Chapter 1

In the midst of life, we are in death; in the midst of death, life.

The pastor’s words from last month’s funeral service came to me as I stood in the explosive heat of the attic, beads of sweat trickling down my spine. Surrounded by boxes of my father’s possessions stacked to the rafters, I looked through the light-filled shaft of a half-circle dormer window, holding my head at an angle to watch my sister arguing passionately and silently with her boyfriend on the street below.

I’d been an unwilling and uncomfortable witness to their breakup over the last several days. Despite the size of the house, it had been impossible to escape the long angry phone conversations and her crying jags afterwards. When she was angry Violet was all sharp angles: slim shoulders up, elbows out, hands slashing the air. She was like that now.

I watched her take her boyfriend’s phone from his hand and dash it to the sidewalk. His only reaction was to fold his thick forearms, sleeved with tattoos, over his chest. He stood with his chin lowered and mouth closed, feet apart, the stance of a man who was guilty of something but wouldn’t admit it.

Their argument was mime through the triple-paned glass, but I’d picked up plenty from the snatches of phone conversation I’d heard. He’d cheated on her, apparently. The usual sexual recombination that happened on a television set. Violet had taken the betrayal hard, coming as it did a week after our father’s funeral. The boyfriend – Ted, a name I’d heard screamed, cried, and cursed over the last few days – had driven here so that they could have it out face to face. Violet had insisted on meeting him outside.

She closed the distance between them across the grass verge, high cheekbones rouged with rage. Their fight was loud enough now to almost penetrate the window glass, her voice high and cutting, the words indistinct.

Something in the argument shifted and broke. I saw him take a half-step back, unfold his arms, and slap her hard across the face.

I was down the attic’s stepladder before I realized I was moving. The stairs to the ground level disappeared under my feet two at a time, one hand sliding on the polished mahogany bannister. There was a signed baseball bat in the garage, some corporate gift to my father. It took a fraction of a second to cull that option; my desperation to get to Violet overrode everything else.

I heard an engine race before I reached the front door; by the time I made it to the street, Ted’s truck was already turning the corner, tires squealing. Violet was holding her cheek, her dark eyes wide and shocked.

“I saw what happened. Are you okay?”

She jumped a little, her eyes still gazing after him, confused and questioning, as if she was struggling to understand what had just happened. “I’m okay,” she replied. Her voice was remote, almost robotic. I looked down at the asphalt: he’d taken his cellphone.

“Do you want me to call the cops?”

“No. He’s gone now.” The same distant, calm tone.

“Come inside.” Taking her free hand, I led her quickly up the walk and back inside the house. Locking the door, I saw curtains twitch closed behind a window on the upper floor of the Tudor-frame house across the street.

“Sit.” Violet sat at the kitchen island like an injured child, still holding her cheek.

I pushed a clean dishcloth into a widemouthed goblet and held it under the refrigerator’s crushed ice dispenser until it was half-full. Twisting the cloth closed, I removed her hand and placed the cold surface against her skin.

“Here.”

“Thanks.” Her fingers covered mine, holding the compress in place. “It really wasn’t that hard.”

“Doesn’t matter.” My body was still quivering with rage. “Are you sure you don’t want to press charges?”

“Yes.” She shook her head minutely. “I’ll be fine.”

I sighed. Ted wasn’t her first abusive boyfriend. My sister had a type.

She pulled the dishcloth away from her cheek and I pushed her hand back. “Hold it there. At least five minutes. If you’re not going to press charges, you at least don’t want to show up on set with a bruise.”

She shuddered slightly, and I winced in empathy. “Sorry. He’s going to be there next month, isn’t he.”

Violet nodded, eyes downcast. “I’m pretty sure. He’s part of the stunt team.”

“Can you talk to the producers?”

“I’m sure I won’t need to do that. It’s over. We’re professionals. Besides, I doubt I have that kind of pull.” She glanced at me quickly. “Really. It’ll be fine.” Her voice was still hoarse from the fight.

I growled in frustration. She reached across the expanse of black granite to grasp my hand, pushing her hurt behind her concern for me.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course I’m going to worry about it. I’m your brother.”

She winced at her own weak smile.

I squeezed her hand. “Come with me.”

Violet followed me obediently across the open floor to the front lounge. Settling into a patch of sunshine on the large white leather sofa, I placed my feet up on the cushions and pulled her between my legs. I could feel her stiffened spine shudder against my chest as I touched her hair with my fingers, one arm wrapped around her waist.

It was a coping habit we’d developed as children, whenever the emotional abuse of our parents had been too much. After every breakup, every fight at home, I held her like this. It made things better.

Strangers seeing Violet and I together often mistook us for husband and wife, an assumption that always left my sister deeply amused. It was an understandable error: we looked nothing alike, and shared an unmistakable intimate bond, deeper than most siblings, one forged in the chaos of our childhood.

My mother had been our father’s first wife. She’d died when I was eighteen months old. Pancreatic cancer. Left balancing a toddler and a rapidly growing engineering business, my father had remarried less than a year later and quickly produced Violet. That marriage had lasted a little over a decade before he’d divorced and moved on to his much younger third wife. He’d been divorced again and looking for wife number four when he died.