Book Lover, The (20 page)

                            
19

R
UTH’S MOUTH OPENED, BUT THE WORDS STALLED in her throat. Thomas’s smile began to fade.

He looked so nice in a white oxford shirt and pressed jeans—fresh-scrubbed, as if he’d just showered. She’d never seen him in anything but the drab prison jumpsuit.

She heard Hannah say goodbye and leave. Then the bell tinkled and in the corner of her mind that was hyperaware, she realized it was Megan arriving for the late shift. But then she heard Harry say hi to Jenny and the girls. Oh shit! Quickly she wrote her address on a slip of paper and whispered, “This isn’t a good time. Come see me tonight, and we’ll talk.”

A moment later, Jenny came into the back with her daughters: Emma, eleven, and Olivia, thirteen. “And who was that?” she asked, with a big curious smile, as the girls gave Ruth a kiss, then wandered off to poke through the young adult novels.

“Oh, no one, just a customer asking for a recommendation.” She could feel the heat rise from her chest up her neck and across her cheeks.

But Jenny’s raised eyebrows said she wasn’t buying it. “I don’t know, he looks like a professor from the college maybe? He certainly left looking happy. And he didn’t buy a book.”

“No, he’s not from around here, just passing through, and I don’t have the book in stock.” Her face felt as if it were on fire, so she turned and straightened a few books, her back to Jenny, while adding, “It was
The Sun Also Rises,
which I’m out of at the moment.”

The rest of the day was torture. Sandy from Scrub-a-Dub Doggie brought in the promised box of papers from her grandmother’s attic, which was so moldy Ruth began sneezing immediately. Megan was nearly beside herself with excitement that the store could possibly be older than they thought. As she began to dive into the box, babbling away, Ruth could barely focus, between thoughts of Thomas and sneezes. She finally told Megan she could take it home with her as long as she put it out in her car right now. Megan skipped out with it a moment later. At five, Ruth grabbed her purse and left early, pleading a headache.

Now, as she puttered in her house, having no idea what time Thomas might arrive, Ruth was excited and terrified. She changed into a long floral skirt and a blue top that gave her much-needed color. Although her skin was in pretty good condition from not spending much time in the sun, she was also pale because of it. She pulled her hair back and braided it because with the humidity it was impossible to tame. Then she put on a bit of makeup, slipped earrings on, and suddenly stopped. “What are you doing?” she muttered out loud. This wasn’t a date. A convicted felon was coming to her house. Sam cocked her head. “I’m not talking to you,” she told the dog.

Jenny would go insane if she knew, and no doubt call Alex and Colin and stage an intervention. They thought she was an innocent, that the roles had somehow reversed as she aged and now they needed to protect
her
from the world. Then she heard a knock at the door and her stomach lurched. She ran downstairs, Sam still at her heels, not wanting to leave Thomas standing on the porch for her curious neighbors to see. She opened the door and there he stood, holding a bouquet of yellow roses.

“Hello, Ruth.” He gave her a shy smile and his face flushed. “I remember once you said these were your favorite flowers.”

She took them, opening the door wider. “Please, come in.”

They stood in the foyer a moment, neither speaking. Sam, who always barked at strange men, was silent, watching. “I’m sorry,” they said then at the same time, uttering the same words. They both laughed, but the awkwardness grew.

“How about a cup of coffee?” she asked. “Or tea?”

He nodded. “Coffee would be nice.”

He followed her to the kitchen. She stuck the flowers in a cup of water in the sink to arrange later on. As she made coffee, she was aware of him behind her, standing in the middle of her kitchen as she’d once fantasized, looking around.

“Your house is just as I imagined it would be.”

“What, tired and dumpy?” she asked with a nervous laugh.

“No, Ruth. Comfortable, cheerful. Warm.” He sat then at the kitchen table, watching her while she continued to putter around. “I started to say I’m sorry for showing up with no warning. I can see that it threw you. I just, well, I was just so excited. You have no idea what these past few days have been like.”

She set cups on the table. “When did you get out?”

“Three days ago. I’m living in a studio apartment about a half hour away in Pine Island. I have a job at a gas station for now. They help you with all that before you get out. A place to live and a job are part of the conditions of parole.”

“I see.”

He took a deep breath. “God that smells good. A kitchen filled with the aroma of fresh brewed coffee. It’s just…so normal.”

She sat across from him, but neither of them touched the sugar or milk. His eyes shone.

“You know, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“I thought so.”

She could see him hesitating. Then he asked, “Is that why you didn’t come back?”

“Partly.”

He looked down at the table, then up at her again. “But you don’t know everything. And that’s why I came.”

She spooned sugar into her cup, poured milk, stirred. Waiting.

“Whatever happens, Ruth, I want you to know the truth. I need that.”

“All right.”

“I’ve been trying for weeks to find the right words to tell you this, hoping for a way to, well, to lessen the impact. But,” he shrugged and shook his head, “it was hopeless. I should have just told you that day you came to visit.”

She said nothing, simply gave him a small, encouraging smile, and waited.

“I knew that once I told you, everything would change. I’d hoped somehow we’d be able to get past it, that somehow you’ll be able to remember who I really am. Because you know me better than anyone, Ruth. And if you believe nothing else, I hope you’ll believe that.”

She was suddenly aware of her heart, fluttering wildly in her chest, the same as it did when she sat in the dentist’s chair and opened her mouth. The anticipation of something awful.

“Just tell me everything,” she said softly.

He nodded. “You know the charges, I guess, and that I pleaded guilty. Kidnapping and terroristic threats.”

Hearing it out loud, in his voice, made what did not seem like it could be real, suddenly too real. He ran a hand through his hair, and she could feel her entire body begin to pulse, as if she’d had too much caffeine. He sat a moment, shaking his head with a sad smile.

“I did do it, but there was a reason. My parents were very old school, my mother an old-fashioned Italian mother, my father Polish, and they had their own little version of the American dream in Albany, a dry cleaning business. I was an only child and it was always understood I’d take over the business. I didn’t mind. They made decent money and truthfully, I didn’t have grandiose visions of anything else. I was a simple guy.”

He picked up his coffee with a trembling hand and took a sip.

“My father died just after I got out of high school and even though I thought about going to college, I jumped right into the business then. After a while I moved out and got my own place, and my mother stayed in the apartment over the store. And life was pretty decent for a long time. Years. My mother was getting older and I began to talk to her about retiring. She had a sister who’d moved to Florida and truthfully, the cold Albany winters were killing her arthritis. Someday, she’d say, but I always wondered. I knew she’d been saving money all those years. I just didn’t realize she was putting it under her mattress.”

“She didn’t trust banks?” Ruth asked, surprised, although she remembered her parents finding her grandfather’s life savings stashed in the barrels of several rifles after he’d died. Her parents had explained it had to do with the Depression.

He shrugged. “They were old school. It was probably my father who started it and, you know, rather than drive the money to the bank, she just hid it where she thought it was safe. One day, though, I’m pressing shirts and she comes in and I think she’s going to die on the spot, her face is so white and she can’t seem to speak. Then she told me the money was gone.”

There was only one person who could have done it, he told Ruth, a cleaning lady his mother had had for years. Who complained time and again about her worthless boyfriend. But his mother had loved her, trusted her, and wouldn’t believe it. They called the cops, but there was simply no proof. His mother wanted him to let it go, but something had gone out of her with that loss. He felt her slipping away.

“I showed up at the cleaning girl’s house one day and when she opened the door, I walked right in before she could even stop me. There was a big new flat screen TV, a nice new pickup truck out front, and she had on some flashy jewelry. I asked her where she got the money for all of it and she said her boyfriend got a new job. Anyway,” he sighed and closed his eyes and Ruth felt a pang of sympathy for him, “I waited. Because I knew. The boyfriend, I found out after doing some more digging, was out partying the rest of my mother’s money away.”

“You’re certain of that.”

He nodded. “I went back one night. With a…gun. I wouldn’t let them leave until they confessed, which they finally did. I told them I wouldn’t go to the police if they gave me what was left, sold the TV and the car and gave me that, too. My parents worked their entire lives for that money and here they were just pissing it away. Even if it wasn’t all of it, I wanted it.”

Thomas was perspiring now, his face ashen as he stared at the table. After a long time, he looked up at her, his eyes glittering. “I told my mother I was getting her money back and she was so happy.”

“I’m sorry, Thomas.”

He shook his head. “I was stupid, Ruth. So stupid. The cleaning girl didn’t come back, the police did. She told them the confession was a lie, that they’d been afraid I was going to kill them. And…there was no proof of the money being taken.”

“What happened then?”

“I went to prison. My mother died a year later.” He shrugged. “I know what I did was wrong, but…they were lowlifes. My mother was a hardworking, honorable woman. We had a lot of pride. It just didn’t seem right.”

“Your poor mother.” She couldn’t imagine the anguish, being robbed of everything she’d saved her entire life, and then losing her only child to prison.

“I got fifteen years and now…after serving ten, I’m free.” He gave her such a sad smile, she felt her heart breaking.

She pulled a tissue from the holder on the table and wiped her own eyes. “Thomas, I…” but before she could finish, he put a hand up.

“I want to show you something.” He pulled a new brown wallet from his back pocket, opened it and took something out, handing it to her.

Ruth looked at it. It was a photograph, a mug shot of a very large man, almost obese. “I don’t understand. Who is this?”

“It’s a different man, Ruth. The man I was when I went to prison.”

She looked at him and at the picture again, and there were his kind brown eyes, buried in the heavy face, a grim look as the picture was snapped.

“I carry it with me everywhere, Ruth, to remind me. I’ll never be that man again.”

She handed him back the picture.

“I don’t know what to say, Thomas.” There were no words to describe how she felt.

“Just remember the me you’ve come to know, Ruth, okay? That’s the real me.”

Slowly his hand slid to the middle of the table, and paused. She closed her eyes, but try as she might, her own hand wouldn’t move. A moment later she heard the scrape of his chair. And then the front door closing.

RUTH POURED HERSELF A GLASS OF WINE, her entire body trembling. She sat again, staring at the chair where he’d been, her mind reeling. As awful as it was, his story made sense. There was even a certain honor to what he’d tried to accomplish, righting a horrific wrong. Easing the pain of someone you loved. She had only to think back on the awful, gut-wrenching days after Colin was first paralyzed to know the desperate feeling of wanting to do something.

But there was one thing she couldn’t seem to grasp. One question she realized she should have asked: Why on earth would he have had a gun?