30. Harry
30
HARRY
I’ve only been asleep for an hour when the telephone in my hotel room wakes me up with an early-morning alarm call. I thank the receptionist and replace the handset, lying back on the pillow and groaning out loud. My head is fuzzy with tiredness, but I want to get to the hospital before any other visitors arrive.
Before Celia arrives.
My tired brain refused to switch off after my conversation with my father. Him and Celia Jackson. Ruby’s mom and my dad. No matter which way I look at it, I can’t quite slot the final pieces of the puzzle into place. Where does this even leave me and Ruby?
I want to speak to her alone before her mom arrives. I’m unsure how much I’m going to tell her, but my dad will have told Celia about our conversation, and I don’t want her to manipulate Ruby further, especially while she’s unwell and vulnerable.
I take a hot shower, grab some pancakes on my way to the hospital, and stop off at reception when I arrive to check that Ruby hasn’t been moved to a different ward.
“Ms. Jackson left a message for you, sir.” The woman hands me a sealed envelope.
I move away from the desk, open the envelope, and read the brief note contained inside.
Harry,
Come to E 65 th Street, block 22, apartment 13.
I’ll explain when you get here. Don’t tell anyone else.
Ruby x
I peer all around the atrium as if I might find Ruby giggling behind a column, waiting for me to take her home. But she isn’t there.
I go back to the desk. “When did Ms. Jackson leave this here for me?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” The woman shakes her head. “I only started my shift a short while ago. This was left for me in the handover book.”
I go to walk away and change my mind. “Can you please check which ward Ms. Jackson is in?”
She glances at the screen in front of her, eyelids flickering. “Ms. Jackson has been discharged.”
I thank her and walk away, turning the letter over and checking to see if I haven’t missed anything. The message might not have been left by Ruby but it’s all I have right now, and I won’t rest until I’ve checked it out.
E 65 th is a long street lined on one side by low apartment buildings overlooking a school playing field. I find the right apartment, ring the buzzer, and wait for the external door to open.
When it does, Ruby appears in the doorway wearing her coat over pajama bottoms tucked inside fur-lined boots. Her face is still pale, but she throws her arms around my neck and holds me tightly. “Take me home, Harry.”
“Home?” I hold her at arm’s length and study her face.
“New York.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not until we’re there.”
We take a taxi to Ruby’s house and I wait outside, standing sentinel, while she collects some clothes, her favorite teddy from when she was a little girl, and a photograph of her dad from his dancing competition days. Celia isn’t there. Ruby doesn’t mention her mom, doesn’t even speculate on where she might be, and I don’t press it. I suspect that she knows more than she is letting on.
When the taxi pulls away to take us to the Chicago airport, she doesn’t even peer at the house through the passenger window.
It’s early evening when we reach my apartment in New York. I order takeout noodles, and we eat them with chopsticks, sitting on the sofa overlooking the city skyline, the tartan blankets thrown across our legs. Ruby is still weak and nauseous, but the pains are gradually easing off, and she slept off the last remnants of the sedatives on the plane.
I wait for her to begin when she’s ready.
“My mom is the reason my dad had his first stroke.”
There’s no emotion in her voice, and I wonder how long she has been protecting this information. Long enough to understand what she wants to do with it, I suspect.
“I overheard them in my hospital room. They thought I was asleep. Your dad gave her an ultimatum: leave my dad, or they’re over.” She faces me then, dry-eyed, and it breaks my heart that she had to deal with this alone. I’m doing a shit job of protecting her so far. “She made him promise never to let me find out.”
Her eyes lock onto mine as if searching for something that only she knows about.
Finally, she says, “You already knew.”
I feel her pulling away from me, and I move the noodle cartons onto the coffee table so that I can snuggle under her blanket, sharing my body heat with her. “I saw them together last night. I followed them to the hospital. I was going to confront them, but I fell asleep, and my dad woke me up. He was alone.”
“He told you?”
I shake my head. “My dad doesn’t know how to express his feelings. He asked me how long I would wait for you if I couldn’t marry you now, and I said as long as it takes.”
She sucks on her smile as a lone tear trickles from the corner of her eye.
“He told me to try thirteen years.”
Ruby closes her eyes, her lashes thick and damp, and I know that she isn’t crying for herself, she’s crying for her dad.
“Ruby, do you want me to see if I can get your dad transferred to a hospital here in New York?”
“Can you do that?”
“I can try. We’re in this together, remember. I promised to make you happy, Ruby. But I think you should talk to your mom.”
“No.” Her lips pinch together. “She lied to me my whole life. I could never do that to my children.”
“Maybe she thought she was protecting you.”
“You don’t know her like I do, Harry. She was protecting herself. The night I met you, she’d set her sights on Alessandro Russo as her future son-in-law.” A joyless laugh escapes her lips. “Even that was a lie. She wanted me to marry someone rich so that I would take my dad off her hands.”
My heart swells with love for this woman sitting next to me. She’s hurting right now, but I know I can make everything better. I can take her away from all this, build a new life for us on the foundations of love and honesty and trust, now that she has told me the truth.
“Then we’ll give her what she wants.”
Ruby blinks at me as if I’ve grown a second head.
“We’ll take him off her hands, set her free if that’s what she wants. You’re all that matters to me. Your happiness. Your future. Your life.”
“Harry…” Ruby scrunches up her face, psyching herself up for what she has to say next. “Alessandro… The night before…”
“Hey.” I pull her against me and kiss her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. “It’s okay. I already know.”
“You do? He told you?”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. It will never happen to you again, Ruby. You’re going to get better, I’ll make sure of it, because you have lots to do.”
She smiles then, and I’m reminded all over again of how beautiful she is. “Don’t think I’m running errands for you while you sit in your nice cozy office.”
“I think you might enjoy these errands.”
“Hmm, I reserve the right to pass judgment until I know what they are.”
“Okay, number one, you have a wedding to plan.” I raise a finger in the air, and then a second. “Two, you have a honeymoon to buy clothes for, and three…”
“You haven’t thought of three yet, have you?”
“Three…” I keep her waiting. “You have a new apartment to find.”
Her smile is kind of wistful, not the full-on moonbeam smile I was expecting. “You know I’m not interested in a swanky apartment, right? You know I’ll be happy living anywhere with you.”
“I know. Call it a wedding gift.”
“A wedding gift? You mean there’s going to be more than one?”
“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?” I kiss the tip of her nose and go to clear up the cartons when she stops me with a hand on my arm.
“Harry, there’s one more thing I haven’t told you.”
I sit back. “Whose apartment you were in this morning?”
Her eyes widen, and she stares out the window, at the city lights beyond. “No, that was just a friend from college. She works in the hospital. She found me when I was trying to sneak out in the night, took me home, and made me hot chocolate.” She faces me then, not quite meeting my gaze. “She saw my test results.”
My heart skips a beat and starts up again, gathering speed. I can’t speak. I won’t be able to bear it if there’s something seriously wrong with Ruby.
“She said…” Ruby’s bottom lip disappears behind her teeth. “She said I had arsenic poisoning.”
The blanket is suddenly too hot. I shove it off my legs and stand up. I go to the window, turning the words over inside my head— arsenic poisoning, arsenic poisoning, arsenic poisoning —but the view is too busy, and I can’t concentrate.
“What the fuck, Ruby?” I turn around to face her. “How does that even happen?”
“Turns out you can get it from contaminated water or by inhaling pesticides.”
“But not in your case.”
She shrugs. “I can’t think of anything, but that doesn’t mean?—”
I’m on my knees in front of her, squeezing her hand. “Does she think someone was trying to poison you? Be honest with me, Ruby. Does she?”
My thoughts are spinning around while I wait for her to answer.
“Maybe. The hospital is investigating my results. According to Mel-my friend, my parents will be questioned.”
I’m back on my feet, pacing the living room, hands balled into fists. Her parents will be questioned as a matter of procedure, investigating Ruby’s lifestyle, recent activities, her mental health. But that will take time, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll find anything conclusive. Then what? What happens when they draw blanks all round?
I already know the answer. I vowed to protect Ruby, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll find the fucker who poisoned her if it’s the last thing I do.
“Who? Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone want to hurt you?”
“Harry, sit down.” Ruby pats the cushion next to her. “I’m safe now. It’ll take a little while to get out of my system, but I’ll be okay.”
“It could’ve killed you.” The situation is magnified by a hundred times when I say the words out loud. “Whoever did this is not going to get away with it, Ruby. I swear I’ll hunt them down and make them pay. They’ll wish they’d picked on someone else by the time I’m finished with them.”
“Please, Harry. Leave it. I’m not going back to Chicago.”
But I’m not listening to her. Who would want to hurt Ruby? Why would someone try to poison her? Why poison? My thoughts are colliding like the bumper cars at Coney Island, crashing into each other and spinning off at tangents. I’ll find them. I won’t stop until I do, because no one hurts Ruby Jackson and gets away with it.
My dad’s face, when he pinned me up against the wall with his hand around my throat, pops into my head. I pick up the phone and dial his home number. I expect it to go through to the answering machine and am surprised when he says hello.
“Dad, it’s me, Harry.” Silence. “Did you poison Ruby?”
More silence, the seconds ticking away with the beat of my heart. Ruby gasps from the sofa.
“Is that what you think of me?”
The adrenaline rush fades as quickly as it began, and I sit heavily on the edge of the sofa, the phone still pressed to my ear. “No.”
“Glad to fucking hear it.” The line goes dead.
“Harry, you don’t really think your dad would do that, do you?” Ruby’s arm snakes around me, and she rests her head on my shoulder.
“No.” He can be intimidating, and rude, and ruthless when he wants to be, but is he a murderer? “I have to make another call.”
“Now?” She sits back.
I’m on my feet and pacing the floor again. Carlos Russo answers his office phone on the third ring.
“How’s Ruby?” he asks.
“Better than she was. She’s here with me.”
“Good, because I need to see you in the office tomorrow.”
I don’t know how I can even think about the new venture, but I agree to meet him anyway. “Carlos, I need your help with another matter. I promise this will be the last thing I ever ask you.”
His laughter booms out of the telephone and bounces across the room. “You should never make promises you cannot keep. I’ll see you in the morning, bright and early.”
I hang up and pull Ruby into my arms, smoothing her hair away from her face. “Everything is going to be okay. I don’t want you to worry about a thing.”
She relaxes against me, and I allow my eyes to close, content in the knowledge that I never have to let her out of my sight again.
As I drift off, the lack of sleep finally catching up with me, I remember that I haven’t been entirely honest with her. I’m keeping one tiny secret, just until our wedding day, but I know she’s going to love it when she finds out.