The first thing people ask Violet when they find out she served in Egypt was whether she saw the pyramids. And yes, she did, but it was at night and all she could see were the massive silhouettes towering hundreds of feet over her as they drove past. She felt small beside them, though not as small as she felt a hundred miles away at El Alamein in the aftermath of battle. The Allies won, but Violet saw nothing that looked like victory. She learned the numbers later—14,000 men killed, 24,000 wounded—but at the time it was a blur, an infinite sea of bodies and blood. British, Egyptian, German, Italian, American; they all became the same thing, calling out in a dozen different languages for mother.
It's Johnny's death that almost destroys her. October 24, 1944—his plane goes down over Leyte Gulf. Violet's in Greece just after liberation and everything is chaos, so she doesn't hear about her brother for weeks. When she learns what happened, she loses the sense of purpose that carried her through two and a half years of war. She can make no sense of it, all these men and women dying, the hungry children in the street, the twisted and burnt towns. Violet moves through the hospital ward like a ghost, and in her lowest moments, she wants to disappear completely. She's already halfway there.
For all the things Violet's seen during the war, going home is one of the strangest experiences of her life. Her parents' home in San Diego looks the same, except now they've put up a little shrine to Johnny: just his medals and a framed picture of him in uniform. It's almost too much for her to bear. She takes up surfing again and that helps somewhat, to lie on the board and feel the waves roll underneath her, but she keeps finding herself breaking down. She smashes a plate in the kitchen sink; she dissolves into tears on the bathroom floor at 3:00 in the morning. The littlest things set her off. Violet doesn't want to be this way and knows it's time for a change. She still has plenty of useful skills, so she takes a physical therapist job in Los Angeles and packs her bags. On the train ride north, she lets the tears flow one more time and tells herself, enough.
Violet slips into her rhythm in Los Angeles quickly. She rents a house and decorates it in warm colors, plenty of yellows and soft pinks. She makes friends and finds good surfing spots and takes long walks around her new neighborhood. Her patients are mostly veterans, lots of them amputees. Some of them flirt with her. She doesn't mind, but she also tries to not encourage their attentions. The problem is that this is a job where she has to touch and discuss other peoples' bodies all the time, and sometimes the boundaries get a little fuzzy.
She likes Daniel right away, and it's not just because he's handsome and kind and she enjoys his sarcastic humor. He tells her he just moved to Los Angeles for work and for a fresh start, and she understands because that's exactly what she had to do too. She starts looking forward more and more to his appointments; likes telling him about places to visit around the city. Ends up sharing more than she probably should about herself. Daniel's a little more closed off, a little harder to read, but she's not entirely surprised when he asks her out. Going against her own rules about dating patients, she says yes. They kiss for the first time overlooking Point Dume on a windy day, and Violet likes it very much.
After a couple months of dating, Daniel is at her place for dinner and he's standing at the door about to leave, and that's when Violet wraps her arms around him and doesn't let go. Wait, she whispers into his ear. His grip around her waist tightens. Without saying much, she leads him into her bedroom and lets things progress from there. She thinks he might be tentative or nervous, but instead he clings to her and guides her hands all over his body and she realizes he's dying for intimacy and so is she. She's spent so much time touching other people's bodies that she's forgotten what it feels like to be touched this way. When they're finished, Violet curls up in his arms, feeling more content than she has in years.
The first flicker of doubt Violet gets is when she notices the look on Daniel's face when he sees she's already met Peggy. It's only there for a split second and she can't even put a name to it or why it makes her uneasy. He's got baggage, to be sure, but so does she, and it's unfair of her to make assumptions. She pushes it to the back of her mind. (Would he have mentioned Peggy at all if they hadn't happened to meet? Would it fall under his not-talking-about-work policy? Or was work just a convenient excuse?)
But it's when Daniel's banging on her door after midnight, it's when Peggy is bleeding on her couch from a massive wound in her abdomen, it's when he freezes up when Violet tells him to get the linens—that's when she knows. Even if he doesn't. And so yes, she's angry, not because she thinks Daniel was intentionally leading her on, but because he seems so oblivious. He can't even answer her when she asks if he loves Peggy, and that's all the answer Violet needs. No matter that Violet loves him, no matter that she's told him things she's never told anyone else. She gives back the ring that she's worn on her finger for less than 24 hours. She will not be a consolation prize. Not now, not ever.
In the morning, Violet takes the day off from work and spends several hours trying to scrub the blood off her clothes, the linens, the couch, the floor. The couch is the worst and eventually she has to admit to herself it's ruined. Then she remembers this is the same couch she caught Daniel with his hands under the cushions just a couple nights ago, searching for the ring. So she gives up cleaning and goes surfing instead at her favorite spot at Leo Carrillo. The water is cold and the waves and wind are perfect, and out there by herself she allows herself a few tears and no more. No more crying for a man who will never love her the way she deserves to be loved.
She moves on. At first it's hard to have that sudden empty space in her life that Daniel used to fill, but Violet works and goes out with friends and surfs and explores more of Los Angeles and in time it's not so bad anymore. She thinks of him less often, and when she does it doesn't hurt as much. She starts dating again too. A couple years later she runs into Rose catching some waves out at Malibu. Violet asks the question and Rose tells her Daniel and Peggy got married, and Violet says That's wonderful. She means it. That night, she goes out dancing and she laughs as her partner spins her around the floor, and she thinks, yes, life is good.