Chapter ONE
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Violet
I WAITED in front of the church for Teddy, little dreaming it would be the last time my brother was ever late. For anything.
He mounted the granite steps, his camel hair coat buttoned against the November chill, in no hurry on this gloomy Saturday we were to bury our father. Teddy flashed his brilliant smile, a gleaming contrast against the darkness of the day. He knew everything and everyone would wait for him.
“Come on,” I hissed and pulled open the door into Holy Family’s dim foyer. “It was supposed to start at three!”
“I had a couple deals cooking,” Teddy said.
Deals cooking. His way of cooking, so different from mine. I’d just come from helping with the reception meal. I led him in the direction of the crowded sanctuary. The front doors of the church opened and closed behind us, admitting a frigid wind along with a couple of bankers, part of Dad’s good-ol’-boy circle. They rushed past us, nodding respects to my twin brother and patting me on the shoulder.
Mournful notes of “Day of Wrath” poured from the organ to further darken my mood. Our workaholic father had collapsed last week, his high-pressure lifestyle causing a massive heart attack. How would his death affect our family business? Will I still be kept shut away in the accounting department, a dainty mouse forever nibbling at crumbs?
Teddy stood in the foyer, his face fresh with vigor, a man on his way up in the world. I grabbed his arm and pulled him down a narrow side hallway. The bereaved family always sat in a recessed space behind a sheer curtain in the crossbar of the sanctuary, laid out in a traditional floor plan. Lodi’s Holy Family Church was just over a century old, a mix of domed and arched spaces.
Cousin Hillary sat with some man I didn’t know in the last row of the family alcove. I wondered about her. She was the only child of Uncle Gerald, who’d ignored our family business in favor of becoming a newspaperman. She was a reporter, too. The only other thing I knew about her was that her mother had run off when Hillary was young.
Now that I thought of it, it wouldn’t have been so bad if our mother had left—instead of tearing me down, year after year. There she sat, in the front row of the alcove, a steely figure draped in black lace. As if psychic, she turned to scowl at me, her dark eyes narrow, the corners of her thin lips pressed tight.
I looked away and tugged at the soft golden wool of Teddy’s sleeve to get him to hurry, but he stopped at an antique coat tree standing in a corner.
“Come on!” I shoved my fists deep into the pockets of my black skirt. I wished I’d had time to stop in the powder room to check my supplies. The damn curse
always came at the worst time. Each period since my marriage was another bloody reminder I was not yet pregnant with a chance for a son, who could inherit controlling interest in the family business.
Only after his coat hung to his satisfaction did Teddy take a seat in the space reserved for us and our mother, aunties, and cousins—all female. Teddy was now the only male left in the family.
