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  Violet tried to laugh, but it came out as a dry cough. It was too close to the truth to be funny. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “After I left your shop the other day, I thought about what you said about not being able to afford to hire our scholarship recipient.”

  Violet’s pulse quickened, and she wondered if Betsy had somehow found out that she was in danger of losing her apartment and store space. If Betsy knew, God love her, the whole city would know, from the governor to the man with the orange-dyed beard who played the piccolo on State Street.

  “Uh-huh,” Violet said, not sure what else to say.

  “I suppose I could have just called somebody else to find her a job, but I had my heart set on her working with you, specifically. She lost her mother recently, and if that weren’t enough to handle, she’s also pregnant.”

  Jesus, thought Violet. She felt sorry for the girl but had the feeling that whatever Betsy had in mind could be a real disaster. Violet had too many problems of her own at the moment to be confident in her ability to mentor anyone.

  “I was thinking an internship would be the answer,” Betsy said.

  “You mean she would work for free? I don’t know how I feel about that,” Violet said. “I think I’d feel like I was taking advantage of a teenage mother.”

  “Not for free. She’d get college credit, which would help her out a lot since she might have to miss some classes in the fall when the baby is born. I already made some calls to my contacts over at the university—Walt was on the board of trustees, you know, before he died—and it will take some paperwork before we can finalize it, but I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for both you and April.”

  “I’m sorry, did you say April?” asked Violet.

  “Yes, April Morgan. She was a senior at East High this year. She stopped attending, though, and got her equivalency diploma instead. Do you know her?”

  Violet pictured the blond girl who’d stood outside the store with the wedding dress swirling around her in the wind.

  “I’m not sure. How old did you say she was?” Violet asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  Violet thought about herself at that age. Her life had been defined by two loves: fashion and Jed Cline. In her one-stoplight hometown, she’d had little access to one and all too much access to the other. Jed had singled Violet out when she was a sophomore and he was a junior at Bent Creek High. He’d plucked her from the ranks of farm kids and metalheads who sat at the peripheral lunch tables and elevated her to the status of “Jed’s girlfriend.” Being Jed’s girlfriend meant a lot of things. It meant Violet sat next to him every day in the center of the cafeteria, surrounded by his contact-sport-playing friends with their orthodontically corrected smiles and car keys. It meant losing her virginity in the middle of a cornfield, in the bed of Jed’s Ford truck under an endless June sky. And it meant accepting a proposal from him at her high school graduation party and enrolling in community college rather than the out-of-state schools many of her classmates had chosen.

  None of it had mattered, though, at the time. Violet hadn’t seen sacrifice in any of her choices. Jed had been the goal, a goal she had achieved without really trying, and when something everyone else deemed as desirable came so easily, it hadn’t occurred to her to question it. Not at the wedding reception in the grade-school gym, where she’d danced in a blissful fog of tulle and tap beer, wearing Grandma Lou’s satin gown from the 1940s. And not in the rented duplex behind the gas station where she and Jed had lived out the decade and a half of their married life—or at least, not until the very end.

  Grandma Lou hadn’t wanted Violet to get married so young. She’d said so when Violet and Jed first got engaged, and again in the tiny room in the back of the church, just minutes before Violet walked down the aisle.

  “You’re sure about this, honey?” Grandma Lou had asked while Violet’s mother pinned a long veil to her daughter’s dark hair.

  Violet had looked in the mirror and traced her lips with another coat of gloss. “Uh-huh.”

  “’Cause if you’re not, you just say the word,” Grandma Lou had said. “You and I will pile into my Buick and keep driving ’til you say when.”

  “Mom, don’t make trouble,” Violet’s mother had said. “We’ve got half of Bent Creek out there in the pews. Violet’s father is already standing at the foot of the aisle, waiting to walk her down.”

  “All I’m saying is that you’re not stuck.” Grandma Lou had leaned over and whispered into Violet’s ear, “You never are, and don’t you forget it.”

  Grandma Lou had never promised that getting unstuck would be easy or quick, though. It had taken Violet a long time to untether herself from the choices she’d made in those critical years of early adulthood. Betsy knew it, too. She’d listened to Violet’s whole story when she’d interviewed her for the start-up grant for Hourglass Vintage. Betsy had told Violet she was a “sucker for second chances” and had rallied the other board members to award her the grant funds.

  And now Betsy was asking her to help give someone else a similar chance.

  Violet couldn’t say no.

  Chapter 5

  INVENTORY ITEM: suitcase

  APPROXIMATE DATE: 1950s

  CONDITION: good, no scratches or scuffs

  ITEM DESCRIPTION: Yellow Samsonite suitcase with ivory, quilted lining.

  SOURCE: Lucille Rollins. Not for sale.

  Violet

  THE BELLS ABOVE THE door jingled and Violet caught a glimpse of her new intern through the glass. Violet hadn’t been expecting her for another half an hour, and she’d been counting on that time to finish reading through the packet of legal information Karen had printed for her to better help her understand what was going on with her lease. She opened a drawer underneath the counter and put the papers away.

  April made her way to the register. She had on a navy dress with gathered sleeves and a Peter Pan collar (1950s, Violet guessed), paired with tan cowboy boots and a chunky turquoise bracelet. Although April’s dress fell loose from an empire waist, Violet noticed with a twinge of envy that her belly looked rounder than the last time she’d seen her, just a couple of weeks earlier.

  “Hi,” April said. “I’m a little bit early. I hope that’s all right. I didn’t want to be late on my first day.”

  “It’s all right,” Violet said. “If you ever drive here, you can park in back of the store. The street parking on Johnson has a two-hour limit, and the police are pretty vigilant about handing out tickets.”

  “I won’t need a parking spot. I live just down the street. And anyway, I don’t drive.” April clutched the strap of her brown satchel.

  “You mean, like, you don’t have a license?”

  “No, I just don’t like to.”

  Violet noticed a defensive edge in April’s voice and decided to drop the topic. So what if the girl didn’t like to drive? Violet certainly had some neuroses of her own.

  “Do you remember me?” April asked.

  “Of course,” Violet said. It’s not every day that someone comes in to buy a wedding dress, let alone return it a few weeks later, she thought. She wasn’t sure what she should do. On one hand, she wanted to give April her money back because she regretted not doing it in the first place. On the other hand, she feared bringing up the dress would remind April of whatever had made her want to return the dress in the first place, and Violet didn’t want to upset her.

  To break the silence between them, Violet said, “It’s hot out there today. It’s nice to finally have some warm weather.”

  “Yeah,” April said, pulling her hair from the back of her neck. “Listen, I want to say thanks for letting me do this. I know it wasn’t your idea, even though Betsy tried to act like it was. She told you I’m pregnant, right?”

  Violet nodded, thinking. This is gonna be awkward. It was too late to change her mind, though. She had already signed the paperwork the university had sent over to formalize the internship.

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nbsp; April took off her satchel and set it on the register counter.

  “Oh, I can show you where to put your purse in the back room,” Violet said. She hoped she didn’t sound too uptight. She’d spent years getting the aesthetics of her store just right, from the orange and blue palette to the gilded mirrors and Lucite stools in the dressing rooms. She didn’t mind clutter, necessarily—clutter was part of her store’s charm—as long as it was her clutter, and carefully curated.

  Violet led April into the storage room in the rear of the shop and showed her the hooks where she could hang her coat and personal items.

  “So why did you decide you wanted to intern here?” Violet asked. “I mean, I know Betsy made the connection, but she knows plenty of other business owners in town, too. You probably could have worked at one of the designer boutiques on Monroe, or at one of the trendy shops on State Street that cater to students. Why did you pick a vintage place?”

  April shrugged. “I guess I just think vintage stuff is more interesting. Anyone can walk into a chain store and buy the same sweater all their friends have. But there’s no story there.”

  “Exactly,” Violet said. For her, vintage items also represented other lives, other choices, and drew the focus away from her own.

  April inclined her head toward a wall of shelves stacked high with canvas containers. “Wow, you have a lot of stuff back here.”

  “This is where I’ve got all my stock that’s out of season or doesn’t fit on the sales floor. Everything is organized by decade.”

  April pointed to a box labeled 1990s. “Is stuff from the nineties really considered vintage?”

  “Sure,” Violet said. “Especially the early nineties.” She lifted the container from its shelf and took off the lid. She pushed aside a layer of tissue paper to reveal a black dress with hot-pink triangles all over it.

  “Okay, I guess that does look vintage,” April said. “I was just a little kid when the nineties ended, so I don’t remember the fashion except for a few things my mom wore. Looks like I didn’t miss much.”

  “Careful,” Violet said with a smile. “This type of stuff is selling really well right now.”

  Violet remembered driving thirty miles from Bent Creek to the nearest JCPenney to buy a similar, neon-patterned dress to wear to her first homecoming with Jed. When he offered her a swig from a flask he’d snuck into the dance, she was so nervous about getting caught by one of the chaperones that she spilled it all over herself. Knowing she couldn’t go home with her dress reeking of peach schnapps, she’d had to wash it with liquid hand soap in the girls’ locker room and then hold it under the hand dryers, wearing just her underwear and bra.

  “Why do you have to wrap everything in tissue?” April asked.

  “It’s acid-free paper.” Violet replaced the lid. “Some fabrics can get damaged or discolored over time just by being in contact with other surfaces.”

  “My mom tried to start up a professional organization business,” April said. “She would’ve loved to see how you’ve got everything set up back here.”

  Violet remembered what Betsy had said about April having lost her mother. She wondered what had happened but knew better than to ask. Instead, she said, “I guess you could say I’m kind of obsessive about my merchandise. But my store is my baby. Besides my dog, Miles.”

  Violet put the box back on the shelf.

  “Do you ever bring Miles in with you?” April asked. “I love shop dogs. The manager of the hardware store down the street from me brings in his Lab. The dog is always there when I go in looking for some obscure fixture for the house.”

  “I’d like to bring Miles in here, but he’s a pit bull and some people are afraid of them.” Violet paused. “Did you say you’re fixing up a house?”

  “Just little stuff here and there. It’s the green bungalow a block east of here, next to the natural foods co-op.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know that house. It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah, but it needs work—work that I don’t know how to do and don’t have money to pay for. My mom left it to me when she died.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom.” Violet didn’t know what else to say.

  “Yeah. Me too.” April’s shoulders slumped. “The house is actually on the market and I’m hoping it sells soon. The Realtor has brought a bunch of people through, but so far no one has made an offer. I guess I can’t blame them. Why would they want to buy a hundred-year-old house when they could buy a brand-new condo right down the street?”

  “If you inherited the house, that means your dad’s not in the picture, huh?” Violet asked.

  “He and my mom got divorced when I was two. He lives in Ohio with his wife and their kids. He used to visit a couple of times a year when I was younger, but I haven’t seen him in a long time. And to be honest, I’m fine with it. It was always awkward when he visited.” April turned to the shelves. “So you know where everything goes, but how am I supposed to figure it out? I mean, I can’t tell just by looking at something what decade it should be shelved under.”

  Violet knew her perfect system was perfect only for her, and she’d organized it that way on purpose. She’d never trusted any of her employees enough to do more than fold clothes and ring up sales.

  “If you need something from back here, just ask and I can show you where it is,” Violet said.

  “But what if you’re not here?”

  “I’m almost always here,” Violet said.

  “What’s all that?” April nodded her head toward a folding table covered with heaping stacks of paper.

  Violet let out a nervous laugh. Of course April had to notice the one area of the store she didn’t have under control. “Just more records I don’t need, but need to save for tax purposes and stuff. I put stuff there to file away later, but I never seem to have time.”

  “Have you thought about getting them all scanned, so you can save them electronically?” April asked.

  “Sure, but I don’t know when I’d possibly have the time.”

  “Isn’t that what interns are for?”

  “Getting everything loaded onto the computer is only the first baby step, though,” Violet said. “Then I’d actually have to learn how to find everything again.”

  “I could show you. Do you have an inventory system, too?”

  “Oh, yeah, hang on.” Violet went over to the table and retrieved her leather-bound journal. With pride, she ran her hands over the worn cover, then handed the book to April. “This is where I have my records of every piece that comes into the store, where it came from, and what condition it’s in.”

  April squinted as she peered down at Violet’s looped handwriting. “Okay, well, we can get all this information computerized, too. You do have a computer, right?”

  “Upstairs in my apartment,” Violet said. “For e-mail and stuff. And sometimes I go online to look for vintage stuff for the store.”

  “If you brought it down here, I could set everything up for you so you wouldn’t have to deal with all these receipts and notebooks and everything.”

  Violet took the inventory book back from her. “I’m not sure we really need to. I mean, things may look disorganized, but believe it or not, I actually know where everything is.” She took a step toward the door, anxious to end all the talk of records and technology. “Come on, let’s go up front. I’ll show you how to work the register.”

  On the sales floor, Violet admired the neat, round racks of dresses and the rainbow of shoes and handbags lining the shelves. She liked it so much better out here than in the back of the shop. It always made her feel calm to be surrounded by beautiful things, like the stacks of hemstitched Irish linen tablecloths she’d folded that morning and placed on the main display table. Beautiful things distracted her from the uglier parts of life, the parts filled with divorce and disappointment.

  “Do you just have the one register?” April bent over the hulking machine with its roll of receipt paper and a corkscrewed change slide.<
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  “Yep,” Violet said. “She’s a bit fussy, but you’ll get the hang of her. These buttons open it.” She tapped a combination of keys and the cash drawer sprang open. A few thin stacks of bills lay nestled in the compartments. Like everything else in the store, the register was secondhand.

  “Sometimes the receipt roll gets jammed, and if that happens, you can use this high-tech device to fish out the paper.” Violet held up a bobby pin that had been sitting next to the register. “I also recommend swearing a lot. Seems to help.”

  “What if someone needs to return something?” April asked.

  “We don’t take returns.”

  “Oh, yeah.” April’s expression turned sad for a second. “The wedding dress.”

  “About that . . .” While she had the register open, Violet counted out a stack of bills and handed them to April. “This is for you, for the dress.”

  April stared at the money in her palm. “But what about your policy?”

  Violet smiled. “I can make an exception for my intern.”

  April looked Violet in the eye, seeming touched by the gesture. “Thanks,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  The bells over the door jangled and a barefoot woman walked in, clutching a plastic broom with one hand and holding a lit cigarette with the other. Her long, white hair obstructed her face, but Violet needed only to look at the woman’s bare feet to know that it was Erma, the neighborhood drifter.

  “Erma, I’ve told you before, you can’t smoke in here,” Violet said. “State law.”

  The old woman went back outside, grumbling something about fascism.

  “You know that lady?” April asked.

  “Everyone knows her around here. It’s hard to miss somebody who doesn’t wear shoes, even in winter.”

  “What’s her story?”

  “No one really knows. Some people say she’s a witch.” Violet looked out the window, where Erma stood on the sidewalk finishing her cigarette. “She’s been coming in here since I first opened. Sometimes she brings me mushrooms or herbs that she says are edible—she calls herself an urban forager. She never buys food, only eats what she can find.”