“What about coming to visit me while I’m gone? I think you’d like it there.”

He grinned. “You say the word and I’ll figure out how to get the time off. I’ll be on the next plane south.”

She leaned forward and pressed her cheek to his chest. His strong, steady heart thumped under her ear. As she leaned into him, she couldn’t help but think of Trudy, stuck in her scary house with her equally scary husband. Violet had done everything she could think of to try to get Trudy away from Jay. She’d offered her home as a refuge, she’d offered to buy her a plane ticket so she could go far away, she’d even tried to confront him. But Trudy always brushed off the help. She explained it in all kinds of ways—she was fine, it was just a bad day, he had his good moments. But Violet wasn’t stupid. Jay Malone didn’t have good moments. All the ones he showed to the world were just that—a show. Trudy saw the real thing at home.

And Violet was the only one who could save her sister, if she could just figure out how to do it.

* * *

Violet heard a sound behind her, and there was Maya climbing out of her old car. She opened the back door and pulled out a large duffel bag, then slammed the door behind her. Poor girl, Violet thought. Everything she has to her name fits into a single bag. Before Violet could make her way through the grass and up to the house, Trudy walked out the back door, her arms outstretched.

After Fritz took the bait shop room back for his brother, Violet and Trudy had decided to ask Maya to move in with them. It was Trudy’s idea at first, but the more Violet thought about it, the more she realized it was the obvious choice. The right choice. Their home—three bedrooms, quiet, with space to move around and be—had been a refuge for the two of them for decades. It was a place to retreat, to gather courage, to feel safe. And looking at Maya, this young, beautiful, lonesome girl, Violet knew she needed a place to call home.

The two sisters were getting up in years, too old really to be caretakers of someone so young, with so much life left, but there they were, walking into the little cottage by the river, the place they’d all call home. Three motherless women braving whatever came next.

Violet and Trudy had spent the day before sweeping and dusting, rearranging and cleaning, and now the house was as spiffed up as it had ever been. Violet walked behind Trudy as she fluttered up the hall to show Maya to her room at the end.

The scent of lavender floated from the attached bathroom, where Violet had unwrapped a new bar of lavender soap and placed it in a dish. Trudy had picked an enormous blue mophead hydrangea and placed it in a milk glass vase on the nightstand. The bed was made up with a rag quilt in shades of blue and green, and the dresser by the wall was bare except for a mirror and a glass tray.