The Violets of March Read Online Free PDF Page A

the kitchen—pancakes, which no one ate anymore, certainly not adults, and certainly not adults in New York. Or maybe it was my phone that jarred my eyes open, the cell phone that was ringing somewhere between the cushions of the couch. I hadn’t made it to the guest room the night before; fatigue got the better of me—fatigue or emotional exhaustion. Or both.
    I pushed the quilt aside—Bee must have draped it over me after I’d fallen asleep—and started digging around frantically for the phone.
    It was Annabelle.
    “Hi,” I said quietly.
    “Hi!” she said, startling me with her cheerfulness. “I just wanted to make sure you made it all right. Everything OK?”
    In all honesty, I wished I could be like Annabelle and let it all out. I wanted to cry big fat glorious tears. God knows, I needed to.
    She was staying at my place for the month, as her upstairs neighbors had taken up the trumpet. “Have there been any calls?” I asked, knowing that Annabelle would understand exactly whom I was talking about. I knew I sounded pathetic, but we had long since given each other permission to be pathetic around one another.
    “Sorry, Em, no calls.”
    “Right,” I said. “Of course. So, how are things there?”
    “Well,” she said, “I ran into Evan at the café this morning.”
    Evan is Annabelle’s ex, the one she didn’t marry on account of his dislike of jazz, and, well, other things, too. Let’s see . . . he snored. And he ate hamburgers, which was a problem because Annabelle is a vegetarian. And then there was the business of his name. Evan is not a marriageable name.
    “Did you two talk?”
    “Sort of,” she said. Her voice suddenly sounded distant, as if she might have been doing two things at once. “But it was awkward.”
    “What did he say?”
    “Well, he introduced me to his new girlfriend, Vivien .”
    She said Vivien as if it were a name for some kind of dreaded health condition—like a rash, or maybe a staph infection.
    “Do I sense some jealousy here, Annie? Remember, you’re the one who broke it off with him .”
    “I know,” she said. “And I don’t regret the decision.”
    I didn’t buy it. “Annie, I know Evan,” I said, “and I know that if you called him right now and told him how you really felt, he’d be yours. He still loves you.”
    There was a silence on the other end of the line, as if she was considering my idea.
    “Annie?” I said. “Are you there?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry, I had to set the phone down. The UPS guy just showed up at your door and I needed to sign for a package. Do you always get this much mail?”
    “So you didn’t hear a word I just said?”
    “Sorry,” she said. “Was it important?”
    I sighed. “No.”
    Despite the fact that she believed she was a hopeless romantic, and despite her research, when it came to love, Annabelle had honed the fine art of relationship sabotage.
    “Well, call me if you want to talk,” she said.
    “I will.”
    “Love you.”
    “Love you too, and stay away from my Laura Mercier moisturizer,” I said half playfully, half seriously.
    “I think I can manage that if ,” she said, “you promise me you’ll work on things in the tear department.”
    “Deal.”
     
     
    When I found my way into the kitchen, I was surprised not to find Bee there tending the stove. Instead, there was a plate of pancakes, a few strips of bacon stacked in a neat little pile, and a jar of homemade raspberry jam waiting at the table next to a note:
Emily,

I had to go into town to run some errands, and I didn’t want to wake you. I’ve left you a plate of your favorite buckwheat pancakes and bacon (reheat in the microwave—forty-five seconds on high). I’ll be back this afternoon. I put your things in the bedroom down the hall. Make yourself comfortable. And you should take a walk after break fast. The sound is beautiful today.

Love,
Bee
    I set the note down and looked out the window. She was right. The gray-blue water,