The Violet Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

daughter, and followed Maddie into the living room. The initial damage report had been accurate. The TV was still intact, as were all the lamps and end tables and Hummels and eight-by-ten pictures. No Buick-sized holes in the drywall, thank God. Amelia looked at Molson and swore that the dog had put on another ten pounds in just the past week.
    ‘I’ll get the DustBuster,’ Maddie said, already assuming some of the blame for this. It was officially her dog, so it was officially her mess, she supposed.
    Later they ate their Healthy Time Shrimp Marias in front of the TV, deciding, by consensus, that Maria could cook for her own family in the future. Maddie offered the rather astute observation that Shrimp Maria tasted like a combination of tuna fish and candy apple.
    Roger was supposed to make a pit stop today, a brief appearance with his family between flights. Amelia glanced at the day’s mail on the hall table and surmised that Roger hadn’t yet been home. There was a time, and not too long ago, that her husband would leave her love notes and tea roses on his stops, but there wasn’t a whole lotta love to make note of around Casa de St John these days, Amelia thought sadly.
    Was there something wrong with her? There had to be. Why else, after nine years of marriage, does a man stray?
    After dinner, Maddie changed clothes and asked if she could run over to Polly MacGregor’s for what she promised would be no more than a half hour. Although the St John house stood alone at the end of Wyckamore Lane, the MacGregor house was a mere two hundred or so feet away, toward Falls Road, and Maddie had no major highways to cross to get there.
    ‘Wear a jacket,’ Amelia yelled as Maddie walked toward the front door.
    ‘Okay,’ Maddie answered.
    A few moments later, the front door closed, and the house was silenced.
    Amelia dialed Paige’s number.
    ‘Well, I’ve done it,’ Paige said. ‘For the first time in my adult life I’ve actually gone twenty-four hours without food. The very first time. Does this make me, like, anorexic or something?’
    Amelia said, ‘I don’t think that it—’
    ‘Am I bulimic now? Jesus Christ, I’m nervous.’
    As a thirty-three-year-old working woman, Paige didn’t get to see too much of the Lifetime Channel, so her catalog of women’s afflictions was a bit backlisted. Still, it didn’t prevent her from coming down with every single one of them – sometimes three or four at a time.
    Paige was taller than Amelia by an inch or so at five six. Where Amelia’s shoulder-length hair was a woefully lifeless auburn, Paige had thick, wheat-colored hair that argued its way to the middle of her back, and conversation-halting aquamarine eyes. She was a little bustier than Amelia (then again, Amelia thought, who wasn’t?), but she foolishly considered herself plagued by that little bit of tummy that simply refused to go away.
    Yet, when you cleaned her up and put her in a little black sheath and heels, Paige was a knockout. Amelia had caught an inebriated Roger St John gawking at Paige at many a friend’s wedding. ‘It doesn’t make you bulimic,’ Amelia said. ‘And – no offense, I say this because I love you dearly – it’s not like you’re up for the Feed the Children poster-girl spot. Maybe it’ll be good for you. Cleanse the system.’
    ‘But what if I pass out tomorrow? What if I’m talking to someone and I just faint, or fall into a book display? What if I swoon?’
    At that moment Molson decided to break his self-imposed exile under the dinette table. He clicked across the kitchen and parked himself at Amelia’s feet, then raised a paw, à la the closing credits on Lassie. Amelia shook it, wondering exactly what sort of cryptic canine message was being relayed here. Perhaps it was a peace offering for dumping over the ficus plant.
    ‘You’re going to be there tomorrow, right?’ Paige asked.
    ‘Of course,’ Amelia said. ‘Will you relax already?’
    ‘Relax. Right. I