It seemed as though I wasn’t fated to eat my supper today. At least, not any time soon.

My old childhood friend Violet D’Angelo stood framed in the doorway to the kitchen. She was Bertha’s only child. The last time I’d seen her, just before I went to join the navy, she was fifteen to my eighteen. I hardly recognized her now. Once a shy, skinny little thing, now she was a shapely young woman who stood straight, her narrowed eyes taking in everything, losing nothing. A smoking gun was in her left hand.

“V-Violet! How are you doing, love?”

“Gun makes you nervous, eh? And I thought all those years you spent in the navy would have toughened you up by now.” Violet tucked the gun into the holster on her belt and smiled at me. Her heart-shaped face brightened into the face I recognized from my childhood. I was transported back to our youth in that instant, remembering running down sun-lit corridors on the ship, pretending to walk the plank, sharing our first kiss…

I cleared my throat. “You look well, Violet.”