The Violet Hour: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

hundred of them, Elizabeth and Kyle on the coveted aisle. Silent cheers went up from their section as Chris, a Google programmer and the previous night’s sloppiest drunk, scuttled in at the last possible moment, miming headache and taking a solo seat in the rear. Bystanders had gathered in the neighboring park, and soon the quartet began to play, pulling the wedding party out of the restaurant and down the aisle in turn. First, with the assistance of cousins, came hertiny, turtle grandparents, then his, astonishingly all still alive, a complete generation that Elizabeth’s family tree had never known. Then the siblings, bridesmaids and groomsmen, the girls dressed tastefully—maybe too tastefully—in long black satin with cowls draping at their backs. Then Rob, escorted by his parents, who were divorced, but smiled amiably as they processed.
    Finally, they all rose, the skin on Elizabeth’s thighs pulling painfully from her seat, as the bride and her parents made their way toward the crowd of well-wishers and digital cameras. Lucie looked taller, and it wasn’t from her shoes. She’d always known how to treat an occasion. The dress, which Elizabeth had seen at an early fitting, was structured at the bodice, flowing in the skirt, and not what she would have chosen, though she could see now in its fully tailored state how well it suited her long-torsoed friend.
    The reception tent billowed expectantly in the hot breeze as the congregation turned to face the wedding party. Elizabeth’s mind tended to wander whenever things got serious and ritualistic, but she tried her best to pay attention now. She clicked her heels together and stared straight ahead, while Kyle, the romantic, reached over to take her hand. In the harbor, a pair of bright white sails sidled up as if they’d been paid to complete the scene.
    Though she hadn’t said so to anyone, not even Kyle, Elizabeth was hurt not to be a more intimate part of her best friend’s ceremony. Family bonds were strong, she knew, but the sight, from ten rows back, of Lucie’s stately family and Rob’s fractured but good-humored one coming together for this one event only made her feel even further away from the most important moments in life.
    How could her own parents ever walk her down an aisle? It was unthinkable. They led entirely separate lives. Even from the other side of the country, she now knew things about them both that they, who still lived in the same metro area, couldn’t possibly know about each other. How her mother had begun eating bananas instead of grapefruit in the morning because of the high-blood-pressure medication she was taking. How her father still kept Ferdinand’s leash bythe door, long after the dog had died. These were things a husband or a wife would know, but they hadn’t been married for years.
    The judge was taking advantage of the easy crowd to make everyone laugh, even as several people had begun to hold their programs over their heads to block out the pestilent sun. One of the grandmothers—Rob’s—rose to read a poem. “From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face, but today I have seen it,” she pronounced. She had a long, bohemian braid, and as she read, she continued to hold the paper in both hands, which shook a little, either from nervousness or a tremor, or both, though her voice remained steady and triumphant, her figure like a flood marker before the retreating sea.
    E LIZABETH HAD ONLY one set of grandparents, the pair on her father’s side having died long before she was born. But even from a young age, she knew they weren’t like other grandparents—that she called their home the funeral home, and not Grandma and Grandpa’s house, was just one of many indicators that there was something uncommon going on. Something that centered itself in their basement. Something secret and exciting that she desperately wanted to see.
    Her grandpa, it was clear, knew everything. His forehead was creased