"Okay, guys," Henry announced. "My dad said Triple A is coming to tow the Benz. We're going to have to take a cab to Lake Forest, and then the train back to Willow later this afternoon."

My heart sank. This significant, unexpected transportation issue was most likely going to have an impact on my desire to get home in time for the dinner my mom was making. It crossed my mind to text her and let her know we were having a car issue and I might be late, but I resisted the urge. For the moment, I was still hopeful that I'd make it home in time.

The manager of the valet service and the two uniformed valets lingered around the Mercedes stroking their chins and looking up at the other icicles dangling from the edge of the car port. The manager called the residence's custodial crew to figure out a way to knock the rest of the icicles down before another one fell and caused damage to another vehicle, or worse, a hurt a person. We stepped into the visitors' center and looked around as if we'd just fallen out of a spinning tornado into Oz. The walls of the room were paneled in rich mahogany, punctured by brass sconces holding little lights shaped like candles. Arrangements of Hawaiian flowers flanked the reception desk, filling the lobby with the fresh, sweet smell of orchids. A well-dressed elderly couple sat together on a leather couch both reading books.

"Welcome to the Gold Coast. Are you here to visit someone?" a kindly-looking man with a gray beard greeted us in the front lobby. He wore a dark gray pinstripe suit and a name tag pinned to his lapel gave his name as RICHARD KUTTNER.

"Yes," Mischa piped up. "I'm here to see my grandmother, Caroline Stowe."

"Ah, yes. Mrs. Stowe. I'm sure she'll be pleased to see you. You must be Violet."

Mischa nodded emphatically. "Yes, I called yesterday about visiting hours. These are my friends. We drove all the way down from Wisconsin to visit my grandmother because I just love her so much."

"Very glad you could make the drive down in spite of the inclement weather," Mr. Kuttner told us. It was obvious that if the real Violet had visited recently or ever, Mr. Kuttner didn't remember what she looked like. Even though Mischa had dark hair to her shoulders like Violet's, she was a good five inches shorter than our sinister former friend. Mr. Kuttner motioned for us to follow him to the reception desk, where a woman who looked more like a hotel concierge than a nurse was answering phones.

"This place is ridiculous," Trey whispered to me as we followed. "It's like MTV Cribs, but for old people."

The nurse ended her call and greeted us with a warm smile. "Angela, these nice young people are here to visit Mrs. Stowe. Would you mind phoning up to Naomi to see if she's ready for visitors?" Mr. Kuttner asked.

Angela, the receptionist, nodded and raised the phone.  

Mischa turned around to offer us a zany smile with her eyes enormous, saying with her expression, can you believe this?

I was nervous even though I knew there was no real reason to be; it wasn't as if nursing homes typically relied on any kind of futuristic technology like retina scans for security access. Although, at that point, if we were called out for being imposters, we'd have been in a bit of a jam since we no longer had wheels to make our escape.

"Alright. Five minutes? Very well. Thank you," the receptionist said into her phone before returning it to its cradle and once again smiling at us.  "You're welcome to have a seat for a few minutes. Mrs. Stowe's caretaker will be down shortly to escort you upstairs."

"She has a caretaker?" Mischa wondered aloud one we were on the other side of the lobby, taking seats in velvet upholstered chairs near a roaring fire in the fireplace. An enormous, beautifully decorated Christmas tree stood in the corner near the fireplace with a Victorian angel on its top. "Is that like a private butler?"

Through the lace curtains hanging on the windows, we could see a tow truck with AAA on its side pulling up to the car port behind the Mercedes. Henry rose to his feet. "I should probably go and deal with this."  He looked around our cluster of chairs at the rest of us. "Is it okay if you guys go up there and visit without me? You know more about all of this than I do. I have to go show this guy my Triple A card."

"Yeah, it's fine," Mischa said. "We've got this."

"Cool," Henry said, and zipped up his coat again to head outside.

Mischa exhaled a long, audible sigh of relief. "Good. I know he wants to help and all, but the less he knows about this, the better for his own safety."

Trey and I nodded in agreement, probably both thinking the same thing about Mischa.

A pretty, middle-aged black woman with an ample bosom and her salt and pepper hair pulled back into tight bun stepped into the lobby and scanned its occupants until her eyes rested on us. As she approached, I assumed that she was Mrs. Stowe's caretaker and made note of the fact that she wasn't wearing a nurse's uniform, but instead a fuzzy wine-colored cardigan over a chambray shirt and khaki slacks. She also wore a Gold Coast nametag on a long silver chain around her neck giving her name as NAOMI BANKS.

"Hi there. Are you the kids here to visit Caroline?" the caretaker asked us skeptically.

"Yes, we are," Mischa announced, sticking her arm out to shake hands. "I am Violet." Mischa seemed to very much enjoy assuming Violet's identity, I had noticed. For the first time all morning it occurred to me to hope that Violet and her parents hadn't visited recently, because presumably if Mrs. Stowe had a dedicated caretaker, she'd remember what Violet looked like.

"Alright, well, I'm going to need you guys to sign in at the front desk before we go upstairs," Naomi told us. I was getting the distinct feeling that she was onto our little ruse.

We dutifully followed her back up to the reception desk and Naomi informed the receptionist, "Stowe's got an I.D. policy. We'll need these kids to sign in."

I bit my lower lip anxiously as I dug my student I.D. from Weeping Willow out of my wallet, glad that I'd saved it even after my expulsion. Next to me, Trey rifled through his own wallet and thumbed past his military school identification card, which would obviously raise suspicions. He instead withdrew his driver's license, which was no longer valid, and presented it to the receptionist with a smile. Mischa made a grand show of digging through her wallet and then the extra pockets on her Coach bag.

"Oh my god, McKenna. You're not going to believe this. My driver's license isn't in my wallet," she said, her face solemn.

"That's weird," I said. "Maybe you left it at the restaurant when you paid for breakfast?"

"Oh no," she said, sounding convincingly distressed. "You're right. I took my credit card back but I don't know if I put my I.D. back in its little pocket. We're going to have to go back."

"Well, that's going to be a huge pain in the butt now that we don't have the car anymore," Trey said, adding another credible layer to our lie. "That was, like, all the way back in Sheboygan."

Mischa turned back the receptionist, who was copying details from the I.D. that Trey and I had produced into the visitor management software on her computer. "I'm really sorry, but I think I lost my I.D. on the way over here."

The receptionist glanced up from her task and said, "Oh, well, that's very inconvenient. We have a strict policy for our Alzheimer's patients that all visitors have to sign in. It's for the protection of our residents, you see. We can't have random people coming in off the street claiming to have relationships with our residents here who might be especially... impressionable, and prone to making generous offers to the people who visit them."

Trey had discreetly tapped my foot with his own at the receptionist's mention of Alzheimer's. Mischa's face fell and she looked like she might genuinely start crying. I had to hand it to her; I previously hadn't known what a gifted actress she was. "Are you serious? We just drove all the way here from Wisconsin so that I could visit my grandmother for Christmas and now I can't even see her?"

Henry stepped back inside the lobby as the service man from Triple A fixed the tow hook under the front of the Mercedes outside. The manager of the valet service followed him, shaking off the cold as he entered. The manager carried a few scraps of paper and stepped behind the reception desk presumably to file them.

"What's going on?" Henry asked as he rejoined us at the desk and noticed Mischa's anguish.

Mischa explained the situation to him, and the receptionist added, "I'm sorry, sir. But rules are rules."

Henry, who was only older than us by two years, was much more comfortable exercising authority with the nursing home staff than we were. I could only guess that his comfort came from having a wealthy father to emulate. He wasn't intimidated by grown-ups in the same way that the rest of us were, and automatically spoke in a slightly deeper voice than usual. "That's unacceptable," he said firmly, shaking his head. "We drove all the way down here so that my girlfriend could visit her grandmother, and my car just sustained significant damage outside your facility due to the negligence of your operations staff."

This comment caught the attention of the manager of the valet service. "What's going on, Patrice?"

The receptionist explained our situation to him and he motioned for her to follow him behind a door on which a sign reading, "STAFF ONLY," was hung.  "Can I have a moment?" he asked her, and she smiled politely at him before following him through the door.

"Sorry about this formality," Naomi told us, softening a little. "We get all kinds coming in here, wanting to talk to people like your grandmother. People smell a little money and you'd be shocked at what kind of crazy baloney they come up with. Can't be too careful these days."

The receptionist and manager of the valet service emerged from the room behind the front desk, and the receptionist printed out visitor guest badges for me and Trey. "And your name again was..?" she asked Mischa.

" Violet," Mischa replied. "Simmons."

Naomi led us toward the elevator bank and pushed the button to summon a car.

"Do you think we should take the stairs?" I asked Trey, referencing what he'd just told me outside about not putting ourselves in high-risk situations.

"It's five long flights," Naomi told me, having overheard my comment.

"McKenna's afraid of elevators," Trey lied. "It'll be okay. I promise."

We stepped onto the elevator with Naomi and she pressed the button for the fifth floor. "It's been a long time since your grandmother had any visitors," she told Mischa in a voice that sounded slightly disappointed.

"I know," Mischa lied. "I feel awful about that. We moved from Lake Forest up to Wisconsin last year and my parents have been super busy at work."

"What about your uncle? The one with all those kids? He never comes around here anymore, either," Naomi complained.

"Oh, I don't know. He and my mom don't talk so much," Mischa expertly lied.

When we stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor, I saw that the residential floors of the facility were much more in line with my expectations of a nursing home. While the Gold Coast was still considerably luxurious, the carpet in the hallway was stained in places. The scent of pomander candles was still strong, as it had been in the visitors' lobby, but on this floor the smells of urine and salty cafeteria food were detectable underneath the more pleasant fragrance. The doors to several residents' rooms were propped open, and we could see the residents sitting on their beds or sofas, all of them watching television. One woman was leaning against her walker, loudly complaining to her caretaker, "But what about fruit cocktail? They said there would be fruit cocktail!"

"There's fruit cocktail on Fridays, Mrs. Kasmierski. You know that. Today's Thursday," the old woman's caretaker assured her.

Some of the doors had Christmas wreaths and holiday cards taped onto them, and others were closed. I hoped that the doors that were closed meant that the residents were spending the holidays with their families far away from this strange residence.

When we reached the end of a long hallway, Naomi extended her arm into the open doorway of the corner room. All four of us funneled in and Mischa exclaimed, "Merry Christmas, Grandma!" before I even had a chance to catch a glimpse of Caroline Stowe. The room was far more brightly lit than the others we'd seen along the hallway, probably because it had windows along two walls instead of one. Beige wall-to-wall carpeting covered the floor, and the walls were painted a clean shade of eggshell, giving the living room of the suite a bland, impersonal look. A petite woman with snow white hair sat perfectly still on a couch with a soft rose blanket spread over her lap. She had lovely blue eyes, just like Violet's, and truthfully she didn't look particularly old. At most she was in her early sixties. She blinked at all of us in quiet confusion.

"Who is this?" Mrs. Stowe asked Naomi.

"This is your granddaughter, Violet. She came with her friends all the way from Wisconsin to see you," Naomi told her. Naomi did not seem the least bit surprised or suspicious as to why Mrs. Stowe seemingly did not recognize her own granddaughter. She told us, "Sit down. Make yourselves comfortable."

"I don't know who this girl is," Mrs. Stowe said, shaking her head.

We all inched toward the sofa across from the couch on which Mrs. Stowe sat except for Mischa, who boldly sat down next to the old woman. "Grandma, look," Mischa said, lifting one of the Christmas cards propped up on the coffee table between the couches. The card had Violet's signature in purple ink inside of it and Mischa flashed it at us so that we could see it. "You got the card we sent."

Mrs. Stowe looked at all of us again sitting across from her and then at Violet. "Violet has blue eyes," she told Mischa.

Mischa brazenly took the old woman's hands in her own and said, "My mother has blue eyes. Are you thinking of her? Of Vanessa?"

"Is Vanessa here?" Mrs. Stowe asked hopefully, recognizing the name. She looked around the room at our faces, suddenly wondering if she had somehow overlooked her daughter's presence in the room.

"No, she couldn't make it today," Mischa lied. "But she wanted me to tell you that she's sorry and she'll visit soon."

"She was supposed to bring Chester. She said the next time she came, she'd bring him here. She promised," Mrs. Stowe said.

Mischa's eyes glazed over and she looked to Naomi for help. Naomi shrugged, having no idea what Mrs. Stowe was talking about.

"I'm sorry, Grandma. I don't know who Chester is," Mischa admitted.

"The bird," Mrs. Stowe reminded her. "My big white bird. Vanessa said he could come and live here with me. That was our deal. I would come here if he could come with me."

Mischa shrugged. "I'll have to ask her about him and see what the hold-up is. I'm sure she didn't forget."

I was starting to feel shameful for being there, for tormenting this poor woman who was obviously suffering from dementia. She had probably been a lovely woman before this disease ravaged her memory. I felt especially ashamed that Violet's family had abandoned her here and that she passed her days alone with a caretaker who barely knew her. This entire visit was seeming like a highly depressing waste of time. We could hardly interrogate Mrs. Stowe about her daughter's medical history with Naomi sitting right there on the couch with us, paying close attention to our every interaction with the old woman. Turning the conversation in that direction was going to be quite a challenge, but I decided to give it a shot.

"Tell your grandmother what happened to our car outside," I instructed Mischa, who raised an eyebrow at me in suspicion. She told Mrs. Stowe about the icicle anyway.

"An icicle," Mrs. Stowe repeated. She twisted around to push back her curtains and look outside. "Is it still snowing?"

"It's not snowing anymore, Grandma," Mischa said. "It was, but it stopped. It's just very cold outside."

"Now the car is being fixed," I interjected. "At the auto body shop. And we're going to have to take a cab to Lake Forest to visit Christina and Ann."

Next to me on the couch, Trey shifted, understanding perfectly well what I was doing. I sensed Henry, on the end of the couch next to Naomi, turn his head to look at me.

"Christina and Ann," Mrs. Stowe repeated without emotion, taking my bait. "Oh, how are they?"

"Grandma. They're dead. Remember? They're the babies that Mom had before me," Mischa said, leading Violet's grandmother along. "We're going to go visit them in the cemetery while we're down here."

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Stowe agreed, the tone of her voice suggesting that she did, indeed, actually remember something. "You were having such a hard time then. We were so worried for you."

"Grandma, I'm Violet. Not Vanessa," Mischa said, holding the old woman's gaze. She spoke in a tone that invited the woman to keep talking.

"You wanted a baby so badly," Mrs. Stowe continued, shaking her head. "You thought a baby would settle Michael down, but after you lost the third one, I told you maybe there was a reason the Lord kept taking them away from you."

Mischa looked across the room at me and Trey to make sure we were hearing everything Mrs. Stowe was saying. After Violet's mother lost the third one. We'd known there were two stillborn babies before Violet, but this definitely suggested a third baby was lost before her arrival. In my head, I envisioned the stick figures in my window. Three girls and then a gap before two more. Three girls and then Violet . Violet was the gap in between those that had died.

And Mrs. Stowe had implied that Violet's mother had thought a baby might save her marriage. Maybe Mr. Simmons' indiscretions hadn't exactly been... discreet.

"What do you mean, the third?" Violet asked. "Mom only told me about two babies she had before me. Not three."

"Well, the third, you lost early. Don't you remember?  Just a few weeks after you called me to tell me you were expecting. The doctors all told you that you needed bed rest but you didn't listen because it was tax season and you thought you could put it off until you were further along. Oh, you were so upset," Mrs. Stowe continued, still confusing Mischa for Violet's mother.

"Oh," Mischa said blankly, not sure how to respond. "Why did my mother keep trying to have a baby if she kept losing them? It would have been easy for her to have given up."

"You wanted to make Michael happy. And you were right, you were right. He turned out to be a wonderful husband and father after all," Mrs. Stowe said, patting Mischa on the hand.

I could tell from Mischa's expression that she was tiring of this game and was starting to get freaked out. And then Mrs. Stowe did the unthinkable: she looked directly at Trey and said, "Who is this young man? He looks just like Michael, doesn't he?"

Mischa studied Trey from her position on the other couch and squinted her eyes for a moment. "Yes, he does, doesn't he? That's my friend Trey, from school."

I slipped my hand over Trey's to either calm his nerves, or my own—I wasn't sure which was more of my real motive.

"Tell me, Grandma," Mischa said, giving this game one more shot. "Why didn't my mom try to have any more kids after me? I would have loved having a brother or sister."

"Oh, she did, Violet. Of course she did," Mrs. Stowe said, now referring to Mischa as Violet. "Then she ended up in the hospital after the last one and Michael told her, enough. They were happy to have you. Such a pretty girl. Your father spoiled you rotten. That's what Bill used to say. Vanessa and Michael spoil that girl rotten."

Mrs. Stowe's words lingered in my head after we left her suite and followed Naomi back down to the lobby, where Henry called a cab service to come and fetch us for the drive up to Lake Forest.

Spoiled rotten. If there was a word that described Violet Simmons perfectly, it was rotten.