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
“Not if you live with three children under the age of five, Violet. I’d have a chardonnay IV if I could figure out how to drag it around.” She handed Violet a full wineglass and clinked hers to it. “Here’s to the placement committee. May they select chairmen naive enough to be flattered and smart enough to accomplish great things next year. You look gorgeous, by the way. Red is great on you.”
Tolly sat in the bar at his club, watching people come and go as he nursed his fourth bourbon. He spotted Pete Hughes, a cardiologist and sometime golf buddy. Pete inclined his head slightly at Tolly and followed his wife into the dining room.
Had word spread through the hospital already? Tolly raised his glass to signal for a fresh drink, cursing the Birmingham Junior League. He was going to make Violet resign from The Do Good While Dressed Expensively Club. The thought made him smile for the first time today.
Bourbon relaxed Tolly temporarily, but soon it would cause him to pick at the thread that would unravel his life.
Violet had agreed to host placement interviews this year because she loved opening her home to big groups and it was an easy meeting for the hostess. All she had to do was keep refreshments set up as the women came and went, occasionally helping someone find her placement advisor. She viewed her expansive living room from a fainting couch that had belonged to Tolly’s grandmother. Antiques galore, none of them connected to her.
The house, she thought, was a monument to ostentation. She knew the neighbors resented the way it towered over their roofs. She also knew they called it “Tolly’s Folly.” Twelve thousand square feet of Tudor splendor, but her husband insisted they couldn’t afford to take a vacation. She sipped her wine and waved at Genevieve as she ushered a young woman toward the library. One hundred and sixty women would walk through her house tonight to carefully plan their upcoming year of Junior League commitments. Family obligations would be discussed. Pregnancies, ailing parents, demanding husbands...and for a few, work schedules...would be factored.
She closed her eyes. Our lives, she considered, were so frighteningly unplanned. Everything came before or after certain moments; huge rocks that sent rivers of expectation and hope spilling into new directions, never to return.
April 3, 1948 divided her life forever. A nurse handed Violet a tiny bundle of sleeping baby girl to kiss goodbye. What she remembered best were her eyelashes, so long and delicate on those creamy cheeks. The little fists clenched under the hospital blanket. The way her head smelled.
She’d named her Alicia, even though they’d told her not to give her a name. When they carried her away, Violet knew that all the joy and light in her had passed into her daughter. She was a dark, empty shell.