The All You Can Dream Buffet (39 page)

Ruby nodded, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She eased closer, pretending to gather things into piles on the table. There, but not.

Hannah knelt and put her hand on Lavender’s face, just as Ruby had done, stroking the lined cheek. She picked up her hand. “Why isn’t she stiff? I thought people got stiff?”

“It probably hasn’t been very long.”

“She’s cold, though.” Hannah peered at something on Lavender’s neck. “And all the blood has drained away from her face.”

Ruby blinked back tears, wishing Lavender could be here, listening to Hannah’s clinical assessment. Lavender would find it amusing, no doubt. “What are you looking for, Hannah?” she asked gently.

Hannah frowned, perplexed. “I don’t know. It’s just—where does the life part go? I don’t get that. Something is living and breathing and then it stops. What is the part that is alive?” She turned to look at Ruby, and tears were streaming down her face. She didn’t even seem to notice. “All those kids you knew who died—did you ever think of that?”

Ruby nodded, unable to speak. “I don’t know.”

Hannah took Lavender’s hand. “My sisters disappeared. Like, there was nothing left of them. The plane went straight down into the ground, and they just disintegrated.” She wiped tears off her cheeks impatiently. “I hate thinking of that. How scared they must have been when it was going down. I don’t know why I wasn’t there. I don’t know what keeps me alive. I just don’t know.”

Ruby grabbed the girl and brought her close as Hannah dissolved into sobs, her shoulders shaking violently. She clung to Ruby so fiercely that Ruby almost could not catch her breath. Her shoulder grew soaked, and Hannah poured out a thousand days of tears she’d held back. “I miss them so much,” she wailed.

“I know,” Ruby whispered, smoothing the girl’s hair over and over and over. She thought of her mother, who had wandered away and never come back. “I know.”

An ambulance came and took Lavender’s body away, and they spent the day cleaning up from the party, getting things in order, getting ready for a wake. Noah said he’d leave the platform
and lights up, and they would have a raucous second party, and Ruby agreed that was just right.

By evening, Ruby sat in the kitchen with Valerie and Hannah, drinking leftover Bellinis and eating cake.

“She wouldn’t want us to be sad,” Ruby said. “But I am, anyway.”

“Me, too,” Valerie said. She covered her daughter’s hand. “How are you, honey?”

Hannah’s face showed the ravages of her earlier crying jag. “I’m cool. Just tired.” She stood up and put her plate in the sink. “I’m gonna go read.” She squatted to rub Willow’s head. “Can she come with me? Sleep in my bed tonight?”

“I’m sure she’d like that. I have my kitten.”

“Thanks.” Hannah whistled like a pro. “Come on, Willow.”

Dog and girl headed out. Ruby poked at the cake on her plate. “I wish Ginny would call back. I hate it that she doesn’t know.”

“I hate it that she had to go back there to those people. They really, really do not appreciate her.”

“Are you worried that she’ll stay?” The possibility had not crossed Ruby’s mind. “She’s changed so much!”

“I know. But getting out of there took a lot of grit. Doing it a second time might be hard.”

“We have her dog. And her Airstream. She’ll be back.”

“I hope so.”

Hannah came back in, Willow trailing. “Um, Ruby? This guy is outside and wants to talk to you.”

“Guy?” She frowned. “I’m coming.”

“It’s me, Ruby,” Liam said, coming into the kitchen. “Can we talk now?”

“I thought you went home to New York.”

He stood just inside the door, looking wildly uncomfortable. “I thought we should talk. I came all this way—it seems important.” His hair was combed over his forehead in a deep side part, and he’d donned hipster black-framed glasses. His jeans were low on his hips.

She didn’t see the Liam she knew anywhere in this outfit, but she took pity on him. “Come inside and sit down.” She gestured toward the living room. He took the couch and she took the chair.
Lavender’s rocking chair,
Ruby thought, rubbing the arms with her palms. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well.” He laced his fingers together. “The baby, I guess. Like, how do you want to do things? Split up custody or whatever. Do you want to come live in New York again?”

“No, I don’t. I’m going to live here.” If she could, anyway. If not, she’d figure out the next step. “You’ll have to come here. I’ll be nursing for the first year or better, and pumping breast milk all that time would be unhealthy for both the baby and me.”

“I’m not leaving New York. My work is there. My life is there.”

“Your wife is there, too. Or wife-to-be.”

“Yeah. She’s freaking out. She’s sure we’re getting back together. You make her feel really insecure.”

Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Maybe she shouldn’t cheat with somebody else’s boyfriend. Kinda leads to expecting he’ll do the same thing again.” As she said it, she realized that she felt the truth of it, deep in her belly. He would do this again—fall instantly, madly in love with another woman. “No offense, but she’s not my problem.”

“I know, you’re right.” He took off his glasses, rubbed his face. “I feel conflicted over this. It seems a gift, but I am not sure what the meaning of it is, showing up so late, after we broke up.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “There is no meaning, Liam. Honestly,
that’s an exhausting way to live. Sometimes things just are. There’s no message from the great beyond or God or whoever. Life evolves.”

“Why did you tell me about the baby?”

She took a breath. “Because it was the right thing to do. Because Lavender told me I should.” She rubbed a palm on her thigh. “Probably because I was hoping it would wake you up to what we had, too, but now I’m seeing how little I want that back.”

“You’re just mad at me, Ruby.” He leaned forward earnestly. “Maybe we should give it a try. Maybe we should get back together, for the sake of the baby if nothing else.”

Two months ago—heck, one
week
ago—Ruby would have burst into tears, thrown herself at him, let him hug her and assure her that all would be well, even if she knew in her heart that it would not. “No,” she said now. “I don’t want that.”

“Is there someone else?”

Noah’s face fluttered over her imagination, but he wasn’t the reason things had changed. “Yes,” she said. “There is a baby who deserves to have a fully present mother and a fully present father, and you’re never going to be that guy. She’s my priority.”

His jaw hardened. “You want to play hardball, then?”

“No, I don’t. I want us to play fair, with each other and with our child. That means my needs matter as much as yours.”

“I want to be part of her life.”

“Good. Let’s find a way to make that work. Maybe for the time I’m nursing, you can come visit on a regular basis, until she’s old enough to visit you by herself.”

“That’s not enough, Ruby. Would that be enough for you?”

She smiled. “No.” She rubbed her hands over her belly, then rocked forward and held out her hand, palm up. For the space of long moments, he held himself apart.

Finally he capitulated, placing his hand in hers and holding on.

“We made a baby, Liam, and whatever happened at the end, it was born in love from my side.”

“Mine, too,” he whispered.

“There’s time for us to figure out the details of how we’ll do this, but if we both try to be kind, it should work out okay.”

He nodded. “We can try.”

Hours later, when all the phone calls had been made, when all the relatives had been notified, when Liam had been sent on his way, and when Ruby had fed her kitten and made sure that Willow was comfortable with Valerie and Hannah, she flung a sweater over her shoulders and walked down to Noah’s cottage.

It was a small place, only four rooms in a square, with a front porch looking down to the pastures and the mountains beyond. Noah was sitting on the steps, a sturdy white cat stretched out on his legs, covering him from knee to waist, his tail dripping down the side of Noah’s thigh. “Hey,” Noah said as she came up. “You work things out with your baby daddy?”

“Did you see him come back?”

He nodded.

She half-grinned. “I guess that’s what he is, huh?” She laughed. “Yeah, we’re good for now. I suspect it will get testy in a little while, but tonight I sent him on his way and we’re good.”

“Good.”

She twisted her arms out in front of her, clasping her hands and stretching. It eased the muscles in her shoulders and back of her neck. “How are you doing?”

He bent his head, and Ruby saw that he was fighting tears. “Okay.”

“Oh, honey.” She scooted closer and put her arms around his shoulders. “Go ahead and let it out. I’m here. I don’t mind.”

“I’m going to miss her like an arm,” he said in a raw voice. “It was her time, and it was a good death, but she made me whole again. Just being here, being accepted.” Tears dripped on the cat, and his tail flicked. “I don’t think I realized how much better I felt until today.”

“She was very special, that’s for sure.” Ruby rubbed a circle on his back, and he rubbed the cat on his lap. “Tell me about when you first came here.”

“I was so tired of death and destruction and blood and noise,” he said. “I wanted to grow things.”

He talked about his conversations with Lavender. He told Ruby about their first meeting, when she’d looked him over with despair. He talked until he was hoarse, one story after another, and Ruby listened. When he wound down, she told him about Lavender tracking her down on the Internet and laughing when she found out Ruby was only twenty-one. It was impossible, she said, but they became good friends and founded the email loop that sustained the Foodie Four. She told him about when Valerie’s husband and daughters had died, how Lavender had raised nearly $10,000 in relief funds so that Valerie could have time and space to figure everything out.

Talked out, they sat in silence on the steps. Crickets sang in the grass, and far away a cow mooed. Stars shone, and the moon was still bright and white. “I’m over him,” Ruby said.

“Are you?”

“Definitely.” She leaned on his shoulder, her arm touching
his side. No ghosts crowded in today. It was only the two of them and the baby dancing inside her and the crickets and the cat.

Noah took her hand. “Good,” he said, content. There were things that were coming—what to do with the farm and how to keep it, and all the details of living—but Ruby felt a quiet, clear certainty that it would somehow all work out.

I’m in Dead Gulch, friends. Nothing to worry about, a family emergency. I’ll tell you everything later.

Ginny awakened with the dawn shining through the window, a hot bright dawn, unlike the ones she’d met recently, and she stared at her feet for a long moment, trying to place herself in time and space. It was her grandmother’s old Singer sewing machine that oriented her. A stone dropped in her gut.

Home. Back in Dead Gulch.

She got up and showered quickly, washing the travel day out of her hair, scrubbing the last of Jack away. She didn’t cry this morning. There were no tears left, only a hard little kernel of loss.

As the coffee brewed—the pot had stood empty the entire time she was gone—she dialed Ruby’s number. It went straight through to voice mail, and Ginny left a message. “Hey, Ruby. I’m sorry. I just realized it’s practically the middle of the night there. Give me a call when you get up. I’m so depressed I feel like I’m walking around in concrete shoes.”

She carried her coffee out to the deck, an elaborate thing Matthew had built a couple of years ago, complete with high-tech grill and seating for twenty, even though they never had parties or even much family over. He didn’t grill, either, but thought maybe he’d figure it out.

Someday.

She sat on one of the deck chairs, looking over the view of fields planted with corn and soybeans and, in the distance, a
silo. The water tower squatted like a flying saucer in a bad movie, the letters fading so badly that only
E D G
    
CH
was visible. As teenagers, the local kids dared one another to climb it, but Ginny never had. She was afraid of heights, afraid of getting in trouble, afraid of—