She tried to get up and follow. She needed to tell them it was a mistake. She screamed at a nurse, who gave Violet medicine to make her sleep.

Later, she curled into a ball on her bed at Aunt Jean’s and refused to eat or drink. She wanted to die, so her body obliged.

Aunt Jean took her to the doctor’s office for a postpartum check a week after Violet came home. Her temperature was 103.6 degrees. They readmitted her to the hospital immediately and gave her antibiotics for puerperal fever. And Violet lost two more things: the opportunity to die and the ability to conceive children.

By 1949, she was back living in her parents’ house and working as a hostess in a nice restaurant downtown. Alice Glenn never suspected what her daughter endured in Florida. It simply would not have dared to enter her mind. Violet used her only job qualification—homecoming queen skills—to charm customers each evening at The Annistonian. She flirted without intention, smiled without happiness, and extended the politeness and hospitality that were her birthright. On Saturday nights after work, she’d sometimes go to a movie with Harvey Hughes, an Army lieutenant stationed at nearby Fort McClellan. He was from Indiana, three years older than Violet, and called her “my beautiful Southern belle.” He told her over and over he wanted to marry her and settle in Alabama permanently. Violet would laugh and shake her head each time. She said, “The novelty will wear off, Harvey. You’ll forget me when you’re transferred.”

He never did, even after Violet left him for Tolly.

She’d been so ready to try to begin a new life; to try to put the horrible Florida memories behind her. Tolly was handsome, successful, and wealthy. He impressed her parents, reached for her hand, placed a ring upon it and arranged a wedding before Violet could object.

She heard Bitsy Cunningham and Theresa Wiley discussing their children, sharing school photos and attempting to top each other with stories of good grades, mischief, Sunday School attendance and vegetable rejection. She felt tears welling and closed her eyes, trying to block the thoughts she could never escape.

What would she look like now? Did she have her father’s red hair and easy laugh? Did she do well in school? Had they told her she was adopted?

A month after they met, Tolly mentioned casually that he didn’t want children—in the manner others might state an aversion to cats or parakeets. She’d looked into Tolly’s dark blue eyes and summoned the courage to tell him all about her baby daughter. She sobbed as she told her story, ending with the fever that left her barren. He held her close until she quieted. Then he lifted her chin with an index finger and said, “Please marry me.”