Chapter Four
Violet Ames drove slowly along the familiar winding roads of River Gorge, Kentucky, wiping tears and saying prayers. It had been years since she’d visited the rural mountain town where her grandmother raised her, and this wasn’t the return trip she’d planned. Her version had involved an abundance of hugs and triple servings of Grandma’s double chocolate brownies, but there wouldn’t be any of that tonight.
Violet divided her attention between the dark country road before her and the sleeping infant behind her. Eight-month-old Maggie dozed silently in her little rear-facing car seat, having given up tears to fatigue only moments after the car exited the hospital parking lot. Violet rubbed her heavy lids and tried to stay composed, but it had been a tough day.
According to the midmorning phone call she’d received from River Gorge General Hospital, Violet’s grandma, a seventy-eight-year-old widow, had fallen from a ladder in her barn and nearly killed herself. The notion was unfathomable. Grandma’s barn was old and left unused after her grandfather’s death many years back, so why was her grandma even in there? And why had she climbed the ladder? There was nothing to reach with it except an old hayloft housing a decade of dust.
Violet gripped the aching muscles along the back of her neck and shoulders with one hand, steering carefully with the other. She couldn’t get her mind around the awful day. “What would have possessed her?” she whispered into the warm summer air streaming through her barely cracked window.
That was a million-dollar question, because no one at the hospital had a clue.
Her grandma, the only one who could explain what on earth she’d been up to, was lying unconscious in a bleach-and bandage-scented room, worrying her granddaughter half to death. She’d undergone surgeries for her broken hip and wrist and received sutures on her cracked head and a wrap for her swollen ankle. What she hadn’t done was open her eyes.
Her doctor said she’d wake when she was ready, and he had faith that would be soon. He’d suggested Violet be patient.
Patience wasn’t Violet’s strong suit. In fact, she wanted to scream. Her grandma had been Violet’s entire world before Maggie was born, and she knew it. Violet had made her promise to be careful with herself the year she moved from River Gorge to Winchester, nearly two hours away. And she had. “Yet here we are,” Violet muttered.
She thumped the steering wheel with one palm as hot tears spouted anew.
Maggie started behind her, jostling the car seat’s reflection in Violet’s rearview. Violet couldn’t see her face, but she heard the squirms and soft complaints as Maggie tried to find sleep once again.
Violet pressed her lips into a tight line, then wiped the new round of tears from her cheeks. They’d be at Grandma’s house soon, where they could get a good night’s sleep before returning to the hospital tomorrow, where hopefully they’d get some answers. Or better yet, find Grandma awake.
Soon the bumpy road grew steadily more uneven until cracked pavement gave way to sparse patches of dirt and loose gravel. Stones crunched and pinged beneath the tires and frame of Violet’s little yellow hatchback as she maneuvered the final stretch to her former home.
A small smile pulled through her heartbreak as Grandma’s farm came into view. Ghosts of her younger self on bicycles and horseback rushed down the drive to meet her, chased by the beloved hound dogs and yard chickens of her youth, sprayed with a garden hose held by her grandfather before he passed. Carried in Grandma’s arms when her mother waved goodbye from the passenger seat of a station wagon driven by a man she barely knew.
Violet rolled to a stop in front of the old white farmhouse, nausea fisting in her gut and fat tears blurring away the world before her. She shifted into Park and climbed out to inhale the sticky night air. Summers in River Gorge were scorching hot with the constant threat of a thunderstorm. A volatile combination Violet had always loved.
She peered at her sleeping daughter. “This will be fine,” she whispered. “Grandma will be fine.” Unwilling to wake Maggie, Violet unlatched the entire car seat and hoisted it into her arms, baby and all.
With any luck, Grandma still kept a spare house key under the plant in the big red pot outside her dining room window.
Violet carried Maggie to the potted flower garden near the front steps and tipped the planter back with one foot. “Shoot.” Nothing but bugs on the mulch-covered ground beneath.
She turned for the porch. All hope wasn’t gone. Her grandpa used to keep a spare above the front door. Grandma had hated it because she was too short to reach without something to stand on. Violet, on the other hand, hadn’t had that problem since middle school when she shot up to five foot eight and a half and stayed there.
She slowed on the steps when she caught sight of the front door
