Chapters (38)
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- epilogue
“Violet, after an hour you have to leave. You have to promise me, because I can’t always get to Chet’s room and make sure you’re out of there. I have other patients and they need my attention, sometimes for hours.”
Violet stared at her, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You have to understand. I need him and he needs me. You know how much better he’s doing since I’ve been staying with him.”
Ronni steeled herself. “I can’t let you in the door anymore unless I know you’ll leave in an hour or two. It’s risky enough for you to be there in the first place without spending the night. Promise me.”
Violet nodded yes and Ronni reached out to hold her, knowing she’d keep her promise for a week or two at most. Violet would do as she wanted, no matter what. And she had to hope no one would find out how badly she’d been breaking the rules for months.
Johnny came down with a flu-like sickness one day and didn’t improve. He was taken by ambulance to St. Vincent’s Hospital. Violet waited anxiously for news and when she heard nothing she drove to Birmingham to see him, just like almost seventy years before. She arrived to find Rose Perkins crying quietly in the hallway, her children gathered close. Rose stood to greet her, shaking her head. Violet held her and cried, whispering, “I’m very sorry, Rose. He loved you so much.”
She told Sam as gently as she could, watching the life drain from him before her eyes. She spent as much time as she could with him now, at a small table for two in the corner of the dining room, on her sofa watching television, walking slowly through the gardens. One day at lunch Sam asked her to please visit him in his room, which she’d never seen. “I don’t feel like getting out much,” he said simply. “Don’t have a whole lot of energy these days.” She walked in and found herself surrounded by photos of Deborah; in her twenties on a beach wearing a modest black bathing suit, gray-haired and heavyset in Paris, leaning to kiss a red-haired baby, riding a carousel horse with a laughing boy beside her. She picked up each one and asked Sam about it, seeing his face light up as he talked about his wife. She sat by his bed and listened to him tell her about Deborah and their life together, and she learned. Just as Ronni said, she learned from Sam. She learned what a good husband was like.