exuberant. âIâm using it, donât worry about it. Just tell me what you know about my grandmother.â
Violent returned the embrace with surprising strength, but then she lay back, looking drained. She stared at Betsy. âYour grandmother!â
Betsy nodded, pleased with the notion. âMy grandmother! Maybe sheâll leave me all her money, maybe sheâs really wealthy, maybe Iâm the granddaughter sheâs been longing for.â
Violet giggled weakly. âOh, Betsy. Do you know, I never thought about her being your grandmother. Isnât that odd? Oh, we do get self-centered when we get old.â She smiled happily and settled into the pillows with a contented wiggle. Her bouts of contentment always amazed Betsy. Sheâs dying , she thought.
âWell. Anyway.â Violet frowned, addressing herself to the paper in Betsyâs lap. âMy parents and I lived at six sixty-six Spring Street. Iâm not sure Iâd remember the address if it werenât for those three sixesâwe moved from there when I was little. And my real motherâwe can call her Emily, by the wayââ
âWhy Emily?â
âThat was her name.â
âHow do you know?â
âMarion told me.â
âYou know her name ?â
âWell, Iâm not at all sure of her last nameâwait, Betsy, weâll get to that part. Iâm ahead of myself. Wait.â Violet touched her brow with her long forefinger and closed her eyes. âShe must have lived at six sixty-eight, on the right of our house as you went up the hill becauseâwait, the numbers went downâyes, the Rebhahns lived on the left, and that must have been six sixty-four, in fact I know it was.â She opened her eyes, triumphant. âYes. She lived at six sixty-eight Spring Streetâ if itâs true that she lived next door, and I think it was. That has the ring of truth. When you tell a lie, you keep to the truth as much as you can.â You should know, Betsy thought. âI suspect Marion only lied about the marriage. Letâs accept the rest as true.â
âWhat else can we do? Weâve got to have something to go on,â Betsy said, thinking: hopeless, hopeless.
âRight. So she was a young, unmarried girl living at six sixty-eight Spring Street, and her name was Emily something, like Lofting or Loftig.â
âAunt Marion told you this?â
âShe told me the name, but I didnât catch it right. To tell you the truth, I didnât pay that much attention. I was in shock, Betsy. Imagine if you were to find out that I wasnât your mother? Or that Daddy was never your father?â
Betsy couldnât imagine it. She brushed the attempt away. Besides, anytime she wished she could look in the mirror and see her motherâs bird faceâeyes and beak, sharpened.
âAnd, of course, this was thirty-five, thirty-six years ago that she told me. But it was something like that. Lofting. Or Loftig. There were a lot of German families in the neighborhood. Say Loftig. But check Lofting.â
âI will.â Violet watched anxiously as Betsy wrote them both down. âAnything else?â
âNot really.â Violetâs eyes became faraway. âExcept I saw her onceâdid I tell you that?â
âReally saw her?â How she dramatizes, Betsy thought. âReally? Or imaginedâwishedââ
âNo, really. I was working at Chappellâs, in hats. I made fourteen dollars a week, Betsy. Can you imagine that?â She chuckled, but it was a faraway chuckle. Betsy had heard many times, especially lately, about her motherâs brief fourteen-dollar-a-week job, and the lunch she treated herself to every payday: a chicken salad sandwich, iced tea, and a hot-fudge sundae at Schrafftâs, all for fifty cents. âSo one day your grandpa came in, and there was a woman with him. I was kind of surprised to see