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ANNA: Perfect.
SCARLET: Meet on the back porch?
ANNA: I’ll be there in an hour.
Anna returned her phone to her pocket and smiled at Violet. “Thanks again for this awesome idea.”
Violet waved her hands, showing off her lime-green nails. “It’s a pleasure, honey. Really. These are the last ‘easy’ days of your life, you know. I want to make sure you’re using your freedom.”
Anna winced. When Violet said stuff like that, it terrified Anna even more about the future.
“Listen,” Anna began, wrinkling her nose. “You know my cousin Scarlet?”
Violet raised her shoulders. “I’ve met so many of your cousins. It’s hard to keep track.”
“Right.” Anna laughed. “She’s the oldest daughter of Quentin. The newscaster?”
Violet’s eyes were illuminated. Everyone remembered Quentin Copperfield, who’d graced their screens on the nightly news for decades. Now that he’d quit, Anna had seen several islanders and tourists alike taking stock of him on the street, trying to remember where they knew his face from. Quentin laughed, telling the Copperfields he looked a little “rough around the edges” these days. “I certainly wouldn’t fit TV anymore,” he’d said with a laugh, simply because he’d let his hair grow longer and shaggier and no longer wore suits every day.
“Oh, yes. I remember Scarlet,” Violet said. It could have been a lie.
“Well, she needs some help this afternoon,” Anna said. “She and her father are putting together a new documentary, and they need to pitch it to a, um, production studio.”
Anna wasn’t entirely sure that was how things worked. She hoped Violet didn’t know either.
Violet’s eyes were saucers. “Everyone in your family is on the verge of a big break.”
“I don’t know about that.” Anna swallowed the lump in her throat. “But I would like to help her. If I can?”
Anna hated that she was asking for permission. She forced a smile.
“Of course, honey,” Violet said. “You take all the time you need.”
Down below, where she knelt before her, Anna’s nail technician finished her pinky toe with a quick gash of his brush. So often, Anna had missed the nail on that toe and accidentally painted her skin instead. Now, her toes looked immaculate in a dark blue with glitter. She imagined she wouldn’t have time to paint her toenails for the next several years—not with a baby and then a toddler in tow. She thanked the technician profusely and tied her hair into a ponytail.
“It’s nice to see a mother and daughter together,” the nail technician said, eyeing Violet.
Violet’s cheeks were cherry red, and she splayed her hand over her mouth. “Did you hear that?” she whispered to Anna. “She thinks I’m your mother!”
As Violet and Anna walked back to the car, Violet babbled about this and that before actually saying something of interest. “That younger man,” she said as she buckled her seat belt. “I don’t know what to make of him.”
The other artists at the residency were in their forties and fifties, which gave Anna a clue as to whom she spoke of. “Smith?”
Violet raised her shoulders. “I saw him spill a bag of pasta the other day in the residency kitchen.”
Anna turned to squint at Violet.
“He looked so upset,” Violet said. “I thought he was going to scream. He made a fist and smashed it against his thigh.” Violet imitated him, striking her own fist lightly against her leg as she adjusted herself in front of the steering wheel. “I wanted to step into the kitchen. To tell him not to worry about something as silly as pasta. You would have thought the world was ending.”
Anna grimaced. “Smith’s been through a lot. I don’t think anything’s easy for him.”
“It’s just pasta,” Violet muttered as she eased the car out of the parking lot.
An hour later, Anna tiptoed down the hallway, the staircase, and through the living room and back hallway to find Scarlet on the back porch. Although the back porch was enclosed, it was usually about fifteen to twenty degrees chillier out there, and Scarlet had set up a space heater and carried several blankets in from the living room. An enormous platter of food sat on the table—crackers, hard cheeses, sliced vegetables, fresh bread, various kinds of dark chocolate, and she’d brought a pot of tea and two mugs. Anna’s heart melted.
“Scarlet! It’s too much!”
Scarlet scooped Anna into a hug and laughed. “For you, Anna, nothing is too much.”
