Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
PRESENT DAY
By the time Cory has put Richie in the bathtub, my nerves are fraying. Mom just keeps avoiding my eyes, pacing and murmuring to herself. I’m terrified of what she’s going to tell us, terrified of what I don’t yet know.
When Cory finally joins us, we’re each given mugs of tea, and Mom takes her seat across from us.
“So,” she says, the word a simple, heavy sentence.
“The truth is… Well, where do I even start? Ruth, Margie, and I met in college. You guys know that.” She balances her hand on the table.
“Okay. Margie and I were friends right away, but with Ruth, it took longer. She was married, you know. So she didn’t go to a lot of the parties.
She’d already had a kid. She was settled. We were…” Her brows rise. “Not.”
The clock on the wall across the room chimes.
Once.
Twice.
Nine times.
We have to wait them out before she continues.
It’s late, and I’m tired, and I have no idea where this story is going.
“Anyway, when Ruth learned we were from Clinton, she wanted to know all about it. Her husband was from here, and once they graduated, she told us she'd be moving home with him. Ruth was from a real city. Boston. It might as well have been Atlantis to us. Moving to the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly something that excited her, but I think—I hope—knowing she had friends here made it easier.”
Mom’s quiet for a while, lost in thought.
“We never really talked about Ruth’s marriage.
It seemed pretty obvious from the beginning she wasn’t happy.
She got pregnant toward the end of freshman year at Havenport, and well, her parents were traditional.
They expected her to marry before the baby came, to settle down and focus on her family.
When Ruth was with us, it was like she finally got to relax.
But…” There’s a long sigh. “I know she loved him. Her husband. And her son. She loved them more than we ever realized. Even up until the end, she didn’t talk about them. It was too hard.”
I’ve always known Ruth was married once, in theory, but it feels like an entirely different version of the woman I knew.
In my mind, she was always the single and free one in the trifecta.
She divorced before we were born, and though we’d heard the moms mention that she had a child—a son—once or twice, all we understood was that he was much older than us and gone.
An abstract concept more than a living, breathing person.
I guess I never questioned why Ruth never saw him or talked about him. Maybe I should have.
“Why didn’t she see them anymore?” I hold my mug between my hands, the warmth heating my palms. “What happened?”
The weight of this conversation hangs in the air, along with the scrape of ceramic on the table and the sound of Richie’s bathwater running from down the hall.
“The divorce was brutal. It broke her, took everything she had. She wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping.
For months. She fought for custody until she ran out of money, and in the end, she decided if she couldn’t have full custody, she didn’t want any custody at all.
She wanted her son to be somewhere stable, and he was still young enough, I guess she thought it’d be better for him to…
Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but she thought he might forget her if she just walked away then, thought he wouldn’t have to miss her.
I know in my heart she thought she was doing what was best for the boy.
” She levels us with a heavy stare. “Even if it’s hard to understand. ”
It’s impossible to know how to react to this, to absorb a hard truth about someone you once considered infallible. To accept that she was human too.
“So that’s why you’re saying she was sad?” Will asks. “Because she felt guilty? Or…because she missed them?”
Mom weighs the question behind twisted lips and searching eyes.
“Yes. I think a part of her struggled with losing them every single day, even when we never saw it. Ruth was complicated. Impulsive. Closed off. But she was still our Ruth.” Her gaze flicks over each of us, pausing to take in our faces briefly.
“And she loved you all. You…filled a hole for her. You meant more than she could ever have told you.” She squeezes her eyes closed, shakes her head gently.
“A few days before Ruth died, she met with her son. He reached out, and she wasn’t sure, but Margie and I pushed her to see him.
” Tears fill her eyes again, glimmering in the harsh, overhead light.
My chest tightens. Next to me, Will’s jaw is a hard line, fingers clenching and unclenching around his mug. Cory’s eyes flick to his hands, pale against the wood grain of the table.
Everything we thought we knew about Ruth, about our lives, is unraveling, piece by piece.
“So, wait, was it him in the blue truck?” I ask as the thought strikes. “Is that why you didn’t want to talk about it?”
“No,” Mom says with a shake of her head.
“They met in town for lunch. He never came here. But what we didn’t know was that he had just found out the truth about the divorce.
That was why he wanted to see her, to tell her that…
” Mom’s lips quiver, and she smooths her hands flat on the table in front of her.
She steels herself, staring at the wall between Will and me.
“His father had an affair. He fell for someone else, and he left Ruth so they could be together.” She drops her chin forward. “Ruth never knew.”
The air in the room vanishes. Will drops his head forward.
“And it killed her,” Mom says, her voice breaking. “She wasn’t… She couldn’t…” She stands abruptly, moving away from the table to dry her eyes.
I squeeze my mug so hard my knuckles go white. Heat rises to my cheeks when Will notices, sliding his hand across to smooth mine. He laces our fingers together. Cory scrapes his cheek with his hand, then examines his palm.
“So, that’s why I know Ruth’s death was…” Mom shakes her head, unable to say the rest. “Margie’s fall wasn’t connected, because Ruth wasn’t hurt by— She wasn’t murdered.”
Will drops his head forward, and Cory stares at his hands. None of us seem able to find words.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I say.
She flinches at the sound of my voice, the shape of my words, like it was the last thing she ever expected to hear me say.
“I do understand why you were worried, Opal,” she says, her voice exhausted. “All of you. But I promise, I’m safe. No one is coming for me. I just…I’d really like to be alone. I’d really like to go to bed.”
She moves out of the room and down the hall. I hear the door to her bedroom shut.
After a few awkward seconds, Cory clears his throat. “Will, can you go check on Richie?”
Silence weighs on the room. Richie must’ve shut the water off minutes ago, but I’m only registering it now.
Will’s eyes move over his brother, then me, but eventually he nods. “I’ll be right back.”
Once he’s out of the room, Cory leans forward. I guess this is it. I was always going to have to face this situation, but it feels impossible right now. How can I turn him down without hurting him? How can I possibly explain where my head is?
“They’re going to start lowering Mom’s sedation tomorrow,” he says, his voice low. “Try to wake her up. We’re still waiting to hear what time.”
“Does Will know?”
He bobs his head with a nod. Then his mouth twists with a sad smile. “Can I say something?”
I swallow. “Of course.”
“I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, and I’m sure it would exhaust me to try to figure it out, but…” He pauses, lowering his eyes. “Will has never needed anyone like he seems to need you.”
I blink. My heart squeezes. Whatever I expected him to say, it wasn’t that. My hands twist in my lap.
“Sometimes I think…you’re the only thing that could get him through if we lose—” He drops his head forward, drumming his fingers along his mug.
After a moment he rubs the back of his neck, his gaze landing on me then flicking away.
“You challenge him like no one else, but you also make him better. Brighter, somehow. I know he’s hard on you, but he does care, Opal.
Even if he’s never figured out how to show it. ”
“Will? But…I don’t understand.” How can he say this when he just asked me out? “Why did you… The text…”
“Was only ever meant to push him in the right direction and force him to admit what he wants.” He waits, letting me process.
“We’ve been pushing him his whole life, but you know how he is.
We made bets about how long it’d take him to finally—” He cuts himself off.
“Back when we were kids. Me and the moms. I lost every time. Your mom, too. Ruth usually won, she just sort of…got him. Got both of you, maybe.” His eyes dance with ghosts of memories and he scratches the skin on his cheek like he might brush them away.
“It was the only thing we hadn’t tried. If he thought he was going to lose you…
And his face, when I asked…I knew. I’d always known, but until that moment, I didn’t know how much. ”
He gives me the softest smile. “You’re beautiful, Opal, and smart as hell.
And I will be happy for you no matter who I watch you spend your life with.
But, if I’m honest, I’ve always sort of hoped you might choose him.
” He studies me closely. His eyes are so similar to Will’s, though a bit more green than blue.
They narrow, then fall back to the table.
“And I realize this is the worst possible time and that we have so much going on, but…maybe that’s reason enough.
” Finally, he looks at me again. “Maybe that is the reason. Because I think he needs you.” He swallows.
“And if you feel the same, I think you’re going to have to be the one to tell him. Or we’re all going to get old waiting.”
I study my hands as if this is the first time I’m seeing them, and I’m starting to feel like maybe I’ve been the only one blind to this all along.