Chapter 64
MAGGIE
Isit in the truck outside Ruthie's for a full minute with the eggs on the passenger seat before I make myself get out.
It's only been three days and it feels too soon to face people.
Three days of keeping my head down, of finding reasons to be at the far end of the property whenever a volunteer was around.
Sloane's been sleeping back at the motel since her interview with Reeves, which is the sensible thing, but I've missed her in my bed.
Ruthie's been texting because the diner needs eggs. I’ve been putting it off but I'm out of excuses. Best to just get it over with. So this is what it's like. The whole world knows your business but you have to face it anyway.
Mom knows, of course. She called the morning after it happened.
The volunteers know. Or at least I'm pretty sure they know.
Luis hasn't said a word but he's been gentler with me than usual, which is its own kind of tell.
Dale won't quite meet my eye. Cassie, sixteen and merciless, asked me if I was okay.
And Ruthie knows, which means everyone who visits the diner or goes to church knows.
I pick up the eggs and go in. The bell over the door rings, and I swear to God the entire diner looks up.
It's not even busy — the mid-morning lull, a handful of regulars — but every head turns, and there's that half-second of held silence, the one I've watched land on Sloane a few times, the one I never once imagined would land on me.
Earl's at the counter with his coffee. The two old boys who do the crossword are in their booth.
Doris is here, of all the rotten luck, and she gives me a look of brimming concern.
Larry, at the grill, very deliberately doesn't turn around.
I understand all of it now, and I feel for Sloane. I told her this was a friendly town and she just had to earn their trust, but I never once had to walk into the friendly town as the story.
"Maggie." Ruthie rushes around the counter, drying her hands on her apron. "Eggs. Bless you, I'm down to nothing." She takes the flats from me and sets them by the register.
"I'll get out of your hair," I say. "I know you're busy —"
"Sit down a minute."
"Ruthie, I really should —"
"Maggie Dawson. Sit."
I sit at the counter and Ruthie pours me a coffee. She leans on the counter across from me, while the rest of the diner pretends not to listen.
"So," Ruthie says. "That was quite a post."
I want the earth to open. "Ruthie —"
"I didn't watch it, mind." She holds up a hand.
"Well. I didn't see it. There wasn't anything to see, was there?
It was the ceiling. Lovely ceiling, by the way.
Is that the original beam? You don't get those anymore.
" She says this completely seriously and I have no idea what's happening.
"But I'll be honest with you, honey, the sound came on before I could find the button, and —" she pats her chest "— well.
I was married for decades and I don't believe Stanley and I ever once consummated our marriage outside the —"
"Ruthie. Please. I'm begging you."
"I'm just saying it was very —" she searches for the word, and lands, devastatingly, on "— committed."
Down the counter, Earl coughs into his coffee. I put my face in my hands.
"Oh, don't do that." Ruthie pats my arm. "Don't hide. You've nothing to be ashamed of. It was an accident. Could've happened to anyone." A pause. "Well. Not the — what happened isn't the sort of thing that happens to anyone. But the posting of it. The posting could happen to anyone."
"It really wasn't meant for anyone to see."
"I know, honey. I know. Doris thought it was the radio, bless her.
She said to me, Ruthie, why has Dawson's Sanctuary put a — she used a word I won't repeat — why have they put that on the internet, and I had to explain to her that it wasn't a production, it was an accident, and that you and Sloane were —" she lowers her voice "— courting. "
"Something like that," I say weakly. "It's complicated."
"Love is always complicated." Ruthie nods sagely.
"But complicated never killed anyone." She leans in.
"I'll tell you what I told Doris. I said, those two have been thick as thieves for weeks, anyone with eyes could see it, and good for them, is what I say.
That girl came here a mess and she's turned herself right around, and if some of that's down to you, then I'm not going to sit here clutching my pearls over a bit of —" she waves a hand "— ceiling footage. "
I stare at her. "You're not… it doesn't bother you?"
"That it's two women? Maggie, honey, I've known you since you were in pigtails and I've known you were that way since you were about fifteen.
The whole town knows and nobody cares. We're more interested in the fact that it was Sloane.
" She straightens up. "Now that's a story.
The girl who drove into your fence and you couldn't stand her.
Wonders never cease. I understand why you were reluctant to set her up with Hector now. "
"It's that interesting, is it?"
"Honey, it's the most interesting thing to happen in Duster since Bill Foster's wife ran off with his cousin in 2012."
I shoot her a look of utter disbelief. "Ruthie, that really doesn't make me feel any better."
Ruthie picks up the eggs and carries them to the kitchen. "You should hear them in here. Earl's got opinions. Don't you, Earl?"
"I do not," Earl says.
I'm laughing, a kind of helpless, exhausted laugh, because it's too much, and so absurd. Ruthie has managed in about five minutes to take the worst three days of my recent life and throw everything out in the open. Completely, catastrophically, lovingly indiscreet.
I slide off my stool, eager to flee and lock myself up in the house for the coming ten years. "Right. I think that's my cue to go. Thank you for the coffee, Ruthie."
"Don't thank me. And take a slice of pie home for that girl. She likes the cherry." Ruthie folds a slice into a napkin and hands it to me, then adds, at full volume, "And tell her we'd all love her to stay. We want you to have your happy ending."
The diner, to my horror, produces a murmur of agreement.