queasy.”
“Oh.” Marina looked pained. “One of
“Poor woman.” I wondered what our next step would be. If she saw two strange women standing on her front porch, she’d assume we were selling something and not come to the door.
“And she’s not answering the door, either,” Yvonne said. “Too many people with magazine subscriptions and whatnot, she says.”
Marina and I looked at each other. There had to be a way; all we had to do was find it.
“I’ll take you over,” Yvonne said, “if you like.”
“You will?” Marina clasped her hands. “Really, truly, totally, completely?”
Yvonne’s shoulders hunched together a little, then relaxed. “Yes. I will.”
I studied her. “Why are you doing this? Helping us, I mean.”
“Why?” She got an owly look, round and deep and quiet. “Because I know you’re trying to right a wrong. That means a lot to me.” A flicker of a smile came and went. “But mostly because I owe everything to you two.” She looked at her feet. “If you hadn’t given me this job, if you hadn’t been my friends, I’d still be sitting in that little house all by myself, trying to convince myself that everything will turn out right.”
Marina’s mouth twisted and I knew she was trying to keep from crying. There were unshed tears in my own eyes, but they weren’t from sentiment; they were out of anger for the sheer waste.
Thanks to the Emmerling ethics handed down from generation to generation, I couldn’t stand waste. I used grocery bags multiple times and always made sure to eat leftovers. But the worst waste of all was of time. Yvonne, through no fault of her own, had been forced to throw away precious years. The idea that Claudia and her ilk wanted more of those years to be useless made me angrier than I’d been in a long time.
“Let’s go.” I stood abruptly.
“Right now?” Yvonne looked at the books still in her hands. “I’m scheduled to work until close.”
“Lois can handle things.” As if there were anything to handle.
“Hi, ho.” Marina smiled, her frame of mind taking a hard turn. “It’s the Three Musketeers. One for all and all for one!” Jumping to her feet, she stabbed an invisible foe with an imaginary sword. “Take that, yon knave!” With her foe vanquished, she leapt into a ghostly saddle, picked up her purse for reins, and off she went. “For Harry, England, and Saint George!”
Yvonne stared after her. “Is she always like this?”
“No. Sometimes she turns into Mae West.”
“I hope she’s not that loud around Violet,” Yvonne said, pulling on her coat. “She’s really not feeling very good.”
“It’ll be fine.” At least I hoped so.
Violet’s house was a lovely renovated bungalow. It was the kind of house that whispers, “Home.” It summoned images of cozy fireplaces, window seats, and a kitchen where white cabinets climbed to the ceiling. I spun the brass tab of the old-fashioned doorbell and we listened to the quivering ring.
The three of us waited, and heard nothing.
“Let me do it,” Marina said.
She elbowed around me and twisted the doorbell. Again we listened to a fading echo. I was just about to suggest going around to the back door, when Yvonne clutched at my sleeve. “What was that?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Marina said.
“Beth, did you?” Yvonne’s face was turned toward me, but her attention was focused inside the house. “It sounded like someone in pain.”
I shook my head.
“Ooooo.”
“There,” Yvonne said. “You must have heard that.”
But I already had my hand on the doorknob. “It’s locked. Let’s try the back.”
The three of us clattered down the stairs, around the side of the house, and up the back steps. I pushed to the front of the pack and banged on the back door with the side of my fist. “Hello? Violet?”
As I called, I turned the oval doorknob. Unlocked. “Hello?” I pushed the door open and we hustled into the kitchen. Looking past the gray marble countertops and tall white cabinetry, I said, “I’ll check upstairs. Marina, you look over there.” I gestured to an open archway leading to dining and living rooms. “Yvonne, through there.” I nodded at a smaller hallway.
We split like a river flowing around rocks. I clattered up the stairs and barged into a guest bedroom, study, and bathroom, searching quickly, looking carefully, wanting to hurry, wanting to be sure I didn’t miss a woman who might be lying on a floor behind a desk, curled up in a small ball. Where was she, where was she . . . ?
“Down here!” Yvonne called.
I rushed down the stairs and followed Marina through the hallway and into a half bath. There, Yvonne was crouching on black and white hexagonal tiles, her arm around Violet’s shoulders. Violet herself was kneeling on the floor, leaning over the porcelain toilet bowl and clutching the rim, heaving and gasping. She wore a loose T-shirt, loose sweatpants, and her hair was lank and stringy against her skull.
Marina and I exchanged a glance. I edged between the pedestal sink and the toilet and hunkered down. “Violet? Should I call 911?”
“No.” She gulped down air. “My doctor said . . .” Her stomach spasmed, but whatever she’d eaten was long gone. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “He said this would happen.” She clutched her burgeoning midsection. “It’ll pass . . . ooohh . . . in a minute. It always does.”
Yvonne gave me a worried look. “Shouldn’t we at least call her doctor?”
“No,” Marina and I said.
“But she’s sick!”
“Only in the morning,” Marina said.
Yvonne frowned. “It’s three thirty in the afternoon.”
“Not if you’re pregnant.”
“If . . .” Yvonne looked at Violet with a dawning understanding in her eyes. “She has morning sickness.”
“There’s nothing morning . . . ahhh . . . about it.” Violet closed her eyes. “Stupidest name ever.”
“But we have to do something!”
Marina smiled. “We can tell childbirth stories.”
“We will not,” I said. “Yvonne, stay with Violet. Marina, come with me.”
The two of us traipsed to the kitchen, where we opened drawers until we found some dishcloths. I ran cold water over two of them while Marina dug ice out of the freezer. “Quit with the childbirth stories,” I scolded. “That’s the last thing Violet wants to hear right now.”
“Just passing on what was passed on to me,” she said airily. “I couldn’t sleep for a week after my aunt Dorothy told me about—”
“Not listening.” I twisted water out of the dishcloths and opened them flat on the counter. Marina laid down a wide row of ice cubes and I wrapped them up. Icewrapped cloths were Marina’s best weapon for morning sickness recovery. If it didn’t help, she always said, at least the cold would distract you.
We went back to the bathroom. Violet had slumped to a sitting position in the corner. I crouched beside her. “This is going to feel cold, okay?” I held the cloth against her forehead.
She groaned at the chill but didn’t move away. The three of us waited, watching Violet’s face. Her misery was etched into the grooves around her mouth and the set of her chin.
Please let this help, I thought. This poor woman needs some relief. Let the ice ease her misery. Let her lean on us. Let her accept our empathy. Let her baby be strong and healthy and happy.
“Oooo.” Violet clutched the cloth with both hands, and my muscles tensed in readiness to move aside. I did not want to be between her and the toilet. “Oooo,” she said again. “That feels good.”
Marina and Yvonne and I smiled at each other. The newly formed Three Musketeers had saved the day. Hip, hip, hooray!
“Wow.” Violet shifted the cloth around. “This feels incredibly good. I owe you guys. I’d offer you my firstborn child, but I don’t have one yet.” She patted her belly and uncovered one eye. “Hey, Yvonne.” The single eye darted at me, then Marina. “You go to my church. Marnie? No, Marina. That’s it. Like with boats.”
