Violet didn’t—couldn’t—answer. She opened her mouth but nothing came. Then Trudy and Maya were both at her side, having rushed to her when they realized something was wrong.

“What is it?” Maya asked. “Did something happen?” She scanned the room, as if expecting the trouble to be there in the shop. She didn’t understand.

Trudy pressed a note in her hand as Maya asked more questions, her lips moving in quick concern, but all Violet could hear was the flutter of a thousand wings as everything she’d built to protect Trudy, all she’d done to keep her safe, everything good they’d built in their lives now, lifted off the ground and flew away.

1982

The departure date for her three-month field study program in the Florida Keys was rapidly approaching, and Violet had yet to pack. Every time she pulled out her suitcase and tried to fill it with her walking shorts, water shoes, binoculars, and visor, something would pull her away and she’d come back hours later to an empty suitcase and clothes strewn all over her room. She kept trying to do it, but it kept not happening, and she couldn’t even blame her busy schedule. Yes, the school year was wrapping up in the usual frenzy of tests, report cards, school parties, and phone calls from nervous parents, but it was more than that.

It was Trudy.

Things with Jay were deteriorating, though Trudy hadn’t spoken a word of it to Violet. Rather, Violet understood the situation by the streaks and colors on Trudy’s skin each time she visited. The fact that Violet had been so fooled by Jay—Jay’s different. He’s a good one—coupled with her inability to do anything about the situation had made Violet restless, irritable, and easily distracted.

But even still, when Frank asked her to meet him at the Sandbar one night after his shift ended—and at the stool where she’d been sitting the night they first met, no less—Violet knew what was coming. She’d seen a small blue box on his bedside table a few weeks before when they’d cooked dinner at his house and she passed his bedroom on her way to the bathroom. Her breath had evaporated in wisps of steam but she kept quiet, not wanting to spoil any surprise he had.

Facing a possible engagement of her own, and in a flash of sisterly affection, Violet wanted nothing more than to talk to Trudy about it. Though she knew it wouldn’t happen this way, she couldn’t help but imagine she and Trudy sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch, trading secrets and giggling like the carefree schoolgirls they would have been if they’d been born into a different family, with a different set of circumstances.

Usually Violet called before she visited, a rule Trudy made her swear to abide by, but this particular evening, the night before she was to meet Frank, Violet broke the rule. With her stomach fluttering she raised her hand to knock on the door. Before she touched the polished wood, it opened in a rush and there stood Trudy, wearing the finest dress Violet had ever seen. Short, red, and glittery, with puffed sleeves and a low neckline, it fit her every curve and set off the pink tones in her skin, yet the barely concealed panic in her eyes turned Violet’s blood to sand.