The Violets of March
Read The Violets of March Online
Authors: Sarah Jio
Table of Contents
A PLUME BOOK
THE VIOLETS OF MARCH
SARAH JIO is a journalist who has written for
Glamour
;
O, The Oprah Magazine
;
Real Simple
;
SELF
;
Cooking Light
;
Redbook
;
Parents
;
Woman’s Day
; and many other publications. For the past three years, she has been the health and fitness blogger for
Glamour.com
. She lives in Seattle with her husband, their three young children, and a golden retriever named Paisley, who steals socks. Sarah is at work on her next novel.
“A romantic, heartfelt, and richly detailed debut.
The Violets of March
is the story of a woman who needs to step away from her shattered life and into the magic of Bainbridge Island before she can find herself again. Sarah Jio delivers a gem of a book, perfect for reading on the beach or under a cozy quilt.”
—Sarah Pekkanen, author of
The Opposite of Me
and
Skipping a Beat
“
The Violets of March
is a captivating, bittersweet tale of what happens when the long-buried truth finally makes its way to the surface. I didn’t want this book to end!”
—Kelly O’Connor McNees, author of
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, May 2011
Copyright © Sarah Jio, 2011
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Jio, Sarah.
The violets of March : a novel / Sarah Jio.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-51404-7
1. Women authors—Fiction. 2. Divorced women—Fiction. 3. Bainbridge Island (Wash.)—Fiction. 4. Life change events—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.I6V56 2011
813’.6—dc22
2010037282
Kirch
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To my grandmothers,
Antoinette Mitchell and the late Cecelia Fairchild,
who instilled in me the love of art and writing
and a fascination with the 1940s
“And the riverbank talks of the waters of March / It’s the end of all strain, it’s the joy in your heart.”
—From “Waters of March” by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Chapter 1
“
I
guess this is it,” Joel said, leaning into the doorway of our apartment. His eyes darted as if he was trying to memorize every detail of the turn-of-the-century New York two-story, the one we’d bought together five years ago and renovated—in happier times. It was a sight: the entryway with its delicate arch, the old mantel we’d found at an antique store in Connecticut and carted home like treasure, and the richness of the dining room walls. We’d agonized about the paint color but finally settled on Morocco Red, a shade that was both wistful and jarring, a little like our marriage. Once it was on the walls, he thought it was too orange. I thought it was just right.
Our eyes met for a second, but I quickly looked down at the dispenser in my hands and robotically pried off the last piece of packing tape, hastily plastering it on the final box of Joel’s belongings that he’d come over that morning to retrieve. “Wait,” I said, recalling a fleck of a blue leather-bound hardback I’d seen in the now-sealed box. I looked up at him accusatorily. “Did you take my copy of
Years of Grace
?”
I had read the novel on our honeymoon in Tahiti six years prior, though it wasn’t the memory of our trip I wanted to eulogize with its tattered pages. Looking back, I’ll never know how the 1931 Pulitzer Prize winner by the late Margaret Ayer Barnes ended up in a dusty stack of complimentary books in the resort’s lobby, but as I pulled it out of the bin and cracked open its brittle spine, I felt my heart contract with a deep familiarity that I could not explain. The moving story told in its pages, of love and loss and acceptance, of secret passions and the weight of private thoughts, forever changed the way I viewed my own writing. It may have even been the reason why I
stopped
writing. Joel had never read the book, and I was glad of it. It was too intimate to share. It read to me like the pages of my unwritten diary.