Chapter 6

FOR SOMEONE WHO HATES having me around, Wesley sure loves getting in my way.

It’s April sixth and I’m exhausted, heartstrings stretched until I’ve lost all emotional elasticity from the highs and lows of discovery and loss as I clear out Falling Stars. I am a sparking, smoking jumble of raw wires.

But I still haven’t cried.

Why haven’t I cried? I won’t feel like I deserve this gift from my aunt until I’ve grieved the way a loved one is supposed to grieve.

So this is what it’s come to: me sitting cross-legged in a circle of Hannobar mementos, immersing myself in Aunt Violet–ness, begging my heart to pick up any station other than the numb detachment I’ve been tuned in to.

Wesley’s footsteps are getting stompier. I can tell he wants to say Do you have to sit right THERE, but he swallows the words. He presses his lips together to keep them from falling out as he grunts and sighs from heavy lifting, dismantling the living room furniture around me.

I do have to sit right here, in point of fact. This is the part of the house where I feel closest to Violet. My favorite hours on this earth were all spent in this living room, side by side with her, chatting about anything and everything. Violet was one of a kind. She didn’t talk down to me, but she also didn’t treat me like I was a grown adult. Mom went back and forth between extremes: one minute she’d snap at me that I needed to do whatever she said because I was a little kid who didn’t know anything; the next minute she’d tell me too many details about one of her dates and if I made a face, I’d hear Oh, grow up.

“Oh, Violet,” I say mournfully, since maybe a theatrical performance will bring the tears. “I wish I’d been able to say goodbye.”

I can’t help a glance at Wesley, whose expression is incredulous until he realizes I’m watching him. Then it smooths over, impassive. He’s judging me.

“I wanted to call,” I sniff. “It’s complicated.”

He says nothing. He gives up on trying to remove an unmovable floor-to-ceiling wardrobe that has stubbornly decided to fuse to the wall. It’s an antique, white with a long oval mirror on the front. He shoots the bulky piece of furniture a glare and I have to admire its tenacity for winning that battle.

Wesley crouches in front of a table, beginning to do something to it with a screwdriver. I’d help, but 1) I don’t think he wants me to, and 2) my back, legs, and arms are jelly from lifting and carrying so much junk these past few days. I’m used to hard work, but clearing out a house as big as this is a merciless beast. And we’ve only got about 3 percent of it cleared away. I’m so daunted by all we have left to do that I wouldn’t mind screaming into a decorative pillow if they weren’t all so musty. However, I am a Maybell Parrish, and Maybell Parrishes do not give up.

I’m sorting through papers, which are a rabbit hole of Victor and Violet Hannobar history. Deeds and documents, court papers and letters. So many letters.

My mouth curves into a smile when I select one, skimming the top line. It’s so old that the paper is nearly transparent. When I hold it up I can see the writing on the back bleed through the front, rendering it all illegible.

“Did she tell you about how she and Victor got together?” I ask casually.

No response.

I glance up to make sure he hasn’t left the room, which he hasn’t. I frown, lowering the paper. “Are you going to ignore me forever?”

Sweat rolls from his hairline, down his forehead. His gaze lifts briefly to mine, impatient and piercing, before he continues focusing on his task.

It’s been too long since I’ve felt heard by anyone, and I want to talk to somebody about Violet. Nobody else shares my memories of Falling Stars and my amazing great-aunt. I think that about half the people still alive who cared about her (or at least, he might have cared about her) are in this room.

“They dated when they were teenagers, but they went to different schools,” I tell him. “Their senior year he broke up with her and she mailed him a Sorry for your loss card.” It might be in this pile of cards I’m riffling through as I speak, actually. She saved hundreds of them, stacks tied with plaid Christmas ribbon. “When they reconnected a few years later, he sent her a Please forgive me card.”

I tug the end of a ribbon, a new stack fanning out across the floor. Jackpot. “In their early twenties, Violet and Victor were officially just friends, but obviously she was still holding a grudge about him dumping her, because she knew he was her soul mate. She knew from day one that Victor was the man for her, but teenage Victor was a little too slick and he wanted to play the field. Also, he didn’t see it working out because, you know, he was Black and she was white. Interracial relationships weren’t exactly smiled upon, even though their families liked each other.”

Wesley, I notice, has been loosening the same screw for two minutes now. He doesn’t want to appear like he’s listening, but I know I’ve got an audience.

“Her letters were petty brilliance. Hello, Victor. Would you be a dear friend and ask Henry if he’s single? I’m dying to finally be kissed by someone who knows what he’s doing.”

I read a few aloud, but I have to keep stopping to laugh. Violet bedeviled Victor with recaps of all the dates she was going on with basically every other boy but him, and her signatures were a riot: The Mighty & Majestic Violet Amelia Parrish, Knower of Her Worth, You’ll Wish You Had This, Runner-Up Miss Good-Looking 1953.

Victor wrote back with fevered desperation, penmanship atrocious to convey his passion, confessing how jealous she’d made him.

“Victor was working at his family’s shop in . . . I think Cookeville.” I squint. “Yeah. Cookeville. Once a week, Violet got dressed to the nines and flounced past his store, all carefree and stunning, rubbing it in. She’d send him photographs, too, of her posing on the hood of other guys’ cars.” I cackle. “She really let him have it.”