by Julia London
The dog, realizing he would get no food, lunged for his tennis ball, then decided to give his coat a good shake. Up until that point, Kyra hadn’t realized the dog’s coat was wet. “No!” she said, moving backward. But it was too late—she glanced down at her arm, now covered in the spray of dog and lake water.
“Otto, sit!” her neighbor loudly commanded as he slid the books onto the hood of her car.
The dog didn’t sit; it lay down to chew its tennis ball.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Kyra. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Yeah well, what did you think would happen, sneaking up on a woman looking the other way?
“I was walking my dog and saw you and thought I’d say hello. Name is Dax, in case you’ve forgotten. Dax Bishop.” He stuck out his hand as if he was offering to shake hers, but glanced at her armful of books and pasta and quickly withdrew it, awkwardly shoving it into his pocket.
“I remember,” she said, as if she could forget that strange first meeting. “I’m Kyra Kokinos.” His weird, almost nerdy vibe didn’t go at all with the way he looked. He was a very good-looking man. He should have been a GQ model. Not an ax-murdering nerd. She would bet herself that he was good at sex.
“I, um . . . I was caught a little off guard when we met the other night,” he said.
Caught off guard? So when a guy stands outside a cottage looking totally deranged, that’s caught off guard? God, she hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those where are you from chats. She wanted to go inside, pay Mrs. Miller, and kick her shoes off. She didn’t want to be neighborly.
His gaze was locked on hers, as if he expected her to say or do something. His eyes were an unusual color of blue—they reminded Kyra of rain clouds. His tea-leaf-brown hair was neatly trimmed, and he was clean shaven. It was kind of refreshing, really—so many men came into the bistro with beards these days. He was tall, too—a couple of inches over six feet. She thought he was surprisingly young to be living in the East Beach Lake Cottages. She had the idea this place was where old people came for the summer.
He frowned lightly. “Okay, well, I won’t keep you,” he said.
Praise Jesus.
“But I wanted to mention that I’ve met your daughter.”
“Wait, what?” Kyra said, startled. What did that mean, he’d met her daughter?
“The girl with red hair,” he said, as if Kyra had dozens of daughters and didn’t know which one he meant.
“Right, my daughter has red hair.” How did he meet Ruby? He wasn’t some kind of freak, was he? Wouldn’t that be just fantastic, to find the only affordable rental in East Beach only to discover some pervert was living next door? If he was nosing around Ruby, Kyra would go to the owners and complain. She’d go tonight. She’d given the McCauleys a full month’s rent, and she wasn’t going to put up with a weirdo this close to her daughter while she was at work. “How—”
“That’s the thing I wanted to mention,” he said. “I work out of my house, and she . . . well, apparently she likes to climb fences. Or go under them. And she’s really . . . friendly,” he said, as if mystified by that.
Oh. Well then. Not a pervert after all. Potentially still a nerdy ax murderer, but not a pervert, which was a relief, because of the ridiculously cheap rent. Furthermore, as Kyra had a bad habit of secretly sizing up every man she met as a potential sex partner, she would not like to know she’d pictured this guy as really good at sex only to find out he was a sicko. “Ah,” she said, nodding and wincing apologetically. “Sorry about that. I’ll talk to her.”
“Yeah,” he said and ran his hand over the crown of his head as if he was uncertain about the whole thing now. “Cute kid, but, you know, I have to work.”
“Sure. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll nip it in the bud,” Kyra said and smiled as she took a step forward. Would he go now? Please?
“Great. Thanks.” Now he shoved both hands into his front pockets. He didn’t move, just stood looking at her.
Kyra’s arms were starting to ache. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to get these things inside . . .”
“Yep. Right. Thanks again,” he said and turned, as if he meant to leave. But he hesitated.
She waited for him to speak.
He didn’t speak, just sort of nodded, then whistled for his dog, who was now half under her porch, his butt in the air, his tail wagging. The dog scrambled out and raced after his owner. Kyra watched the two of them go around the fence that stretched between their cottages.
Her neighbor had a very strong and broad back. She wished she’d known someone with a back like that to help her lug stuff when she’d moved in last week.
He paused at his back porch and glanced back at her, as if he thought she might have called out to him. Only then did Kyra realize she was still standing there, ogling him.
She lurched forward and strode for the front porch. She tried to dash up the steps like she was Holly Golightly carrying a Tiffany bag. But she wasn’t Holly Golightly, she was a woman who’d worked all day and was carrying too many things at once to save a second trip, and she misjudged the top step. As she tried to catch her balance, her knee collided with the porch railing. “Ow, ow, ow,” she gasped and hobbled to the door. She didn’t dare look back to see if her neighbor had seen that, and hastily and precariously balanced everything on her knee and up against the wall so she could pull open the screen door. She used her foot to hold it as she fit herself through, then let it bang shut behind her.
She dropped everything onto the worn sofa and leaned over, glancing out the window.
Her neighbor had gone inside.
Kyra sighed. She reached for the TV remote and tapped down the volume as the Wheel of Fortune spun. “Hello!” she called out and started for the kitchen with the spilled bag of pasta.
Fern Miller stuck her head in the doorway between the living area and kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “You’re late,” she said.
“I know, and I’m really sorry,” Kyra said. “I had a really late table.”
Mrs. Miller waddled back to the kitchen sink. She was a sizable woman who was partial to khaki capris and big, roomy tops in lots of bright colors and patterns. She wore her hair in a halo of silver curls around her face and once bragged she washed and set it only once a week. “Now, Carrie, you know I don’t mind babysitting, but my husband likes his supper ready when he gets home. He’s going to have a fit.” She put the dishtowel down.
Kyra had long since given up getting Mrs. Miller to say her name correctly. “I won’t be late again, I promise,” she said and hoped like hell she could actually keep her word this time.
Mrs. Miller looked her up and down, as if she were gauging her sincerity. “Well,” she said. “Just don’t make a habit of it.” She picked up her black, utilitarian purse from the tiny kitchen table and slung it over her shoulder.
“By the way, I just met my neighbor,” Kyra said. “He said Ruby was over there today?”
“Yep,” Mrs. Miller said. “I guess she got into his yard.”
Kyra really wanted to ask where Mrs. Miller had been when Ruby had gone over to the man’s yard. But Kyra was also afraid of upsetting this apple cart. She needed child care she could afford, and in a town where most people employed au pairs, Mrs. Miller had been the only one to answer her ad on Craigslist. No one else was going to watch Ruby for thirty bucks a day, and that’s all Kyra could swing right now. She figured she just had to keep a lid on the situation until the fall. Ruby would be starting first grade, and she’d be in an after-school program and everything would be okay. Get to the fall, get to the fall . . . that’s what she kept telling herself.
“What was she doing over there?” she asked.
“Who knows why that girl does anything?” Mrs. Miller said with a shrug.
Kyra tucked her hair behind her ear. “Were you, ah . . . outside with her?”
“That girl is in and out all day.” She said it accusingly, as if Ruby were at fault for bei
ng six.
“Where is she now?” Kyra asked.
“In her room,” Mrs. Miller said. “Now, I fed her,” she said, gesturing with her chin at the kitchen table and the deflated juice pouch, the empty paper plate, and the half-empty tube of saltine crackers. There had probably been cheese, too, which Ruby loved. Wouldn’t Megan lose her mind if she saw this?
“You should get some groceries,” Mrs. Miller said.
“Yeah . . . I’m going tomorrow since it’s my day off,” Kyra said guiltily. But come on, like she’d had time in the last few days to drive to Black Springs to the only grocery of any size in the area.
“She needs a bath,” Mrs. Miller said, wrinkling her nose. “She got into mud or something. I hosed her down in the yard, but she kind of stinks.”
Hosed her down in the yard? Would it have been too much trouble to put her in a bath? Kyra bit back her irritation. “I’ll take care of it.”
Mrs. Miller started for the door; Kyra followed her, reaching for her purse on the couch. She pulled out two crumpled bills—a twenty and a ten. “Thank you,” she said, handing Mrs. Miller the money.
Mrs. Miller looked disapprovingly at the crunched bills, took them from Kyra, and made a show of straightening them out against her knee. Not only had Kyra run out of time to grocery shop, she’d run out of time to iron the bills. If Mrs. Miller wanted cash every day—and she did, having said, “What Ed don’t know won’t hurt him”—she was going to have to take some crumpled tips from time to time.
“See you Wednesday?” Kyra asked hopefully.
“I’ll be here at seven a.m.,” Mrs. Miller said as she walked out the door.
A moment later, Kyra heard the truck rumble awake as she stuffed the takeout into the fridge. “Ruby?” she called and stifled a yawn as she walked down the little hallway to the two bedrooms. They were small, separated by a bathroom. Ruby’s room had a twin bed with a pink cover. Kyra had decorated the walls with a Minions poster and pictures of flowers and of balloons she’d found on sale at Walmart. She’d bought a small white dresser at a thrift shop and had wedged that under the window. The closet was teensy—maybe three feet long and one foot deep—but it held Ruby’s things well enough.
Ruby was sprawled on the bright green shag rug, coloring madly on a pad of construction paper.
“Hey, pumpkin,” Kyra said. She stepped over her daughter and sank onto the bed, lying back with her head on Ruby’s pillow. She yanked a stuffed dog out from under her back and placed it on her stomach.
“Look, Mommy, I made a unicorn,” Ruby said and held up her drawing.
One day Kyra would know what Ruby’s talent was, but she felt pretty safe in saying it wouldn’t be art. The unicorn was a blob and its horn was twice the size of its body.
“It’s beautiful, Ruby. What do you have all over you?”
Ruby rolled onto her side to look. “I don’t know.”
“It looks like paint,” Kyra said. Ruby’s glasses were splattered, too. Kyra sat up and leaned down to have a better look. “Where did you get paint?”
“I don’t remember,” Ruby said. “I’m going to make a dog next. Mommy, can I have a dog yet?”
“Not yet. Come on, you can draw your dog after you have your bath. I brought some pasta.” She hoped she could salvage some of it, anyway. “Do you want some?”
Ruby shook her head no. “I’m full.”
Fantastic. Kyra had suffered Judgmental Megan for nothing. She bent over to pick up her daughter. Ruby was getting too heavy for Kyra to hold anymore, but sometimes she still tried, unwilling to admit that her baby was now a little girl.
Ruby giggled as they wobbled toward the bathroom and she slowly slid out of Kyra’s grip. “You’re dropping me, Mommy.”
“Because you’re getting so big!” Kyra said, huffing, pretending to struggle more than she was. She managed to get her daughter into the shoe-box-size bathroom and started the bath.
Ruby stripped off her dress. Her hair, a vivid and dark orange-red shade that sometimes made Kyra think of garnets, was a tangled mess of curls. Kyra often wondered where that hair had come from. Her own hair was black, thanks to her Greek heritage, and her eyes were brown. Ruby’s father’s hair had a reddish tint to it, but it had been more blond than red, or at least in her memory that was so. She hadn’t seen Josh since conception.
Ruby also had the most amazing blue eyes Kyra had ever seen. They sparkled like the surface of a pool, and in her glasses, they looked much larger than they actually were.
Kyra worked the hair ties out of Ruby’s pigtails, then picked up Ruby’s dirty clothes when she climbed into the bath and started to play with the red plastic Solo cup, her only bath toy. Another thing Kyra hadn’t had time to get for her daughter. She really had to fix that tomorrow. Not only could she not seem to feed her child properly, her child was playing with a red Solo cup in the bath.
“Dax has a dog,” Ruby said as Kyra began to wash her. “His name is Otto. He told me not to pet him. But he’s really nice, Mommy. He’s got brown eyes.”
Kyra glanced at her daughter. “His name is Mr. Bishop, and I think he has blue eyes.” Definitely had blue eyes. A very blustery shade of blue.
“The dog,” Ruby said with great exasperation. “His name is Dax, Mommy.”
“He is Mr. Bishop to you. By the way, did you get in trouble for playing in his yard today?”
Ruby considered the question. “No,” she said.
“Ruby—”
“I got in trouble for crawling under the fence and touching his stuff and petting his dog,” Ruby clarified. “His dog is big,” she said. “He likes it when you scratch his ears.”
“Listen to me, Ruby. You are not to go into that man’s yard again, do you hear me?” Kyra demanded.
“Yes.”
“I mean it,” Kyra said sternly. “If I find out you’ve been over there, you will lose your TV privileges this week. I don’t care how much you want to pet that dog, you do not go over that fence.”
Ruby didn’t say anything. She had turned her head slightly and stared at the white tiles on the bathroom wall as she fluttered the fingers of one hand against the water, as if considering and debating what Kyra had said. That, or she was thinking of dogs.
“Hey, are you listening to me?” Kyra said sternly.
Ruby didn’t answer.
Kyra snapped her fingers in front of Ruby’s face. “Did you hear me?” she asked again.
“What?” Ruby asked and blinked at Kyra.
Kyra caught her daughter’s chin in her hand. “Ruby Ellen Kokinos, do not pet that dog.”
Ruby blinked. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes, you did. You went somewhere you weren’t supposed to go. You have to respect people’s things, and the yard and the dog are Mr. Bishop’s things, not yours. Wash your face and I’ll be back to check on you in a moment.” She stood up. “Don’t forget to use soap.”
“I won’t.”
Kyra left Ruby—not washing her face, she noticed, but playing with the cup again—and went into the kitchen. She opened the old, white fridge that looked as if it might have been salvaged from the fifties and pulled out a bottle of wine. She uncorked it, removed a mason jar from the cabinet, and filled it to half full. Wineglasses. Add that to the list of things she needed to find the time to purchase.
She had a good, healthy sip, and another, then rummaged around the fridge for something quick to eat, landing on the cheese Ruby hadn’t completely polished off yet. She went back to the bathroom with her mason jar of wine to get Ruby out of the tub.
It was the same every night—dinner, bath, and the inevitable struggle to comb Ruby’s hair while she wailed about how much it hurt but also refused to let Kyra cut it. Brush teeth, find pajamas, read a story—Kyra would say a short story, Ruby would say a long one—and then finally to bed with a bit of tickling and talking about the day. Put up the laundry, iron a work shirt, wash dishes, take out the trash . . .
It was almost n
ine when Kyra was finally able to sit down at her ancient laptop with her books and her wine, the rest of the saltines Ruby had left on her plate, and the cheese from the fridge. As she nibbled a cracker, she opened her laptop and her notes, looked at the quiz at the end of her reading assignment, and groaned. Sometimes this goal of hers seemed impossible. Sometimes it felt like she couldn’t summon one more ounce of energy from her body.
A new career in real estate was a crapshoot, anyway, a pipe dream that was looking totally unattainable at this magic hour. Ever since Kyra had found herself accidentally pregnant seven years ago, everything seemed like a pipe dream.
It was hard to remember the person she’d been then—fresh out of college, working at US Fitness. It had been her first foray into adulthood, her first time making it on her own without help from her dad, and the possibilities had seemed endless.
She’d been dazzled by the magazine and the staff of beautiful, toned people. With her dark hair, her olive skin, and a body with more curves than angles, Kyra had stood out as the exotic one and had fit right in.
She shook her head now, recalling how glamorous she’d thought she was. She’d believed she was just like her beautiful coworkers and, for that matter, like all the beautiful people who streamed into New York looking for bigger and better futures.
What a great run, she thought wistfully. Her coworkers were always jetting off to exotic locales for race photo shoots or to follow a new fitness trend and then write the articles that Kyra copyedited. They met up on weekends for “long” runs, whatever those were, and traded passes for spin classes. Kyra didn’t run, and the one spin class she’d attended had almost killed her. But she could drink with the best of them, and she was the life of the party at those happy hours.
And then had come one long weekend in Puerto Vallarta, and look at her fabulous life now.
Not that she could possibly conceive of a day without Ruby. It still nauseated her to think she’d considered abortion, and then adoption . . . but when she’d held Ruby in her arms for the first time, she’d felt a swell of love so great that she’d almost swooned with it. No, she wouldn’t want to be without Ruby for a moment. She just wished she’d been a little further along in life so they didn’t have to struggle so much.