“A letter she wrote you?”

Yes, exactly that. “Detailed advice on how to be a force of nature. Or her own diary, with enough juice for blackmail.”

“Are you in need of money?”

“I could use a million.” I chugged more caffeine to wake up my brain. Bram Dekker didn’t need to know about my business failures.

“Were you hoping for a large inheritance?”

“It wasn’t Violet’s way. And that’s not a complaint. I think she lived the way life should be lived.”

“She thought the world of you. You must have been close. Did you spend a lot of time together?”

I drank the coffee, but grief filled my throat instead and threatened to drown me. “I grew up in Connecticut. My parents didn’t get along with Violet. They rarely let me stay with her as a kid.” I pulled up my feet and tucked them under me. “At first, I didn’t want to come anyway. I thought Greenwich Village was Green Witch Village.”

“Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz?”

“I used to have nightmares about the flying monkeys.”

“We all had nightmares about the flying monkeys.” Bram’s laughter filled the room and cleared out the last of its abandoned vibes. “Did you spend more time with her later?”

“Once I was in high school, I fought to take the train a few times a year. But at Stanford, I was always taking extra classes, and in the summers, I did internships. It was better when I was working in New York, but Violet always had people around her. She belonged to everyone.” And once Diya, Trey, and I had jumped into our startup, none of us had a minute for anything else. Maybe we wouldn’t have ended up in a love triangle if we had time to date other people.

“What was the source of the conflict between your parents and your grandmother?”

“Diametrically opposing world views. And Mom felt abandoned by Violet, both in her childhood and later.”

“Difficult to picture. The Violet I knew was always there for people.”

Bram was right, of course. I didn’t want to put either my mother or my grandmother in a bad light, so I felt the need to explain.

“You were Violet’s lawyer. You must know she was financially successful. And that she donated most of what she made each year to her causes.”

“She didn’t believe in the accumulation of wealth.”

I tapped my cup to the table, wishing I’d avoided the topic. But I’d gone into it, and now Bram was waiting for more. He might know the story anyway. His grandfather almost certainly did. Bram Dekker Sr. was a close friend to Violet.