4. Ruby
”I”m so glad you”re here.” Ruby has a red handkerchief tied around her head and she”s wearing a beat-up gray t-shirt and a pair of too-big overalls. ”I”m not sure I could do this on my own.”
”You could,” Helen Pullman says, leaning her weight against the doorframe of Patty”s bedroom in Santa Barbara. She”s flown in from D.C. after Ruby”s quick trip to Seattle, and the women have plans to go through Patty”s jewelry and clothing together. ”You have gone through much bigger things--and on a public stage, I might add--and the death of your mother, while terrible, is not unexpected in the life of a middle-aged woman.”
Ruby is taping the bottom of a box and she stops mid-job to look at Helen. ”You don”t pull any punches, do you?”
”It would be a waste of my time,” Helen says, ambling over to the bed and sitting at the foot of it. ”I ran the Oval Office and kept your husband on track, so helping you organize your mom”s house will be a walk in the park.”
True to form, Helen keeps them on task with a firm but loving hand, and by late afternoon there are boxes of family photo albums taped and ready for Ruby to FedEx back to Shipwreck Key for storage, as well as several boxes of clothing, dishes, shoes, and brand new linens set by the door that she plans to donate to the local women’s shelter. Helen has headed off at least four breakdowns, swept through whatever room Ruby was in throughout the day and dropped off a box of tissue to dry Ruby’s perpetually flowing tears, and made the whole thing about ten times more fun than it would have been by insisting that they put some of Patty’s vinyl on the turntable as they work.
“Helen?” Ruby calls out, trying to be heard over Fleetwood Mac as she sits on the floor of her mom’s sunny little office. She shifts around on the faded rug that covers most of the wood floors. “What do you think I should do with this?”
Helen pokes her head into the office and Ruby sees that she’s got several of Patty’s silk scarves hanging over one shoulder like she’s moving them from one spot to another. “What, babe?”
From her spot on the floor, Ruby holds up a blown glass hibiscus flower the size of her palm. She frowns at it. “It’s beautiful, but it feels too fragile to FedEx.”
“Pretty,” Helen says. “Put it in the box to go.”
Ruby gives a little huff of a laugh. “It’s that easy, huh?”
Helen shrugs. “If you don’t know where it came from, who made it, or why it was important—and if it has no meaning to you—I say send it down the river. But if you think it has some importance, then I guess bubble wrap the crap out of it and send it home with the rest of the boxes.”
Ruby understands the simplicity of making these calls; it should be easy to look at an item that she has no emotional ties to and say yay or nay quite easily, but something about this delicate glass hibiscus gives her pause.
“I’m going to hang onto it for now. Maybe I’ll just carry it on the plane with me to take home.”
Helen shrugs and moves on, leaving the room with a wide-brimmed hat on her head that she’s picked up from its spot on a chair, and the scarves still dangling over one shoulder.
As the record in the front room ends and Helen switches it out without asking, Elton John’s crooning voice drifts down the hall. Ruby continues sifting through her mother’s personal items, emptying out drawers and pulling books and photos from shelves. The picture she’d picked up before her trip to Seattle catches her attention again, and she turns the frame over in her hands, unclasping the latch to take the back off of it. The photo comes out easily and Ruby turns it over, looking first at the front—her mother, standing in that gorgeous afternoon light in a vineyard with a handsomely weathered man—and then at the back, where a faded inscription is scrawled in Patty’s looping cursive: With Lyle W. Napa 1988.
Lyle? Ruby frowns. Lyle who? In 1988, Ruby’s father had only been gone a few years, and she and her mother were living in Southern California, navigating Ruby’s teenage years together as Patty argued court cases and dipped her toes back in the dating pool. But this man—Lyle—appeared to be more than a casual date. The way he leaned in to Patty, the familiarity with which she pressed her face close to his. The faraway look in their eyes, as if they’d just been talking about something that had made them both wistful, made Ruby feel as if she’d stumbled into a room in the middle of two people having a private conversation.
Ruby stands from the floor and stretches her arms overhead, then picks her way through the piles of books and photos and tchotchkes until she’s standing at Patty’s desk. She flips through the calendar next to the computer, running her fingers over the last entry Patty had made there: May 21—appt with Dr. Sanderson; send $ to FSV.
This tickles her brain and Ruby wiggles the mouse on the computer until the screen springs to life. There, as a screensaver, is a photo of Patty with her daughter at her side and her two granddaughters behind them, their hands resting on her shoulders lovingly. It had been taken during a visit to Shipwreck Key the previous year, and Ruby’s eyes fill with tears at the sudden memory of a visit with her mother where she’d assumed that nothing would happen to her for years to come. If nothing else, life has taught her in the past few years that everything is temporary; there is no guarantee not just of a tomorrow, but of the very next moment. From Jack’s death and finding out a year later about his diagnosis, to Harlow’s getting trapped in the crossfire in a shooting in New York City, and now Patty’s death, Ruby feels as though life has grabbed her by the roots of her hair and dragged her into midlife kicking and screaming.
With a few keystrokes, Ruby is back into her mother’s account, and she skims the disbursements again until she finds what she wants: FSV—Fair Skies Village. The retirement home in Austin. Sinking into the chair rather than hovering over it, Ruby navigates to a new browser page and types in the name of the retirement home, watching the screen as an image of a building that looks like it’s situated on a golf course appears before her.
It’s almost resort-like, with palm trees, manicured green grasses, and man-made oases sprinkled around the main building. Ruby scrolls to the bottom and finds a phone number.
After a few minutes of explanation and transfers, she has a woman on the phone in the main office, and she’s once again explained that her mother has passed away, and that she has been sending checks to Fair Skies Village each month for several years, and now Ruby needs to find out more about these payments so that she can determine what her mother’s intentions were.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t give out information about current residents,” the woman on the line says.
“I’m not asking about your residents,” Ruby explains patiently, “I just need to understand what my mother’s monthly payments were for. If she was supporting one of your residents and her checks stop coming, that could be hugely detrimental to the person relying on them.”
“Yes,” the woman agrees. “It could. Let me see what information I can provide.” She asks Ruby a few questions and taps at her computer keys audibly while Ruby waits. “Hmm. Okay. I see that two thousand dollar checks have been coming monthly from Patricia Dallarosa for nearly twenty years now.” There is a pause. “And that the remainder of the payments are coming from someone in Austin. I guess…I could reach out to the person paying the other portion, who appears to be the resident’s daughter, and perhaps she would be willing to talk to you about it? That’s the best I can do.”
“Of course,” Ruby says. “That would work.”
“I’m sorry I can’t give you more than that.”
“No, no—I understand. Patient confidentiality.” Ruby is mildly distracted as she gives a phone number and her email address to the woman.
“Ruby Hudson,” the woman on the other end of the line says. “I bet people confuse you with the former First Lady all the time,” she teases, a smile in her voice.
“Oh, you have no idea.” Ruby takes off her reading glasses and spins around in her mother’s desk chair so that she’s facing the window. “Thank you for your help. I’ll wait and hope to hear from the woman you’re reaching out to, and I guess we’ll go from there.”
“My condolences on your mother’s passing,” the woman says before they hang up.
As soon as Ruby ends the call, her phone rings again and she answers.
“Hello, Mrs. Hudson?” a man says.
“Yes, this is Ruby.”
“This is Alan Berkshire, your mother’s attorney. I’d love to meet with you as soon as possible, and I understand that time is of the essence to you as well, based on your message.”
Ruby clears her throat. “Yes. It is. I’m only in Santa Barbara temporarily, so I’d like to handle as much of this in person as I possibly can. Could we set up a time to meet?”
“How is this afternoon?”
Ruby flips over her wrist and consults her watch; it’s nearly three o’clock. “I can be there at four?” she offers, calculating how quickly she can run a brush through her hair and slap on some lipstick. “You’re downtown on State Street, correct?”
“Right by the courthouse,” he says. “You’ll know you’re there when you see brides and grooms standing on the grass with professional photographers and makeup artists,” he jokes, alluding to the fact that the courthouse is incredibly picturesque and a popular spot for Instagrammable weddings.
“Got it. I’ll be there at four,” Ruby promises, ending the call and standing up quickly. “Hey, Helen?” she calls. “I need to go meet my mom’s attorney now. Are you fine here for a bit, or do you want to come?”
Helen materializes in the doorway of the office; the hat and scarves are gone, but she’s holding a small painting gingerly in her hands. “Do you think this is a real Picasso?”
Ruby squints at the artwork. “Maybe?” She walks over to inspect it. Sure enough, the telltale signature is right there on the canvas. “Apparently there’s a lot about my mom that I didn’t know, so maybe she’s been squirreling away invaluable works of art behind my back along with hiding the fact that she was the one driving in an accident where a woman lost her leg. Who even knows at this point?” Ruby throws her hands in the air and then lets them fall in exasperation.
“Yeah, that was a doozy,” Helen agrees. She leans against the doorframe with one shoulder, still holding the painting. “I didn’t want to ask too much about it, but you said she was drinking and driving? And some lady is living in her house up in Seattle because your mom felt bad about the leg?”
Ruby blows out a long breath. She needs coffee. “I think it’s so much more than that, Helen. I just…this is overwhelming, you know? All of it.” Ruby puts her hands to her face and stands there for a moment, breathing in and out.
“Oh, love. Don’t I know it. My parents are both long gone, and let me tell you, with each of their deaths came a mountain of garbage—both literal and figurative. So just cut yourself all the slack you need.”
“Yeah,” Ruby finally says. She drops her hands from her face. “You’re right. And do you think you can come with me? To the lawyer?”
Helen sets the painting down carefully so that it’s leaning against the office wall out of the way. Ruby will have to deal with the Picasso later. “I’m ready when you are,” Helen says gamely. “As long as we can get a latte somewhere along the way.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Ruby grabs her purse off the kitchen island and forgoes a change from her sweatshirt into something nicer. She checks her bag for a hairbrush and a tube of lipstick so she can do a quick touch-up in the car. “Let’s roll.”
Alan Berkshire’s office was indeed located near the courthouse, and on this gorgeous, sunny October afternoon, Ruby and Helen stroll down the sidewalk with iced coffees in hand, dodging kids on skateboards and watching as young college students lounge in the emerald grass that surrounds the courthouse.
“Nice digs,” Helen says, lifting her sunglasses as she looks at the mission-style building with its dark ironwork and tiled roof. “Not a shabby place to spend your days.”
“A bit more relaxed than the White House, huh?” Ruby says, taking off her own sunglasses and dropping them into her purse as they pass through the front door of Berkshire, Hallywood, Briar, and Lane’s law office. The woman at the front counter is young and pretty, and her hair is loose and wavy, her nose studded with a glittering diamond. Ruby can’t help thinking that a young woman greeting the public in D.C. would be more likely to have her hair slicked back and her nose stud-free, but there’s something in the air in Southern California that makes her breezy attitude and natural look feel right.
“Welcome!” the front desk attendant chirps. She lifts a hand and waves at Ruby and Helen, and Ruby can feel Helen pause next to her, startled by the motion. She reaches out and grabs Helen’s hand, tugging her along so that she won’t gawk like an East Coaster.
“Hi,” Ruby says with a smile. “I’m here to see Alan Berkshire. Ruby Hudson.”
Recognition passes over the young woman’s face and her smile widens, though so do her eyes, making her look like a stunned little girl. “Oh! Mrs. Hudson. It’s an honor to meet you.” She stands behind her desk, revealing a form-fitting, stretchy black dress over bare legs. The dress is about two inches too short. “I’m Reggie.”
“So nice to meet you,” Ruby says, falling immediately into First Lady mode. “And this is Helen Pullman. We have an appointment at four.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll let Alan know you’re here,” she says, stepping from behind the desk and revealing a pair of rhinestone bedazzled Birkenstocks on her feet. Her toes are painted hot pink. “Can I get you some coffee while you wait?”
Helen holds up her plastic cup and rattles the ice around to indicate that they already have some.
“No, thank you, Reggie. We’re fine.” Ruby smiles at her.
Reggie disappears down a long hallway, her extremely toned derriere wiggling its way to get Alan Berkshire.
Ruby can barely bring herself to look at Helen, but she glances in her friend’s direction just in time to see her put the straw of her iced coffee between her lips and raise her eyebrows quizzically.
“Ruby!” Ruby looks up as a man in a shirt and tie (sleeves rolled up; no jacket) approaches. He is fair-haired and balding, his remaining hair windswept and his face tanned as if he drives through Santa Barbara in a convertible on his way between his law office and the golf course. “Alan Berkshire,” he says, hand extended. His eyes dance merrily and he turns to Helen, who introduces herself. “Lovely to meet you both. It’s not every day I have a First Lady and a Chief of Staff walk into the lobby of my humble offices.” Alan spreads his hands to indicate the well-appointed but still rather bland space.
The women follow Alan to his office, which has a giant window that looks out at the courthouse lawn. Palm trees wave against a late afternoon sky that looks like turquoise brushed over with gold, and on the green grass, two young men in cut-off jeans toss a frisbee back and forth. It looks like an image that the California Board of Tourism might have conjured up to make visiting Santa Barbara a must-do.
“Let’s dive right in,” Alan says, waving at two mid-century designed chairs for Ruby and Helen. He sits behind his desk and slides on a pair of reading glasses as he taps at his keyboard. “First of all,” he says to Ruby, looking back at her and taking his reading glasses off again as he makes eye contact with her. “Let me say how deeply I adored your mother. Patty Dallarosa was a force to be reckoned with, and I miss her laugh, her friendship, and her legal banter.”
“You knew my mother professionally?” Ruby frowns. “She wasn’t just a client?”
Alan’s laugh booms throughout the office and he leans back in his chair, pushing his shirtsleeves up further. “Oh, lord no. Patty and I go way back. We worked together on a huge trial in Los Angeles County in about…1995, I guess it was. She was several years into her career by then and man, was she a sight to behold.”
Ruby smiles at this, loving the look of admiration on Alan Berkshire’s face as he remembers Patty in the prime of her career.
“Dressed to kill, always,” Alan says, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepling his hands before him. “She’d walk into a courtroom in head-to-toe Chanel with her hair and makeup done in whatever style was current. I’m not kidding you, Ruby,” he says imploringly, as if she might not believe his words, “your mother could have been a runway model, even in her forties. Or a movie star.”
“That’s true.” Ruby beams, feeling tears prick at her eyes. She’d always been unfailingly proud of her beautiful mother. “My mother never left the house without being fully dressed and made up. In fact,” Ruby says, glancing out the window at the satiny sky, “she never started her day until she was dressed. That was one of her things: get ready enough so that no matter who knocks on your door, you’re ready.”
Alan is shaking his head. “She looked like a perfectly turned out starlet at all times, but her mind and her tongue were like cut glass and velvet, respectively.”
“That’s a perfect way to describe her,” Ruby agrees. “She was never at a loss for words—some of them quite sharp—but she always knew the perfect way to sand them down and deliver them so that you weren’t even sure you’d been cut.”
“I watched her do it over and over in court,” Alan says, following Ruby’s gaze out the window.
”My mother was a one of a kind.” Ruby puts a hand to her cheek. Tears are never far when she”s thinking about Patty, but she”d rather keep herself in check here at the lawyer”s office and not crumble into a pile of tears and memories. ”I will miss her forever.”
They take a brief pause, and then Alan puts his reading glasses back on and sits up straight. ”On that note, I say we get down to it.”
Ruby gives a firm nod and Helen pats her hand and then stands, holding her iced coffee. ”If you”ll excuse me for a moment,” she says, nodding at the door. ”I”ll just ask the nice young lady up front--your daughter, I presume?--to show me to the restroom.”
Alan smirks at Helen. ”Third wife,” he says with a guilty and slightly apologetic shrug. ”She tells me that I need to keep things relaxed around here if I”m going to attract a younger, hipper clientele.”
Helen stands there, looking down at Alan Berkshire disbelievingly. ”It”s your business, Mr. Berkshire, but as an estate lawyer, I’m not sure that ‘younger and hipper’ is really your target audience.” With that, Helen shows herself out of the office and closes the door gently behind her.
”She”s got a point,” Alan says, looking at Ruby over the top of his glasses. ”She definitely has a point.”
”Well, we”ve all gotten sidetracked by love a time or two, haven”t we?” Ruby says kindly. ”Anyhow, you were saying?”
Alan frowns at the computer screen before looking at Ruby again. ”Well, your mother”s net worth is fairly substantial,” he says. ”She invested well, and once you talk to her accountant I”m sure you”ll get more up-to-date figures, but as of our last discussion, she had something like forty-six million in stocks, savings, and real estate holdings. Her will has some provisions that we”ll need to adhere to, but as her next of kin, Ruby, you stand to inherit the bulk of that money.”
Ruby blinks. She sucks in a breath and holds it. Blinks again. Releases the breath in one loud puff. ”Forty-six million? But...how? I...” She is at a loss for words at this point, and instead of saying more, Ruby clamps her mouth shut and waits.
”I think once you speak to her accountant and see the actual stock portfolios it might make more sense, but essentially, Patty took your father”s life insurance policy and paid off her house. She then went back to work and put the lion”s share of her salary into the stock market. That might have felt like a risky move for a relatively young widow, but Patty was playing the long game, and she was on the receiving end of some solid advice, as far as I can tell.”
Ruby folds her hands, unfolds them. She”s still trying to grasp how her mother might have turned her life into an estate worth forty-six million dollars. ”What kind of advice do you think she got?”
Alan Berkshire shrugs. ”Someone told her to invest in Apple in the eighties, and she did. Beyond that, I couldn”t tell you the specifics, but she did well. As far as real estate, she owns the house here in Santa Barbara, as you know, and one in Seattle. She also owns an apartment in New York City, and--”
”Wait.” Ruby slides forward on her chair, holding up a hand. ”New York City? My mother?” Ruby shakes her head adamantly. ”That must be a mistake. My mom doesn”t own any property on the east coast.”
Alan pulls a face that says I”m not quite done yet, and Ruby sits back in her chair, still shaking her head.
”She also owns a bungalow on Jekyll Island in Georgia.”
”No,” Ruby says, and it”s not a protest, but a proclamation. ”My mother would have told me if she owned more property.”
Alan stands and places his reading glasses on the desk. He walks around it, sits in the chair formerly occupied by Helen, and looks at Ruby searchingly. ”I find--in life, and in my business--that there are many, many things we don”t know about our loved ones, Ruby. Both good and bad things. Fortunately, I think you”ll find that most of what you don”t know about Patty is good stuff, but I want you to know that there is stuff.”
”But...” Ruby trails off, still processing the apartment in Manhattan and the so-called bungalow in Georgia. ”My mom and I shared pretty much everything. There was no reason for her not to tell me these things. No reason at all.”
”None?” Alan raises his eyebrows and waits for Ruby to come to her own conclusions.
Ruby racks her brain, thinking of what might have compelled her mother to keep secrets from her. Of course, it”s natural for a daughter not to tell her mom everything, but as Patty had gotten older she pretty much just gardened and walked on the beach and met friends for happy hour for the last couple of decades of her life. What part of that needed to be some big secret? But what about the forty-six million dollars? How and why would her mother have accumulated that kind of money and kept it tucked away and hidden? None of it made any sense.
Ruby sighs; she”s suddenly exhausted. ”I guess I got kind of busy with my own life,” she says, waving a hand through the air listlessly. ”I was raising kids and then I was in the White House, and--”
Alan”s eyebrows shoot sky high. ”And maybe your mom assumed--perhaps rightly--that you were too busy being First Lady to the entire nation to be interested in the daily goings-on of her life. Maybe she set out to support herself, to entertain herself, and to leave her own legacy that was separate from yours. Maybe she wanted to be something other than a young widow, a fierce lawyer, and Ruby Hudson”s mom.”
Ruby tips her head to one side and looks out at the sky and the trees. The palm fronds are now dipped in gold, and the two frisbee-tossing men have vanished. ”Like what?” she asks, though her words are really more for herself than for Alan. If anyone can answer what else Patty Dallarosa might have wanted from life, it”s going to be her daughter, not a fellow attorney who mostly knew her from the courtroom.
Alan shrugs; he”s clearly a smart enough man to know that Ruby will have to find that answer for herself. He uses one hand on his own knee to push himself up to standing again, and as he does, he gives a nearly inaudible groan. ”Bad knee,” he says, patting his right thigh with one hand.
Ruby gives a half-hearted smile as she leans forward, tapping her fingers on his desk. “Okay.” She’s ready to refocus the conversation. ”What do I need to know about the will? Is this a good time to go over it?”
Rather than sitting back in his own chair, Alan walks across his office and stands before the window, looking out at the early evening sky.
”Actually,” he says, turning his head so that he”s looking at Ruby, but keeping his body facing the window, ”there are a few other people we”ll need to have handy before I can read the will. How does tomorrow at ten o”clock sound?”
Ruby frowns; she’s an only child, and her aunt Olivia has been dead for decades. Patty has no other family besides Harlow and Athena. Ah! she thinks, Harlow and Athena!
”My daughters? I can FaceTime them and loop them in--”
But Alan cuts her off by turning around fully. ”They will be acknowledged in the will, but you can represent your entire family unless they want to join us by Zoom. We have a few other people joining us via Zoom as well.”
”Who?” Ruby asks, standing. She is completely lost--who else might her mother have included in the will? Right then, Helen taps lightly and opens the door. She pokes her head in, reads the room, and backs out again. ”Who else needs to be there?”
Alan holds up a hand. ”Tomorrow, Ruby. That”s all I can tell you for now, and I”m sorry.”
Ruby is flabbergasted and also wildly curious; she isn”t even sure she”ll sleep at all for wondering what might be coming her way.
”Okay,” Ruby says, though she sounds far more annoyed than defeated as she picks up her purse from the chair and slings the strap over one shoulder. ”I guess tomorrow it is. I”ll see you at ten o”clock, Mr. Berkshire.”