Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Milo and Carrie weren’t back yet, but after Ruby kindly refused his offer to take her out to lunch, Dominic announced that he was going to go check in at the clinic and would see her the following day.
There was a twinge of regret in her stomach when she watched him get into his car and drive away.
She nearly abandoned all stress over her son and jumped into the passenger seat at the last second.
But in the end, she let Dominic go, and on her way back to the main house, her phone rang.
It was Aiden. She’d tried to call Milo’s dad earlier that morning, but he hadn’t answered. Now, Ruby wasn’t in a great spot for cell service, but she decided to answer anyway. They really needed to talk, and she didn’t want to keep playing phone tag with him.
“Hey,” she said into the phone. “Can you hear me?”
“Mostly, yeah,” Aiden said. His voice was a little robotic-sounding, but she could still hear him okay. “I saw that you called earlier. What’s up?”
“Your son has a girlfriend; that’s what’s up.
” There was a big boulder off to the side of the path.
She took a seat, knowing that if she continued to walk towards the house, the chance of the call dropping only increased.
“Not only that, but he brought her along to Florida and has been hiding her right underneath my nose this whole time!”
Aiden laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“Wait, really?” The humor left his tone. “No way. Milo wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, he did. Her name’s Carrie and she scared me to death last night when I caught her sneaking around the property.”
“I bet. Geez.”
“I thought you said you didn’t think he was dating anyone!”
“Yeah, I didn’t think he was… Although that name sounds familiar. I think I might’ve actually met Carrie at that parent weekend I went to last year.”
“What? Really?”
“Yeah… I’m remembering now. I definitely met a girl named Carrie. I’m pretty sure Milo just introduced her as his friend at the time, but who knows? Maybe they started dating shortly after that.”
“Did you spend much time with her?”
“She walked around campus with us for a little while,” Aiden said.
“And then Milo told me more about her when we went to grab coffee later that day. I could tell he was kind of crushing on her, but I honestly wasn’t sure he even knew about the crush himself, so I didn’t say anything too obvious.
He wouldn’t stop talking about her, though. ”
“Can you tell me anything about her?”
“I mean… Is she nice? Or at least, I thought she seemed pretty nice. She was talkative, and I’m pretty sure she said she was studying marketing. Or maybe it was English. Either way, she seemed smart, and she made Milo laugh. I liked her.”
Ruby relaxed a little, although the boulder wasn’t comfortable enough for her to feel totally at ease regardless of what Aiden was telling her. “Well, that’s good to hear, I suppose. If you didn’t notice any obvious red flags, that makes me feel better.”
“Have you spoken to her much?” he asked. “I feel like you’re going to get a better read on her than I could, if she’s staying with you and all.”
She rubbed her face with her free hand. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her really at all, and I’m not sure how long she’s planning on staying, but I guess none of that needs to be figured out right now. I will try to see what I can find out.”
“Well, keep me updated. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this all on your own. I—” His voice suddenly cut out. There was a second of static, then he was back. “If you—or—” He was gone again just as fast.
“Hang on, Aiden,” she said, raising her voice in case the same problem was happening on his end. “I can’t really hear you very well.”
“College and that—it’s not a big deal.”
“Aiden, stop. You’re cutting in and out.”
There was more static, then finally Aiden’s voice came through clear again.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” She sighed with relief. “I can hear you again. What were you saying just now?”
“Oh, just that I know we have tended to parent somewhat separately ever since Milo went to college, but if you start to feel overwhelmed or like you need a teammate, tag me in.”
She smiled. “Thanks. There’s a very real chance I might end up taking you up on that.
” She looked up to see that the sky overhead was beginning to darken.
Combined with the sticky moisture in the air, Ruby thought it was safe to assume she could get caught in a sudden Florida downpour at any second.
“I have to go; I think it’s about to start raining. ”
“All good. I’ll talk to you later.”
Ruby pushed herself up off the boulder. “Yeah, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Oh, wait, before I let you go,” he said. “I know you have to make sure Milo understands that he’s been messing up pretty badly lately, but if I can make a tiny little request… That you keep something in mind whenever you go tell him all the ways he’s let you down recently.”
“What’s that?”
“That I’m thinking Milo might be experiencing all the ups and downs with a first-ever love. It’s not always an easy thing to navigate, but if I’m right, he’s going to need our support more than even he realizes.”
“It seems like Carrie likes him,” Ruby noted. “I don’t think she’s going to break his heart.”
“They’re young, Ruby, and young love never lasts.”
“I don’t know about that, but I do hear what you’re saying. I’ll be… gentle.”
“Good. And don’t hold the girl’s past against her either,” he added offhandedly.
“Wait, what?” Ruby gawked. “What do you mean, hold her past against her? What past?”
Aiden said something, but it was garbled and more robot-like than before. She couldn’t catch any of the words. “Aiden? What are you there?”
“I was just—but—you know?—”
“No, I don’t know! I have no idea what you’re talking about because I can’t hear you! Hello? Are you there?”
She pulled the phone away from her ear just as the call dropped.
Hurriedly, she tried to call back, but she was officially out of service somehow, even though she hadn’t actually moved from the boulder.
Cursing, she moved around like a chicken with its head cut off, holding her phone up in the air in case she could get a single bar.
Nothing happened, no calls came through, and the little SOS notice in the corner of her screen continued to mock her.
“Dangit!”
If she wanted answers, if she wanted to find out what Aiden had been referring to about Carrie’s ‘past ’, she was going to have to get them elsewhere.
Likely, she was going to have to go directly to the source.
* * *
Back at the main house, Ruby found a note from Milo pinned to the fridge with a novelty Sanibel Island magnet.
He informed his mother that he and Carrie were going to go for a hike around the island and would be back later in the afternoon.
She would’ve tried to call him, but she knew there was no point until she was back in an area with reliable service.
She cursed herself for wasting so much time on the property with Dominic.
She should’ve stayed at home until Milo and Carrie got back from their walk on the beach; that way she could be there to talk to them about what their plans were.
She’d told them that Carrie could spend the night and they would figure the rest out in the morning, but then Milo made sure to slip out of the house with her before Ruby was done getting ready.
Had he done that on purpose?
Ruby didn’t like to think of her son as being so conniving, but he wasn’t leaving her much of a choice. For now, she decided to try and give him the benefit of the doubt, if only because Aiden asked her to. That didn’t mean, however, that she wasn’t going to try to find some information on her own.
Since Dominic was gone and Lonnie hadn’t shown up to help out that day, she thought she could afford to take the afternoon off as well. She threw a few things into her purse and grabbed her work tablet. She wasn’t planning on answering any work emails or anything like that.
Instead, she wanted to do some research.
Although a more appropriate word would probably be ‘digging’.
She drove to a different cafe than the one she suspected Dominic’s friend worked at—just in case he had decided to go there after all.
It would be pretty rude to have refused his offer to grab lunch, only to show up on her own at the same place half an hour later.
Luckily, there was a quaint coffee shop not too far away, where she managed to snag a comfortable spot in the back corner on a plush armchair.
It began to rain. She logged into the shop’s wifi on her tablet, sipped her latte, and got to work.