A Heartbeat Away

“She killed herself, your grandma,” she told me quietly. “She took her own life with a length of rope and Violet found her.”

Mrs. Brown bustled forward then, pushing me behind her and taking hold of my mom’s arm in one smooth movement.

“That’s enough for now, I think, Mary,” she said firmly. “Lucy has heard quite enough for one day.”

With those final words, though, it seemed that my mom dried up, as if facing her past had been too much to bear. She sank back in her chair, staring into the empty grate, and I saw that the cloudiness was in her eyes once more.

“She’s turned herself inside out again,” I said solemnly. Mrs. Brown leaned down and gave me a hug. “Lucy,” she declared. “I do believe you’re right.”

“Why does she do that?” I asked. “Why doesn’t she stay with me?”

I watched Mrs. Brown’s smooth forehead crinkle into tiny lines and she looked me straight in the eye. “Maybe she does it to hide away from the things she can’t face,” she said quietly. “And we have to help her to get well again.”

“I won’t ever hide like that,” I told her, and she smiled, nodding gently.

“Let us hope you never have to, Lucy,” she said.

After I waved goodbye to Mrs. Brown and Daniel and gave Fudge one final pat, I went back into the living room and picked up the letter from my aunt Violet. Violet! I wondered if she would smell of violets the way Mrs. Brown did. She should have been called Violet. It would have suited her a whole lot better than “Edna.”

I stared at the writing, but it was difficult for me to read, short upright strokes with thick, sure lines, placed on the paper with a heavy hand. I tried to imagine the person who wrote them, but as I struggled to decipher the words, the front door banged and my dad’s voice floated through from the hallway.

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