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“We did, yeah,” Violet agreed with a soft smile aimed at Rachel’s dark, beautiful eyes.

“Why do you have a sad face, then?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t have a sad face. I’m smiling.”

“It’s your deep-in-thought smile, when you have forty other things rolling around in your head, and not at all your super happy smile.”

“My super happy smile?” She laughed.

“Violet, what’s going on? Does this idea sound terrible to you or something?”

“It sounds perfect. It’s us. It’s exactly what I want.” She squeezed Rachel’s hand. “I love you more than life; you know that, right?”

“You can’t say something like that with that sad smile thing going on.”

Violet knew Rachel wouldn’t let this go, so it was either time to make up a lie, which she didn’t want to do, or tell her the thing she’d been holding back for the entirety of their relationship.

“Can we talk?”

“Yes, that’s what we’re doing,” Rachel said.

“I have something I need to tell you, and I don’t know how you’re going to take it.”

“Just say it, Violet. You’re freaking me out here,” Rachel replied and slid her hand out from Violet’s, making Violet only worry more.

“I don’t mean to scare you.” She took Rachel’s hand back and entwined their fingers. “I just have to tell you something that happened before we met. Well, I guess it happened after we met at that initial interview when I got my job, but before we talked at the elevators and really met.”

“You were with someone you haven’t told me about?”

“What? No, babe. You know my entire relationship history.”

“Okay. Then, what?”

Violet cleared her throat and said, “Remember me telling you that the pool had to be fixed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it broke because something was buried beneath it, and it somehow caused cracks in the foundation, so they had to dig it up and fix the pool.”

“Something was buried in our backyard?”

“Yes,” Violet said, still loving how Rachel called itourbackyard. “And, well, they gave it to me, the thing they dug up. I didn’t know what it was. It was a case, really, and it had been under the ground for a long time, or at least since I’d bought the house. I wasn’t going to open it at first because I had no idea what was in it, but something in me just finally broke and told me to open it at least just to know if it could be thrown out.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know,” Violet said and shrugged a shoulder.

“You don’t know?”

“No,” she said. “I opened it, saw it, and honestly, I still don’t know what it was.”

“What are you talking about here?”

“Rach, it’s this device thing. A machine of some kind. I tried to look it up and find out what it was online, but I couldn’t find anything. It doesn’t have a charging cable, but there’s a cord or something hanging off it. I don’t know what to plug it into. It has a weird shape and looks like someone made it in their underground laboratory or something. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Okay… What does this have to do with anything?” Rachel asked.

“There’s a button on the thing, and I don’t know why, but I pressed it. I didn’t expect anything to happen because it had been buried for over a year, at least, and it wasn’t plugged into anything, so it shouldn’t have worked.”