The Violets of March (19 page)

Of all the nights to surprise me, why did it have to be this one? Fate, the wretched witch that she was, had just slapped me with her cruel, cold hand.

“But what about the baby?” I said, eager to find a hole in his plan. She reached her little hand up to my necklace, grabbed the starfish on the chain, and cooed. I rewarded her with a kiss on the cheek.

“I’ve already made arrangements,” he said. “My mother is coming over.”

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Elliot would be waiting for me tonight, and I would be with Bobby.

Bobby took me to the Crow’s Nest, a beautiful restaurant perched high on a cliff overlooking the sound. Elliot and I had dined there many times, but this was a first for Bobby and me. You see, Bobby was frugal. Spending money on dinners out just wasn’t something he did. So when he held open the big knotty pine doors to the restaurant, there was an air of pride in his swagger. “Only the best for my Esther,” he said as we made our way inside.

We were seated at six, but the food didn’t arrive until at least seven thirty. No matter how fast I tapped my foot, how tightly I clenched my teeth, or how many times I glanced at the clock, the evening just inched along.

Bobby didn’t notice my mood. He was too busy questioning the waiter: “Is the duck cooked in a wine sauce?” “Are the oysters fresh?” “Do the potatoes come mashed?” “Could we substitute salad for soup?”

I tapped my finger against my leg under the table, trying to hide my frustration, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone looking my way. I glanced up at the bar, where Billy, my old high school boyfriend, was seated, holding a drink and looking a little bleary-eyed. Billy had proposed to me just before Homecoming our junior year. He gave me a ring, and I said yes—well, actually, I said maybe. I loved Billy, and we had grand times together, but that was before Elliot came into my life. Frances always said that Billy never got over me, and there was a look in his eyes that evening that told me she was right. Yet he never hated me for my decision—not for a minute. That night, I even got the feeling that he felt sorry for me.

He waved from the bar, where he was sitting with another man. They were both in suits. I waved back.

“Who’s that?” Bobby asked.

“Just Billy,” I said, gesturing toward the bar.

Bobby turned to smile at him too, a gesture with a singular purpose: to underscore the fact that I was his. I sometimes got the feeling that Bobby was less in love with me than he was with the idea of me. I was his trophy, one he liked to polish up and take out and parade around every now and then.

“Esther,” he said after our dinner arrived, and after he’d downed two glasses of beer, “I was just thinking that maybe”—he lowered his voice—“maybe we should try for another baby.”

I spilled my water in my lap just as I heard the word “baby.”

“What do you say, sweetheart?”

“Well, isn’t it a little too soon?” I said. “I mean, she’s just four months old.”

“Give it some thought,” he said.

I nodded.

We finished our dinner, and Bobby suggested dessert. “I’ve been feeling like baklava ever since Janice brought some over to my office last week,” he said.

“Why was she at your office?”

“She had an appointment on the floor below,” he said, wiping a few breadcrumbs from his lips. “She stopped in to say hello.” He picked up the menu and lowered his glasses on his nose. “Do you feel like dessert, sweetheart?”

No, I didn’t feel like anything except leaving. I looked at my watch: It was nearly nine thirty. Elliot hadn’t specified a time, but it was getting late, almost too late. If I was going to go, I needed to go soon.

“No,” I said. “I’m actually feeling a bit tired. I think we should call it a night.”

Bobby paid the bill, and as we left, I deliberately dropped my purse beneath our table. It would be my alibi.

Once at home, Bobby thanked his mother and walked her to the door, while I checked on the baby, sound asleep in her crib. I felt the passage of every minute, every second. Then, Bobby undressed and got into bed, waiting for me to follow.

“Rats,” I said. “I left my purse at the restaurant.”

“Oh no,” he said, standing up and reaching for the trousers he’d laid over the chair. “I’ll go get it for you.”

“No, no,” I said. “You have to get up so early for work in the morning. I’ll go. Besides, I forgot to drop something by Frances’s house, and I can do that on the way back.” Brilliant, I thought, as my heart raced. I’d just bought myself another thirty minutes.

“But, Esther, it’s so late,” he said. “A woman shouldn’t be out on the road at this hour.”

Bobby believed his lot in life was to protect me, and that my lot in life was to be protected.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

He yawned and climbed back into bed. “OK,” he said, “but don’t be long. Wake me when you get home so I know you’re all right.”

“I will,” I said.

But I knew I wouldn’t. I would be gone much too long for that, and as I closed the door to the house, I could hear the sound of his snoring down the hall.

I drove the Buick fast that night, too fast, past the restaurant, past Frances’s house, and down the long road that led to Elliot’s. I looked in my rearview mirror a few times, just to be sure no one was following me.

It was after eleven when I parked my car on the street in front of Elliot’s property. I smoothed my wool twinset and ran my fingers through my hair, chastising myself for not brushing it before I left, or even looking in a mirror, for that matter. The trail that led down to the beach was dark, but I had memorized every step.

The full moon lit up the sky and beamed down on the beach I knew so well—the beach where we had made love for the first time, and the last. I looked around, expecting to see him sitting on a log or lying on a blanket in the sand, the way he used to wait for me so many years ago. He’d hand me a bit of beach glass or some beautiful shell he’d found to add to my collection and we’d fall into each other’s arms.

But he wasn’t there. I was too late.

The house lights were dark. Could he have already gone? I gasped at the thought. Our timing had always been dreadful, so why did I expect anything different on this night? Still, the pain surged out of my heart like an electric shock. I turned back to the trail, and I would have raced up the embankment to my car had it not been for the glimmer of light purple petals underfoot. I shook my head. Wood violets? I hadn’t seen them since I was a girl, when they appeared one summer in my grandmother’s garden. I’d never noticed them on Elliot’s property. What were they doing here?

Many on the island, me included, believed that these flowers had mystical powers, that they could heal wounds of the heart and the body, mend rifts in friendships, even bring about good fortune. I knelt down and ran my hand along the carpet of dusty purple nestled into pale green leaves.