Violet Crumble: A Prequel to the Family's Chaos Mechanic

My wife cannot sleep when the jasmine blooms.

When Elena cannot sleep, she wants specific things, and tonight she wants a Violet Crumble — an Australian candy bar that she discovered in Melbourne twenty years ago and that I have been quietly restocking ever since. She does not know where I get them. The mystery is part of the romance, and a marriage without mystery is a marriage running on fumes.

I could send someone. I have people. I have Marco, who has driven for me for twenty-two years and who would retrieve the candy bar without complaint at any hour. But sending someone to buy your wife a candy bar at two in the morning is an errand. Driving to buy it yourself is something else.

Tonight, the drive serves two purposes. The candy bar is one. The other is in the vicinity, and enough time has passed that he has stopped looking over his shoulder.

There is a romance to doing things yourself — to showing up personally for the things that matter, whether the thing that matters is a candy bar or a correction. A man who delegates everything is an administrator. A man who arrives is making a declaration.

The store is sixty miles away. The man is closer. My suit is darker than usual. Marco is driving. Artemis is in the front seat. And somewhere between the candy and the consequence, a car is going to break down on a dark road, and a young woman with a toolbox and steel-toed boots is going to pull over and change everything.

But I do not know that yet. I only know that Elena wants a Violet Crumble, and I intend to bring her one.