By January 22, Violet was exhausted. Then Jerry asked her to come over and thread a needle for him. Violet had no idea what he meant. She stared at the message for a moment, trying to decide whether he was being literal or making some kind of strange reference she was supposed to understand. With Jerry, either seemed possible. He could be playful, cryptic, oddly specific. He could say things that sounded like jokes until they weren’t, or like invitations until they turned out to be something else.