Norah
August 25
She was shopping online for luxury-brand anti-aging cream, about to press “Purchase” to spend more money than she cared to admit for the sake of her vanity, when her phone buzzed beside her. Lately, whenever that phone went off, she experienced a jolt of anxiety. It felt like a small seizure.
She could still recall when the sound of the ringing phone had meant creditors chasing her down, how her body had reacted the exact same way then. She could only guess it was like muscle memory: what to do in cases of severe panic. Back then she had thought that was as bad as it could get, owing money she didn’t have to people who expected to collect it nonetheless. Funny how that time—those old phone calls—had led right up to this one, to these mini seizures every time the phone rang all over again.
When she saw that it was just Violet calling, she exhaled loudly, her breath making a whooshing sound in the otherwise quiet room. She needed to turn on some music, and fast. Music always made her feel better, drove the demons away. Quiet just bred anxiety. When baby Violet had cried, she used to turn the music louder than her wails. She would hold her on her hip and the two of them would dance away the tears.
She answered the phone. “Hey, baby,” she said to her only child, hoping that the tone of her voice belied any wisps of lingering panic. She didn’t want to alarm her daughter. Because no matter what happened, Violet would be fine. Norah would make sure of that. Norah always made sure of that.
She heard static on the other end, only pieces of her daughter’s voice coming through, staccato syllables. Sometimes when this happened, she wondered if her phone was bugged. She glanced around the den, wondering if it was bugged, too. If someone was listening to her right now. Or, God forbid, watching her. She glanced down at the threadbare T-shirt and very old sweatpants she wore. She was just being paranoid.
“Vi?” she asked the static.
“Mom?” She heard her daughter’s voice, then more static.
“Vi! Call me back!” she hollered into the phone. She ended the call, put the phone on her lap, and waited. A moment went by before it buzzed again. She smiled and picked it up. “Is that better?” she asked.
“Huh?” a voice said. She had not looked to see who it was. In that brief moment, as she’d waited for Violet to call back, she’d forgotten to be worried. Not that she wouldn’t have answered her business partner’s call if she’d looked first. She and Lois were in this together, after all. They were all each other had right now.
“Sorry, Lo,” she said. “I thought you were Vi. We had a bad connection earlier.”
“He was there again,” Lois said, skipping pleasantries. Norah heard the anxiety in her friend’s voice.
“Wh-what was he doing?” she asked.
“You know, skulking around like he always does. Looking with those eyes of his. Asking lots of stupid questions. He asked to use the bathroom, and Tessa said he had to be a paying customer. He said, ‘Oh yeah, I’m sure I do.’”
“Tessa told you this?” Norah asked.
“Yes, she called as soon as he left.”
Norah sighed into the phone because there was nothing else to say.
“He’s a cop,” Lois said.
“We don’t know that.” Norah’s words came out too fast, too desperate, to be reassuring.
Lois sighed too. “Yes, we do.”
The two women sat silently on the phone, listening to each other breathe as they each weighed their options. They’d always known this day could come. But things had been going so well for so long, they’d almost forgotten about the possibility.
Lois spoke up. “I think it’s time for plan B.”
“I guess it is,” Norah agreed. She’d been thinking the same thing but also wondering, was this panicking too soon, folding needlessly? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t willing to be at risk anymore. The infamous plan B was dreamed up the same night as plan A, a night of much wine and laughter, when success seemed like the only future they would have. Success, and money. Money to buy expensive eye cream to prevent the signs of aging. Money to keep creditors at bay forever. Money to provide a freedom neither she nor Lois had ever known. But the time for plan B had come. And who knew what would come after that? Certainly not Norah.
“So this is goodbye,” Norah said.
Lois’s voice in response was choked with tears. “Just for now.”
Though Lo couldn’t see her, Norah nodded. “So, then I’ll just say, ‘See you soon.’”
“Remember what we said? Remember what we promised?” Lois asked, and she sounded like a very scared little girl.
“Mouth shut,” Norah intoned. “I remember.”
“Mouth shut,” Lois agreed. “Whichever one of us goes down, we go down alone. We take no one else with us. I’ll do it for you.”
“And I, you,” Norah replied, the words from that long-ago night of plan-B scheming coming back to her like those verses she used to memorize back when her mother, Polly, went through that religious phase and dragged her to church every Sunday. Which of Polly’s husbands had been the religious one? Norah wondered, more because thinking about the past was easier than thinking about the present. When she was little, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t turn out like her mother. And she hadn’t. She’d managed to turn out worse.
Norah heard the click on the other end that meant Lois had hung up.
“You think you’re better than me,” Polly used to say. “You’ll see someday. You’ll see.”
And now, she did.
Violet
September 24
On Wednesday Violet’s mother brought a pumpkin home, and on Thursday Violet’s mother got arrested. When the student volunteer, a boy
