by Iris Morland
At least Martha hadn’t heard the knock on the front door: the water was currently running in the bathroom for Martha’s nightly bath, loud enough that it was unlikely she’d heard anything.
When Violet heard the visitor knock a second time, the knock faster and louder, she wrenched the door open with angry words on her lips. The words died when she realized it was Ash. His face was pale, his lips thin.
“What are you doing here? Did something happen? Are you okay?” The words tumbled from her lips like one long question.
“I’m fine. Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”
Violet was about to ask why he couldn’t have texted or called her, but the look on his face stopped her. Something was seriously wrong here. She’d never seen Ash this out of sorts: pushing his fingers through his hair, which was already totally disheveled. He had purple bags under his eyes, so clearly he hadn’t slept a wink. What had happened between Sunday, when they’d returned from the tulip fields, and now?
Violet pushed away the panic that threatened to overtake her. Memories of the phone call from the police when William had died choked her for a moment, and she had to turn away to compose herself. Trying her best to hide her shaking, she gestured for Ash to go into the living room with her.
He said, “First, I need to see something with your husband’s writing on it. Something you know he wrote himself.”
Violet blinked. “What? Why?”
“I’ll explain. I promise. But, can you just get something?”
Totally flummoxed, she went to her bedroom to dig around in her drawer for a Valentine’s Day card that William had given to her a year before he’d died. She returned to the living room and handed it to Ash.
Ash then pulled out what looked like a book of old checks. Crouching down, he opened the card and then folded the checkbook over until one of the carbon copies was visible. Violet didn’t ask questions. Based on Ash’s face, he wouldn’t answer them anyway.
The silence was deafening. It pulled at Violet until she had to sit down to keep from collapsing from the anxiety. Her palms sweaty, she tried not to stare at the clock, but suddenly it was like the ticking got louder and louder with each passing second. What is taking so long?
Ash moved so he sat next to her. He pointed at the s in Valentines that William had written on the card. Happy Valentines Day, Vi. Love you. He’d never included the apostrophe in Valentine’s Day, and seeing that tiny reminder of him made her swallow a sudden lump in her throat.
“Do you see the s here?” Ash said, tapping the card. “It’s a cursive s.”
“So?” She peered more closely. “Are you saying that’s not William’s handwriting?”
“No, what I’m saying is that this is his handwriting on these checks. The checks that are signed in your name.” He pushed the checkbook toward her.
It was like her vision had to clear before she could even see what Ash was talking about. Her attention was snagged on the cursive s in Eastern written on the check. In the bottom right-hand corner, she saw her signature—except it wasn’t her signature. She’d never signed this check.
Her mouth went dry. “I don’t understand,” she said hoarsely. “What is this?”
“Violet, I think it wasn’t one of your bookkeepers who stole from you. It was William.”
Violet stared at the carbon-copy check until it felt like it was inscribed upon her eyeballs. Her breath came faster and faster, but it was like she was listening to someone else struggle to breathe from very far away.
Ash took her hand. “Violet, baby, breathe. Take a deep breath for me.” Ash rubbed her back as he squeezed her hand. “Then let it out. Slowly. Now do it again for me. Deep breath in, then a deep breath out.”
She focused on the feeling of his hand rubbing her back, the motion a gentle circle. She felt weirdly disembodied in that moment. It was only Ash’s soft voice that kept her from floating away completely.
It was William. It was William. It was William. She wished she could say, I knew it all along. Or, I’m not surprised.
She wished rather fervently that she wasn’t that much of a fool. That she hadn’t been duped so easily. William, her husband, the love of her life, had betrayed her. How had he done it without her noticing?
“Do you know why he stole the money?” Her voice came from far away.
“I don’t. Not yet. He also took out credit cards in your name; that’s what the money was being funneled toward. There are a lot of transactions on the credit card statements, but none are specific enough to trace. I’ll figure it out, though. I promise you that. I won’t rest until I find where William put your money, or if it can even be recovered.”
That was when she started shaking. It seemed to start from her toes until it took over her entire body. She was glad she was sitting down; otherwise she was sure she would’ve collapsed right then. Never in her life had Violet fainted, but at that moment, she rather wished that she would. At least she could forget what she’d just heard for one blessed second.
“Violet, did you hear me? Baby, talk to me. You’re scaring me.”
Violet reached for Ash’s hand, holding on as if her life depended on it.
“I can’t think. I can’t understand how I didn’t know. It didn’t even occur to me. He never acted like he was doing anything shady.” A sob burst from her throat. “Was he having an affair? Oh God, what if he has some other family somewhere and I never knew—”
Ash enfolded her in his arms, and although she wanted to cry, her eyes were dry.
Right then, a sound came from the back of the house, and Violet remembered with a start that Martha was still here. Getting up, she looked down the hallway to see the bathroom door still shut. She breathed out a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed was Martha to hear this news about her son. She would be absolutely devastated.
Violet returned to the living room and sank back down onto the couch. Ash shot her a look of concern and tried to take her hand again, but this time, she shook her head. She did her best to ignore the hurt that flashed in his eyes.
For so long, Violet had told herself that her marriage to William had been perfect, until she’d been selfish enough to destroy it with her ambitions. She’d wanted to start her jewelry business because she hadn’t been content with a boring office job. She’d wanted more, and look what had happened. He’d gotten so frustrated with her that they’d fought bitterly. And then he’d left and had never come back.
She wished she’d never started her godforsaken business. She wished she hadn’t had to prove to herself and everyone else that she was capable of doing it. What had been the point? Her husband was dead and her business was in shambles.
The guilt, though, was punctuated with bursts of hot, almost boiling anger: anger at William, who’d stolen from her without batting an eyelash. Who’d sworn to love and to cherish her no matter what, but who’d deceived her so thoroughly that she’d been blindsided by this revelation. What else had he been hiding? At this point, she almost didn’t want to know.
The bathroom door opened, followed by footsteps in the hallway. Another door opened and closed.
Violet let out the breath she’d been holding.
She turned to Ash. “You should go. I need to—I don’t know. I need to be alone right now.”
“Are you sure? You were about to collapse on me.” Ash touched her forehead, but she jerked away. His face closed.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I mean, I’m not fine, but I’m not going to keel over. Really. You should go.”
Ash rose and went to the front door, but he hesitated when he reached for the doorknob. “You’ll call me if you need anything? You’ve gotten a huge shock tonight. I hated that I had to tell you that, but you needed to know.”
Her smile was tremulous, and she could feel her bottom lip start to quiver. I can’t break down yet. I can’t. Keep it together, Violet. Just a few more seconds.
“Yes, I know, thank you. Please, just go.”
; He enfolded her in a tight hug that squeezed the breath from her lungs before he finally left. Violet shut the door quietly, hoping that if Martha had heard voices, she had assumed it was from the TV.
Violet returned to the living room and gathered up the Valentine’s Day card and the checkbook before going to her room. She locked her bedroom door and turned on some music. She was glad, at that moment, that her bedroom didn’t share a wall with Martha’s bedroom.
The click of the lock, the sound of the song’s chorus drifting through her room—it was if the combination unleashed the floodgates. A sob burst forth from Violet, and she fell onto her bed, crying so hard that she had to bury her face in her pillow to muffle the sound. Her sobs shook the bed. A scream built in her throat, and it took all of her self-control to swallow it.
William, what happened to us? What happened to you? Where did everything go wrong?
She blamed herself; she blamed him. In her bitterness and regret, she blamed Ash for looking so deeply into things that he’d unearthed skeletons that Violet rather wished had never come to light.
Why had Ash been so intent on this? Why had he felt so compelled to shatter the illusion that her marriage had been built on love and trust? That illusion had been what she’d held on to ever since William had died. Without it, her world crumbled.
She cried until she didn’t have any tears left. She cried until her eyes burned, her head pounded, and her throat ached. Seeing the card and checkbook on the corner of her bed, she tore up both and flung the pieces across the room in a sudden burst of rage.
“Damn you, William. Damn you.”
Like a popped balloon, her anger diffused. She was left a shaky, teary-eyed, exhausted mess. As she lay back down on her bed, she could only see Ash’s face in her mind. She saw the hurt look he’d given her, how he’d tried to comfort her. But mostly she just heard his words, over and over again, like a never-ending litany.
It was William. It was William. It was William.
Violet didn’t know how long she’d fallen into a doze, but when she awoke, her music had stopped playing. She rubbed her eyes, grimacing as her hand came away with all of the smudged mascara that had melted from her eyes. She needed to wash her face, brush her teeth, and try to go to sleep for real.
After she’d cleaned up in the bathroom, she was returning to her room when she heard what sounded like a groan. Frowning, she listened, only to hear it again.
It was coming from Martha’s bedroom.
Violet pushed open Martha’s door. Her bedroom was dark, with only a little light from the streetlamps outside. Violet switched on the overhead light and gasped. To her horror, Martha lay on the floor, unmoving.
“Martha! Oh my God, Martha!” Violet turned her mother-in-law over, and Martha’s eyelids fluttered, but she was clearly out cold. She let out a low moan, and the sound was the sweetest sound Violet had ever heard.
Violet’s hands shook. It was like everything had come to a standstill. Finally, her brain—slow and confused—registered that she needed to call 911. Sprinting to her room, Violet grabbed her phone and prayed that help would arrive in time.
16
Ash had never driven so fast as he did after Violet called him, telling him that Martha was in the emergency room. He burst through the hospital doors and practically ran over at least one nurse to get to the front desk. He was so out of sorts that the attending nurse had to get him to take a deep breath before he could eke out the words Martha, Fielding, where?
“Ash!” Abby Thornton hurried up to him, which wasn’t particularly fast given the size of her pregnant belly. She took his arm. “Let me take you to Violet. She said you were coming.”
Ash let Abby lead him to a waiting room not far from the nurses’ station. There, he found Violet slumped in a chair, her eyes closed and her face pale.
“Violet, baby.” He sat down next to her and took her hands, chafing them because they were so cold. “I’m here. It’s me.”
Her eyelids fluttered open. A second later, her face crumpled, and she started crying into his shoulder. Ash didn’t even notice that Abby had left them alone; he didn’t care about the other patients in the waiting room, although luckily, there were few.
“What happened?” Ash kept asking.
Violet shook her head and cried harder until his shirt was soaked with her tears. Finally, he snagged a box of tissues from a nearby table and handed it to her. She mopped up her face, her eyes bloodshot.
“Violet, what happened? Talk to me.” When she’d called him and said something about the ER, he’d thought at first that she’d been hurt somehow. It had taken her yelling that it wasn’t her, it was Martha, before the reality had registered.
“I found her in her bedroom on the floor. I thought she was dead.” Violet hiccupped. “She wasn’t, thank God. The doctor hasn’t come to talk to me yet because they’re stabilizing her, but she went into ketoacidosis.” At Ash’s blank look, she explained, “She’s diabetic. Ketoacidosis is when you have too much sugar in your blood and not enough insulin. It’s really dangerous. It can kill you, and the EMT told me if I had found her even an hour later, she wouldn’t have made it.”
Ash swore under his breath as he held Violet. She shook in his arms, and all he could do was rub her arms and tell her that he wasn’t going to leave her for one second. He’d never seen her so unraveled. Added to that was his guilt about telling her about William just hours earlier.
She had to be absolutely exhausted. He didn’t know how she was still coherent.
About an hour later, Abby returned to sit next to them. “Your mother’s going to be fine,” she told Violet. “It was a close call, but we were able to get insulin into her system to counteract her blood sugar.”
“She’s my mother-in-law,” Violet whispered. Her voice was far away. “Do you know how this happened? She takes insulin, checks her blood sugar. I saw her do it earlier in the evening.”
“She’s not fully conscious yet, so I can’t say how this happened,” said Abby. “Her blood sugar was close to four hundred.”
At Violet’s gasp, Ash asked, “What’s a normal level?”
“It depends on if you’ve eaten or not, but a normal rate would be between seventy and one hundred and forty. Mrs. Fielding’s blood sugar level was so high that our attending physician wasn’t sure if he could save her, especially given her age. She’s very lucky that you called 911 when you did, Violet.”
Violet sniffled. “I should’ve checked on her earlier. I was so caught up—” She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. “When can I see her?”
“When she’s awake. I’ll let you know.” Abby touched Violet on the arm and left them.
Ash sat with Violet for a few more hours, and she dozed against him. Seeing her like this and not being able to do anything for her? He felt a piece of himself break apart. He vowed that he would do everything he could to keep Violet safe and loved for as long as he lived.
Abby finally took them to Martha’s room around three in the morning. At the door, Ash said to Violet, “I don’t have to come in if you don’t want me to.”
Violet hadn’t let go of his hand. She took in a shaky breath. “No, I want you to. I don’t want to be alone, although I’m sorry I’ve kept you up this late. I know you have work in the morning.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he assured her. “Trent will totally understand if I don’t come in.”
When they entered, Martha looked absurdly small, sitting upright in the hospital bed. Wires and machines were hooked up to her, and when she saw Violet, she just said in a broken voice, “Oh, honey.”
Violet tried to embrace Martha despite all the wires and IVs, letting out a watery laugh when she had to duck under Martha’s IV tube to hug her.
“You scared me,” said Violet. “What happened? Did you forget to take your insulin? You know I told you that I would help remind you.”
Martha shook her head, effectively silencing Violet. “First,” said Martha, “you s
hould introduce me to this man standing behind you.”
Startled, Violet introduced Ash to Martha, and when he shook the older woman’s hand, her eyes narrowed, assessing him. He had to restrain himself from fidgeting under that eagle-eyed assessment.
What the hell does she think she can see when she looks at me? I’m not sure I want to know, he thought.
“Do you mind if Ash stays?” Violet asked Martha. “He promised he would behave.”
“If he goes and gets you some coffee and something to eat first, then he can stay.”
Ash murmured in Violet’s ear that he’d be right back, knowing quite well that Martha wanted to talk to Violet in private. Leaving the two of them, he took the long way to the hospital cafeteria and counted down the minutes before he returned.
“You know Ash wouldn’t have cared. Whatever you need to tell me, he wouldn’t judge you.” Violet smiled, despite the fact that her eyes hurt from crying and her head felt like it would split open at any minute. “I’ll make sure you take your insulin from now on, and we’ll test your blood sugar twice as often. We won’t let this happen again.”
“Sit down, sweetheart. I need to tell you something.”
Violet sat down, her heart in her throat. Martha looked so exhausted and pale, her hair sticking up every which way. Without her usual lipstick and matching ensembles, she seemed diminished and frail. The realization that Martha wouldn’t be with Violet forever made her want to start crying all over again.
“I know about everything,” said Martha in a rush. At Violet’s surprise, she added, “I should’ve told you that I knew. I’m sorry.”
“You know everything? I don’t understand.”
“I know that your business isn’t doing well. I know you’re struggling financially, and I found that summons in your bedroom a few weeks ago.” Martha sighed. “Do you really think I wouldn’t know? I’ve seen the strain on your face, Violet. I’ve noticed how every time I ask you what’s wrong or if you’re having issues with money, you never answer my question.”