said. “You got yourself here.”
Norah’s nostrils flared; her eyes went squinty. Violet had seen that look before. When she didn’t clean her room. When she wore grubby clothes out to dinner. When she didn’t listen to Norah. She saw the look flare, then die on her mother’s face. A calm look replaced it.
“You’re absolutely right,” Norah said. “It didn’t. But it did inform some things I believed about myself growing up. Things that weren’t so good for me. I want you to be different from me, than Polly.” She closed her eyes. “It was all I ever wanted. And I know you’ll never understand this, but it was why”—she stopped, considered her words, probably remembering that the police and her attorney were listening—“it was why everything that has happened has happened. I was always thinking of you. Trying to make things better for you. So you didn’t have to be like me.”
“You mean a prostitute?” Violet countered, feeling smug and satisfied as once again, her word arrow hit its mark. She saw it go into her mother, and she pushed away the guilt that came after.
Norah hauled her bound wrists onto the table, settling them uncomfortably with a clang. She leaned forward. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “my mother used to take me to visit her mother and aunt. They were just country bumpkins to me. Old ladies who baked biscuits and grew tomatoes in their garden. They certainly didn’t seem like Beaucatchers, like my mother claimed they were. The only thing I could tell was that they’d both been married several times but now lived together with no man in sight. And all they seemed to want to ask me was, did I have a boyfriend? They didn’t care if I had hobbies or interests. They didn’t seem to care about current events or learning new things. They only cared about men. They made me a bride doll, gave it to me like that was the epitome of my existence. It had a beautiful lace dress with a matching slip underneath.” Her mother tapped on the table with her finger, once, twice, three times, and looked at her. “I gave it to you, remember?”
Violet nodded, her mind racing as it processed what was happening. “It gave me the creeps. I felt like it was staring at me at night.” She forced herself to say it lightheartedly. To act like this was just a fond memory, a family story—nothing more, nothing less. People were listening, after all.
Her mother laughed at the recollection. “So you hid it. Remember?” she said, leaning forward, eyebrows raised.
“I remember,” Violet said.
“I gave you that doll not because I wanted to pass on some stupid legacy to you. But because I wanted it to be a symbol of what I didn’t want you to be. Being a bride—some man choosing you for his own—isn’t the be-all, end-all of your existence. It doesn’t say nearly as much about you as you can say for yourself.” Her mother swallowed and their eyes met. In that moment, Violet knew she would forgive her. Maybe not right this minute, but soon enough. She would be mad—she should be mad—but she would come to understand what it was her mother had tried to do for her. And what her mother had just done for her.