"Thanks. My grandparents left it to me and my siblings after they passed away last year," she replied, unsure of how to proceed. While she was waiting for him to arrive, she had tried to think of this as just another meeting, perhaps with one of the clients she would have been dealing with at the gallery in New York if she had stayed in Brooklyn. However, with him now sitting in her house, at her kitchen table, Violet had to admit to herself that she had no idea what she was supposed to do now. She couldn't help but look at the man in front of her with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she was glad that he had survived his tour of duty and was able to tell her about the day Derek died. But on the other, she resented him for the very same reason. Though it was irrational, she felt as though this man, with no apparent connections to anyone else, should have been the one to die instead of her fiance. It was a horrible thought, but she pushed it to the back of her mind in order to keep herself from dwelling on it.
"I know this is awkward," she said, breaking the silence between them. Her hands were clasped demurely on the table in front of her, but as she steeled herself to ask the question, she gripped tighter, her nails digging crescents into the skin on the backs of her hands. "I'm sorry about that. There can't possibly be an easy way to go about this, and I'm not even sure I want to hear about it, but I feel like I need to know... what happened to him." She closed her eyes briefly, a pained expression crossing over her features before she looked at him again, apparently ready to hear what had happened in Derek's final moments, even though inside she wanted to do nothing more than to throw this man out of her house and never see him again.