Her voice was too frail. I didn’t like the tremble in it. I wasn’t going to wait a whole month for another visit. I was going to make time in my schedule and come back next week.

And then we’d talk about her diary. Curiosity was killing me.

In an hour, I was at the airport, and an hour after that, I was settled in my seat for takeoff. I had the little green book on my lap, and I couldn’t wait to jump in. I was about to meet Violet’s scandalous past.

I cracked the cover open, but before I could read a single word of the loopy, handwritten cursive, my phone rang.

“Hey, Mom.”

“You cannot hire a cleaning service,” she said with a vehemence she usually reserved for things I did that kept me from securing a man. “I’d clean the house out myself if I could. And golfing is one thing, but your father’s heart can’t take carrying boxes down all those stairs. You can take time off from work. Give Trey a chance to miss you. Who knows what risqué pictures of Violet with her celebrity friends might be at the house. You know what tabloids pay these days for sordid secrets like that? Do you want our family splashed all over the papers?”

“I’ll clean. Relax, Mom.”

“I know you idolize your grandmother, but she wasn’t so perfect when I was young. All the wild parties. Strangers at the house at all hours of the night. Or she’d drag me to a museum, then walk away, under the spell of some great new idea for her next work. I would be crying in the corner, surrounded by people I didn’t know, lost and terrified.”

“I’m sorry.”

“At least you know who your father is. Imagine if I had so many lovers, I couldn’t tell you where you came from. How would you like not knowing your father’s name?”

“You know I love Dad. I can’t even image how terrible it must have been for you. I love you both.” And I loved Violet too. But I was willing to accept the possibility that the Violet I knew was different from the Violet my mother had lived with.

“Be nice to Trey. He’ll realize what a fool he’s been and come back to you, you’ll see.”

An announcement came through the speakers, the captain asking all passengers to turn off their electronic devices.

“We’re taking off. I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I didn’t have a chance to put my phone away yet when it pinged—a text from Trey.

After all the time he’d taken to think about my suggestion, he must have seen my point. I expected him to respond with Okay, we’ll invest in marketing. Instead, he wrote: We need to shut down.