8. Chapter Eight Ruby
Chapter Eight: Ruby
I t was supposed to be a day off from school. Not a day off work.
But Rosie had woken up warm and glassy-eyed, the kind of low fever that didn’t scream emergency but still meant no school, no backup plan, and no rest for anyone. So here we were.
She was curled up on the kitchen bench, sniffly and wrapped in one of my oversized sweatshirts, half-heartedly working through an assignment Julian had given her. I’d set up at the table to keep her company—not that she needed me hovering, but I wanted to be close.
Julian would’ve said this was me neglecting her again. That I was too distracted, too buried in work. But the truth was, I didn’t want her out of my sight today. Not when she didn’t feel good. Not when I knew the ache behind her eyes and the droop of her shoulders better than I knew half my donors.
I loved this kid so much it physically hurt sometimes.
Still, my laptop was a battlefield—emails piling up, meeting notes unfinished, the campaign looming like a tidal wave. Alek was supposed to come by and help, but his sister had just shown up from London without warning. He wasn’t thrilled, but I got it.
I glanced over at Rosie. She was chewing on the end of her pencil with that dramatic intensity that meant she was either deep in thought or completely over it. Probably both. Julian’s idea of “academic enrichment” usually involved way too much pressure for a seven-year-old.
He meant well. But sometimes I wondered if he actually saw how hard she was trying.
Balancing the laptop on one knee, I scrolled through my phone with the other hand, searching for a takeout place that delivered breakfast. My growling stomach was losing patience with the banana and coffee I’d tried to fend it off with.
“Mom,” Rosie said. “What’s an algorithm?”
“You’re seven,” I said. “Why do you have to know that?”
“Dad says we need to understand how machines think,” she said, rolling her eyes in a way that was far too practiced for someone her age. “I don’t even get how humans think yet.”
I suppressed a sigh. Julian was pushing her too hard, and I knew I needed to talk to him about it. But how did you tell your kid’s father, who was also your ex but not your ex, that he needed to back off?
“It’s like a recipe,” I said, closing my laptop. “A set of instructions that tell the computer what to do.”
I slid off the couch, walking over to peer at the printout. Sometimes I wondered if Julian’s ambitions for Rosie were more about him than about her. Not that I minded her learning useful skills, but she was in fourth grade. Couldn’t she just play with Legos and read Harry Potter?
“So it’s not math?”
“Not always. But it can be.”
She made a face like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Math is the worst.”
No, this is the worst, I thought. But I said no such thing. “Let’s take a break.”
“Dad says that I need to—“
“Dad says a lot of things, mi amor. Let’s take a break.”
I ruffled her hair and walked back to the living room, where my laptop mocked me from the couch.
The election was eating my life, and I missed the days when we could just hang out, read silly books, and bake cookies without me fretting over voter turnout, campaign contributions, or the city’s brilliant decision to hold a snap election a few weeks after Lenta’s death.
Emergency measures to restore public trust, they said—because God forbid the mayor appoint someone and risk looking corrupt.
Or maybe they just didn’t expect me to run.
But here I was…running, raising a daughter, and dealing with my soon-to-be-ex husband.
Rosie put down her pencil with a huff and came over to me. “Can we make pancakes?”
“I have a better idea. I’m going to order in,” I say. “Then we can watch a movie, huh? Your choice.”
Rosie’s eyes lit up. “Even a Disney one?”
I hesitated. The stack of work waiting for me was taller than the Empire State Building, and taking two hours out of my day to watch Frozen for the hundredth time seemed like an indulgence I couldn’t afford.
But then I looked at Rosie’s hopeful face and remembered that this was supposed to be quality time.
That it wasn’t just her life I was trying to balance, but mine as well.
“Even a Disney one,” I said, smiling.
She cocked her head, a strand of curly hair falling over her forehead. “But don’t you have to work?”
“Work can wait,” I said, though my fingers twitched with the phantom strokes of a keyboard. “Pancakes and princesses are more important right now.”
Rosie beamed, and for a moment, the tension that had been knotting my shoulders for weeks began to unwind. This was what I needed—a reminder of why I was doing all of this in the first place. It wasn’t just for me; it was for her, for us.
“You know what I really have to do? I have to dance,” I said.
“Mami—“
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I can feel it. It’s dancing time.”
I stood and wiggled in place, doing a ridiculous shimmy that I knew would mortify her. She covered her face with her hands but peeked through her fingers, giggling despite herself.
“Dance breaks are scientifically proven to make you smarter,” I said, twirling around and nearly knocking over a floor lamp. “It’s like an algorithm for your brain.”
She laughed out loud at that, and my heart swelled. I grabbed her hands and pulled her into a spin, and she didn’t resist. We whirled around the living room together, our steps chaotic and uncoordinated.
She tried to break free, but I held her tight, bending her backwards in a melodramatic dip.
“Mami!” she shrieked, half in terror, half in joy. She grabbed a throw pillow from the couch and threw it at me. So this was how she wanted to play this.
This was war.
“En garde!” I said, pulling her up and into a mock fencing stance and speaking in a bad French accent. “We duel!”
She played along, swatting at me with imaginary swords as we pranced around the room. For a few precious minutes, we were pirates on the high seas, conquering an empire of couches and coffee tables.
When we finally collapsed onto the sofa, breathless and laughing, I felt something close to whole again. This was the Ruby I recognized—the woman who could balance a life full of contradictions with grace. The mother who knew how to seize a moment of pure, unfiltered joy.
“Okay,” Rosie said after a moment, “I can finish my assignment later. Maybe after the movie.”
I kissed the top of her head. “That’s my girl. I’ll order the food, you go queue up the movie.”
Rosie bounded off the couch and ran to the living room, her footsteps light and carefree. I pulled out my phone again and found a place that did gourmet breakfasts. I splurged on a variety: blueberry pancakes, avocado toast, a selection of pastries, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
If we were going to do this, we were going to do it right.
Rosie had the app menu up and was scrolling through the titles with a deliberation that suggested she was taking the choice very seriously. I remembered being that age, when picking out a movie from Blockbuster felt like a life-or-death decision.
“Don’t start without me,” I called as I opened and looked at the notification that had just come in.
A message from Alek sat at the top of my inbox.
I feel terrible bailing on you today, especially with everything that’s at stake. I’ll try to swing by after dinner if you’re still up. Please don’t kill me.
“Alek is coming over tonight,” I told Rosie as I sent Alek a text back. Don’t worry. Just come over whenever you can. You can bring Natalia, I’d love to see her. “His sister might be coming too.”
“Yay! I like Natalia. She’s funny,” Rosie said, her eyes still glued to the screen as she scrolled through the movie options. She paused, then looked back at me. “Can Dad come?”
I paused, considering how to answer. Could Julian come? Should he come? These days, every interaction with him felt like navigating a minefield. We were still figuring out how to co-parent, how to be in each other’s lives without being in each other’s lives.
“Maybe,” I said, noncommittally. “Let’s see how things go.”
Rosie shrugged and went back to the app, but I could see the wheels turning in her head. She was so smart, too smart sometimes. She knew more than we gave her credit for, and that worried me.
I glanced back at my laptop, its screen now dark, and thought about the mountain of work waiting for me: speeches to revise, polls to analyze, strategy calls to make.
Alek bailing meant I’d have to juggle even more tonight.
But for now, I pushed those thoughts aside. We had a movie and a feast on the way.
“Got it!” Rosie shouted, holding up the remote like a trophy.
She had a sparkle in her eye that reminded me of when she was younger, when every little thing could set her alight with excitement.
Those moments were rarer now, as if growing up had dimmed her natural glow.
Seeing it again made me ache with a bittersweet nostalgia.
“What did you pick?” I asked, walking over to peek at the screen.
She quickly turned it off, hiding the selection. “It’s a surprise.”
I raised an eyebrow. “A surprise? You know I don’t like surprises.”
She smirked, a mischievous little grin that told me she was enjoying this. “You’ll like this one.”
“Fine,” I said, throwing my hands up in surrender. “But if it’s Cars 3, I’m vetoing.”
Rosie laughed and ran to her room. “I’m going to change into my pajamas!”
“You are? It’s like 11 o’clock in the morning.”
“Movie mornings are better in pajamas!” she called back, already out of sight. With how poorly she had seemed in the morning, I had been surprised she had wanted to get dressed at all. But now she was going back to her jammies, which was, in my opinion, how sick days should always be spent.