“I don’t know. It’s like a completely weird thing.”
“It wasn’t just him saying that?”
“No. He didn’t know where I was until I texted.” She shook her head, carefully keeping the peel in a single strip around the potato. “And that phone was absolutely dead. You saw it.”
“That gives me the creeps a little,” Valerie said. “Maybe he’s a ghost, your trucker. Like one of those teenage stories.”
Ginny laughed. “Oh, he’s real.”
“What’s going on?” Valerie said quietly.
“I don’t know yet.” She met her friend’s eyes. “I have so much to tell you guys.”
“Don’t start without me!” Ruby swished into the kitchen, and they turned. She held out her arms. “Ta-da!”
Ginny let go of a delighted laugh. “You look amazing!” The blue offset Ruby’s bright-blue eyes, and the bodice left her shoulders bare and revealed a voluptuous cleavage. The skirt swelled over the baby bump and swished outward, silvery and sparkling.
“I feel like the moon goddess in this,” she said, spinning in a circle.
“It’s appropriate, too, because that’s your blog.” Ginny tugged the skirt a little. “I’m delighted that it fits so well.”
“I hope it doesn’t keep raining!” Ruby spun one more time. “Okay, let me go change, and don’t say a word till I get back.”
They waited. Valerie wiped her onion-ravaged eyes. “I should have made my daughter do this.”
“What’s she doing? I saw the light on in the trailer. It looked very homey.”
“Probably reading. That’s her default mode. She is the biggest reader I’ve ever met, and I’m pretty serious myself.”
“Me, too.” Ginny finished another potato. “What are we doing with these? Chop or grate or slice?”
“Grate. I’m making hash browns.”
Ruby swirled back into the room and settled at the table with her peas. “Okay, now talk.”
Ginny said, straight out, “I think I’m getting a divorce.”
“What?” Valerie said. “Because of the trucker?”
“The guy with the voice?” Ruby gave a little shiver. “I get it.”
“No,” Ginny said. “Not because of that. Not because of anything to do with this trip except that I never want to go back to Kansas again. I can’t believe I finally got out of there.”
“So, why? He won’t leave Kansas?”
“No,” she said again. And, slowly, “Because I don’t want to be with him anymore. I haven’t wanted to for a long time, but that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to leave, you know?”
“I told you I knew you were miserable,” Ruby crowed, throwing a pea that hit Ginny on the arm. “Ha!”
She picked it off the counter and tossed it back. “There is more, actually.”
Valerie turned, eyes dark and still. “He didn’t abuse you?”
“No.” Ginny took a breath and told them what she’d never told another living being. “We haven’t had sex in twelve years.”
“Oh, Gin!” Valerie said softly. “Twelve years?”
“I know.” She picked up another potato. “I tried everything. Let’s go to counseling, let’s see the doctor, let’s talk about this, for God’s sake, but nothing.”
“Twelve years?” Ruby said. “That’s half of my life!”
“I feel like an idiot that I put up with it for so long.” She paused and met Valerie’s eyes. “I just didn’t know what to do.”
“Is he gay, maybe?” Ruby asked. She nibbled peas out of her palm as if they were candy. “It happens a lot, you know.”
“I’ve thought about that, but he didn’t seem like it before the sex stopped.”
“Does he have any guy friends he hangs out with?”
“Yeah, they’re all ex-football players. Married, guy’s guys.”
“See?” Ruby grinned. “You should ask him.”
Ginny shrugged. “At this point, I don’t care anymore.”
Valerie touched her shoulder. “Have you told him that you want a divorce?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I wrote an email that I wasn’t going to send, and then I sent it.”
“No!” Ruby let go of her robust laugh, then covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes glittered. “How Freudian is that?”
Ginny laughed, too. “I know. I feel bad that it happened like this, but it gets it out in the open. Only trouble is that he’s not accepting it. He thinks I’m going to come to my senses.” She put the quotes around the words with her fingers.
Lavender, coming into the room, said, “It sounds like you have come to your senses.” She sat at the table with Ruby, looking wan but sturdy, and plucked a handful of peas out of the bowl to nibble one at a time. “I knew you were going to leave him the minute you bought that trailer.”
“Maybe I did, too,” Ginny admitted aloud. “I’ve been looking for a new life since my daughter left home ten years ago.”
Ruby leaned over and pressed the back of her hand to Lavender’s face. “You’re still so pale. Are you feeling better?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. It’s just a touch of something.” She popped peas into her mouth. “I’m not going to hide in my room while you all are here.”
Valerie stirred the pot. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do?”
“Zero. I only know I’m not going back to Kansas.”
“You’re welcome to stay here while you figure it out,” Lavender said. She plucked another handful of pea pods from the bowl in Ruby’s lap and split one open. “Are you comfortable enough in the trailer to live in it for a bit?”
“It’s only been a week, but I think so.” In her mind’s eye rose a vision of herself camping on a beach somewhere, waking up to the sound of waves crashing on the shore. A sense of possibility swept her, smelling of morning. “Maybe I want to wander around a little. I thought it would be lonely on the road, but it wasn’t.”
“I’m heading down to San Diego to be near my parents,” Valerie said. “If you like, you can caravan with us.”
Ginny didn’t want to say straight out that she wanted to be on her own, so she smiled and said, “I’ll think about it.”
The rain didn’t let up, so they set the table in the tiny kitchen and crowded around it for dinner, just the five females. Noah was nowhere about. “He said he’d come for dessert,” Lavender said, “but he’s in a mood.”
“He showed me the still this afternoon,” Ruby said, dipping a chunk of bread into her stew. “It’s pretty cool.”
“I helped him with feeding the chickens,” Hannah said, throwing a long look at Ruby. “He wasn’t grouchy then.”
Ruby grinned. “Well, you know, I can be pretty irritating.” She jumped suddenly, making a little squeaking noise, and put a hand on her tummy. “Yikes! That was a big kick!”
“That’s a very active baby. He’ll be running you ragged by the time he’s one,” Valerie said. “That’s how it was with my Louisa. And she was a nonstop girl.”
Ginny felt uncomfortable at this mention of one of the dead sisters. Hannah wiggled her leg under the table, making Ginny think she felt uncomfortable, too.
But Valerie’s face was smooth and serene as she continued. “Kalista was so lazy in the womb that I kept worrying about her. Hannah here”—she nudged her daughter with an elbow—“made me so fat I was afraid I would pop like a balloon.”
Ruby said, “Was Kalista lazy when she was born?”
“Not really,” Valerie said. “She was a quiet baby, an observer. I’d say she was like that as she grew up, too, wouldn’t you, Hannah?”
She stared at her plate, gave a tiny shrug. “I guess.”
“You’re the middle sister, right?” Ruby said.
“Yep.”
“And the reader. Neither of my other girls liked to read. It’s as if Hannah is reading for the whole world.”
“Why are we talking about them like this?” Hannah said, slamming her hand down. Spoons rattled
.
“Why wouldn’t we?” Valerie asked calmly. “We loved them. It’s nice to think about them sometimes.”
“I don’t like thinking about them. It hurts! I wish I could forget they ever existed.” She pushed back from the table and leapt to her feet, but by the time she was standing, Ruby was there, putting her arms on Hannah’s shoulders.
“Wait! I know something about this, I promise.”
“Leave me alone!” Hannah shook free. “I don’t care what you have to say.” She stormed toward the door.
Ruby called after her, “What if you were the one who died?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you want us to never talk about you again? Pretend you didn’t exist?”
Hannah paused. Frowned. “I didn’t die.”
“Me, either,” Ruby said. “I thought I would, about five times. Chemo makes you feel like you’re going to die, and I was a little kid, only seven, the first time I started it.” She took a breath. “Sometimes, Hannah, I was so afraid that I would die and disappear and no one would ever know I’d even lived.”
Hannah’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s terrible.”
“I’m alive. Some of the kids I was in the wards with didn’t make it, and I love to say their names out loud. I love to think about their faces and what they liked.”
Ginny had always loved Ruby, but right then she adored her even more.
Hannah eased back into the room and perched on a chair, right at the edge. “Like what?”
“My friend Mona loved comets. She had them all over the place, on her notebooks, and her pajamas, and they put some on the wall for her. She had a scruffy little dog named BeBe, all black, with hair in its eyes.”
“When did she die?”
“When I was eleven and she was ten. They thought she was going to make it, and right at the end of the five years she got sick again.”
Valerie said, “Why don’t you have some supper, Hannah? We’ll keep talking.”
“I don’t want to talk about my sisters, though, or my dad.” She gave her mother a challenging glance.
“You don’t have to. I might want to, though. So you can go if you like.”
As if summoned, right on cue, Noah came into the kitchen. “What are we talking about?” He ruffled Hannah’s hair and sat down beside her, looking across to Ruby, who sat straighter, even though she didn’t look at him.
Interesting, Ginny thought.
Lavender said, “Sometimes I see ghosts around this place. Maybe when you’re as old as me, you’ll see ghosts, too, Hannah.” She slapped her knee. “Anyway, let’s put on some music and get happy!”
She stood up with purpose, then doubled over, grabbing her belly with a moan. Staggering sideways, she grabbed for a chair and knocked it over. Ruby, closest to her, tried to catch her before she fell, but Lavender was already in motion and hit the floor.
Chapter 30
Ruby and Noah sat side by side in the county medical center ER. Val and Hannah had stayed behind at the farm. Ginny had gone in with Lavender, easily slipping into the role of capable mother/nurse, and they’d let her, taking seats in the cold waiting room. Overhead, the lights buzzed faintly, and somewhere a child cried, but mostly there was only the hush of worry hanging in the air.
Ruby stuck her feet out in front of her, studying the shape of her pink high-tops. They were proving to be highly impractical shoes in this wet place, but she still liked them. Inside her, the baby moved every now and then, as if trying to find a more comfortable spot to sleep. Ruby shifted, thinking that maybe if she slumped, the baby was squished. Absently, she rubbed her hand in a circle over her belly, then remembered Noah rubbing his hands over her this afternoon and froze, flushing.
He sat beside her, utterly still. One jeaned leg was propped on the other, ankle to knee, so that his right knee jutted out toward her. Along the internal seam, the fabric fanned in small, even lines all the way down his thigh. His hand was on his knee, and his sleeve was rolled up on his forearm. The shirt was fresh, not the same one he’d worn this afternoon. That had been a work shirt, worn soft, with pockets in which he stuck random things, like an invoice or a packet of seeds. The tools—wrenches and screwdrivers—ended up in his back pocket.
The shirt he wore tonight was crisp white cotton with tiny, wide-spaced red lines. The color pointed out how tanned his forearm was and how oddly hairless. His skin was very smooth, covering the cords of muscle with a buttery gloss. Again she wanted to touch him, just put her hand along that butter and feel the suppleness.
He said nothing.
Neither did she. Until she finally said, “Stop being so awkward, Noah. We were friends before this afternoon.”
“Were we?”
“Of course we were. You were teaching me about lavender and chickens and trying to cheer me up.”
He kept his eyes on the hallway. “Not sure friendship is exactly the right thing between us, Ruby.”
“Why?” She flicked her fingers over his arm. “Because I’m so hot you can’t stand to be around me?”
He glanced sideways at her. “I’m still thinking about kissing you today. You’re not?”
She flushed again, looking away. “No.” His tongue in her mouth, his hands on her sides. “Yes,” she admitted.
“Right. So ‘friends’ is not the right word.”
“You know, the thing is—”
He held up a hand, shaking his head. “I hate those conversations. We’re not even involved.”
Yet. Ruby heard the word clearly in her head.
“Okay,” she said, and unconsciously nibbled a fingernail. “But I’m bored, and there is no one else here to talk to, so you might as well talk to me.”
“You can talk.”
“That’s not fun. I’m worried and I want to take my mind off Lavender. I’m scared she’s had a heart attack.”
His jaw clenched and he shifted in his seat, leaning forward almost prayerfully. “Yeah.”
Ruby took a long, cleansing breath and let it go. “So let’s talk. Twenty questions. I’ll start.”
He groaned but sat up.
“What’s your favorite color?” Ruby asked.
“Blue.”
“Your turn to ask a question.”
“Oh. Um …” He flung out his fingers. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Cherries. Yours?”
He gave her a faint grin. “Steak. Rare.”
Ruby shuddered for effect because she didn’t want to disappoint him. “What is your mom’s name?”
“Linda. Yours?”
Ruby flinched. It was unconscious and unstoppable. “Cammy,” she said, voice thick.
Noah met her eyes for the first time. “Sorry, I forgot.”
She nodded. “TV or books?”
“Books. I don’t even have to ask you.”
“Why, because I’d just naturally be a TV lover?”
“Uh, no. The opposite. Book fanatic.”
She beeped like in a game show. “Wrong. I like to read, but give me television and I’m one happy girl.”
“I don’t even have one.”
“Not surprised.” She shifted so that she was sitting with one leg up on the chair, facing him a little more. “All you brooding types give up television in your ennui.”
That kindled a half smile. “What do you watch?”
“God, everything! My dad hates it, but I like sitcoms and dramas and news shows and those house-hunting shows. Love HGTV, full stop. Decorating, landscaping, all of it. I love it when they buy an old house and make it over. I love it when a couple is shopping for their first house. All of them.” She pointed a finger in the air. “Oh, and all the food shows, of course.”
He studied her for a moment. “You’re a little housewife at heart, aren’t you?”
Ruby couldn’t tell from the tone of his voice if that was meant to be an insult, so she went with the truth. “I prefer ‘homemaker,’ ” she said pertly. “I mean, somebody has to
do it, right? Shake out the sheets, put some flowers around, make sure there are supplies—toilet paper and bread and whatever—cook a good meal, smooth everything for the day.”
“Yeah.” He swallowed, as if the litany hurt him. “Yeah,” he repeated gruffly. Then he sniffed. “So maybe that’s your work.”
Tears sprang to Ruby’s eyes. A life spread before her in possibility—a kitchen stocked with everything she could think of, all the special herbs and spices that took her fancy, star anise and lemon curry and tarragon, and special spoons and plates for every possible scenario. She would have sturdy pots for stock and very good knives. She could feed chickens and grow flowers and have a vegetable garden and hang pictures on the walls. “In New York, we lived in six hundred and ten square feet for six years. It was so crowded I couldn’t keep it tidy, and there was no room for anything beautiful.”
“Tidy?” His body language eased, too. “That’s a prim word.”
“I have a prim side, sir.”
He full on grinned, and Ruby felt she’d scored points for making him loosen up. “Why do I doubt that?” He lifted a finger. “Oh, I know! Because you have a camper that looks like a sultan’s den.”
Ruby conceded with a tilt of her head. “But, honestly, I do like things to be right, to be appealing to look at, and if things are messy, it’s not beautiful anymore.”
“I bet your apartment was beautiful anyway.”
“Really? That’s a nice thing to say. Thank you. I tried.”
He nudged her foot with the tip of his boot. “Lavender brought you guys out here so she could leave the farm to one of you.”
“She can’t! The nephews get it because of some weird deed thing.”
“It’s only money. That’s all they want—money.”
“Why not you?”
“I don’t have the resources to buy it, and that would have to be done to keep it out of the hands of Wade Markum. And, anyway, I like what I do, managing the animals, looking out for crops, all that. I don’t want to run a shop or do the marketing or anything like that.”
“The mead?”
“You have a thing for mead, don’t you? No, I don’t care about that part, though I like the bees and the honey.” He met her eyes simply, those long dark lashes making him look like an earnest three-year-old. “We’d be a good team, Ruby. A really good team.”
The All You Can Dream Buffet Page 23