The Violet Hour: A Novel by Katherine Hill Page A

officious. A transplant from the South, she was a tall woman who dyed her short hair blond and wore dramatic eye makeup and heels even in the kitchen. She and her husband, Jules, had left Dallas fifty years before when he came to work for the Defense Department, and she spent the next five decades telling everyone she’d never forgive him. But Jules had died of a heart attack, several years had passed, and still Dorothy was not making any effort to return to Texas.
    The moment Eunice opened the door, Dorothy was talking. “I told myself I’d wait until morning,” she said. “The family needs that time at first to themselves. And I knew you were all here together—dare I say it: a blessing—and so I thought, ‘Best leave them to themselves.Eunice is a big girl. She can take care of herself.’ But oh my Lord you poor thing: look at you, just look at you.”
    She pressed Eunice’s head to her padded life raft of a shoulder.
    “When my Julie died, I sat on the floor and cried for weeks . Wasn’t it weeks?” She released Eunice. “But look at you, you’re standin’ and carryin’ on just like you always do. My Lord, how terrible . To fall from a roof !”
    Eunice smiled grimly. “I always say you have to carry on the best you can.”
    “Well, enough of that! I’m here to help. You’ll do no more carryin’ on today. Did you know there’s a boy in your front yard?”
    When the doorbell rang again that hour, it was a deliveryman, bearing the first of the condolence flowers. Our deepest sympathies, read the card, from an undertaker in DC.
    “You see,” Eunice said to Cassandra. “I know how these things work.”
    Cassandra experienced the rest of the morning as a steady stream of flower deliveries, phone calls from distant relatives who’d received Mary’s message, and visits from neighbors and business associates with food. The family awoke one by one and began moving about the house like automatons, drinking something, eating something, sitting in one chair, sitting in another. Elizabeth had been the next person up after Cassandra, and yet they’d found little time together. Too many other voices and bodies, and Kyle was always nearby.
    Dorothy ran the kitchen, baking casseroles and organizing the delivered food on trivets all around the house. She was a proud widow; the first to come and the last to leave whenever another woman’s husband went under.
    Meanwhile, Alvin Dao had arrived. It was supposed to have been a day off for him, and he had a family, but he was nothing if not a dedicated worker.
    “Alvin,” Cassandra cried when he came through the front door. They were alone in the hall; the voices of the rest of the householdcrackled in other rooms. “Thank God you’re here.” She nearly hugged him.
    “I wouldn’t usually come into the family home,” he said, blinking rapidly through small round spectacles. “But I wanted to pay my respects in the proper fashion.” He was a consummate undertaker, almost a parody of the profession: careful with the living, stiff as their dead. “Your father,” he continued, “would have wanted it this way.”
    Cassandra nodded, her eyes watering, suddenly overcome with affection for the dour man who’d shared her father’s business interests for so many years. She looked at Alvin, tacitly begging him for information. His eyes blinked several more times, and in an uncharacteristic gesture, he clasped her hand in both of his. Then, after a curt nod, he released her and hurried into the kitchen like a messenger with urgent news to share. Several rooms away, Cassandra heard Eunice’s voice rise almost happily to receive his condolences, followed by a flattered mumble from Alvin himself. Cassandra had come to suspect that Alvin liked her parents more than he liked his own family. She thought of his solid, tidy wife and backpack-wearing school-aged boy, and felt sad.
    The rest of the day, the Fabricants moved spastically through emotions and rooms. Eunice had