Violet closed the door softly behind her as Maya continued the instructions. With the students tucked away in class, the shop was much quieter. The only sounds were Maya’s muted words through the door, soft music on the speaker, and the rustle of a newspaper on the seat of one of the chairs under the window.

Violet walked through the shop, straightening and neatening and thinking of her next survey with Frank tomorrow morning, then headed to the chairs up front to clear away a discarded receipt and an empty tea mug. The newspaper still fluttered, its pages rustling from the ceiling fan above. It was open to an article about a new neighborhood development called Fox Cove. As Violet reached down to grab it, her eyes snagged on two words at the bottom of the page. Two words that made her legs wobble and her blood harden to ice.

Jay Malone.

* * *

Trudy invited Maya over for dinner that evening as she and Violet closed up the shop. Trudy raised her eyebrows at Violet in question, and Violet nodded despite the thin coat of anxiety that had slipped over her shoulders after reading Jay’s name in the article in The Observer. It seemed a boat had been found on the premises of a new housing development at the edge of the river, having washed up from somewhere. The housing development was situated on River Ash Road.

“Of course she can come,” Violet had said to her sister, who hadn’t read the article. Violet threw it in the recycling bin as soon as she read it, burying it under a couple days’ worth of loose papers and cardboard. “We have plenty of food.”

And now the two women had notes and sketches spread out all over the dining table as Violet threw together a salad to go with their dinner.

“What if we do a class specifically for kids and we add in some fun materials like pipe cleaners and googly eyes?” Maya asked.

Violet chopped the last of the cucumber and dumped it in the salad bowl as Trudy shoved another note across the table to Maya. She picked it up and read it, then laughed. “You know, googly eyes. Those little plastic eyes with the black dots that move when you shake them.”

Trudy’s brow wrinkled.

“I’ll find some and show you. I just think having some silly things would be good for the kids. Plus, parents might not appreciate us giving their little ones wire and glass to work with.”

They’d been talking for half an hour, the conversation moving from classes to the sculpture they’d been working on together, as Violet puttered in the kitchen, making iced tea, pulling apart cold cooked chicken, and chopping veggies for the salad. Both women came alive when talking about the shop and their art, and Violet was struck by how similar they were despite their differences in age, verbal abilities, and background.

Then again, they didn’t know much at all about Maya’s background. Something Violet hoped to remedy tonight.