Chapter 15
When Ruth went into labor, she was at the library.
This wasn’t a surprise to her best friends Dina, Kelly, and Reese, who’d spent all year teasing Ruth about how obsessively studious she was.
It was, however, a surprise to the freshman guy who’d been studying next to Ruth, who screamed in terror when Ruth’s water broke.
“Well,” Ruth said to him, shrugging as she waddled out of the library. “That’s science for you.”
She saw him glance at his biology textbook, his face marred with fear.
Because she knew a thing or two about what was happening to her, Ruth decided to head home first to pack up for the hospital.
She knew she had a bit of time. Dina was there, and she flew into a tizzy when she realized what was going on.
As it happened, she’d already packed a bag for herself for the day of Ruth’s labor, which made Dina better prepared than Ruth.
Before long, they were in Dina’s car, headed for the hospital.
“It’s happening! I can’t believe it’s happening!” Dina sang, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. Her cheeks were tinted green.
Ruth had never been the kind of woman who panicked about anything.
She’d fallen into the flow of her life, easily moving from her tiny Virginian town to Nantucket Island to Yale—openhearted, open-minded, and ready for anything.
Now, as the pain set in and the baby came into the world, she reminded herself that she was only a person, a person in a world of biological processes.
Once, more than nineteen years ago, she’d been born.
Now, she was bringing a baby into that life, and one day, at the end of this life, she would die.
It helped her, somehow, to see everything in the context of time.
She was not unique in her living, nor her dying.
The baby was born healthy and beautiful.
Graciously, none of her friends told Ruth how much the baby looked like Quentin, even though it was plain as day.
Ruth half hoped that would change soon, although she couldn’t help but think the baby was the most adorable one she’d ever seen.
On the birth certificate, Ruth wrote only her name. She named her baby Sloane Landers.
During the weeks that followed Sloane’s birth, Ruth heard from all of her Yale professors.
They sent her flowers, cards, and food. They congratulated her endlessly and reminded her that this wasn’t the end of the road, only the beginning.
“Women can do anything they set their minds to,” read the card from Professor Smith, whom she’d interned for all summer.
For the first time, Ruth found joy in the ordinary rhythm of her life.
Rather than spend all her time studying and reading, she committed herself to breastfeeding, burping, changing diapers, and watching her baby grow.
Dina, Reese, and Kelly were supportive and kind, always eager to watch Sloane when Ruth wanted to take a nap or go for a walk by herself.
In turn, Ruth and baby Sloane watched as Dina, Kelly, and Reese delved deeper into their studies and went on dates with disappointing yet adorable Yale men.
There was a divide between Ruth and her friends. But Ruth reasoned that there had always been a divide. Ruth had come from nothing. Ruth had had to apply herself that much harder to make her life work. That was how it was. It was how it would always be.
Throughout that first semester of their sophomore year, Ruth was terrified to run into Quentin and CeeCee, and she often kept herself and the baby away from places she knew Quentin liked to go.
Her roommates knew better than to bring Quentin up, even if they saw him.
By the time Ruth returned to school the following semester, Ruth had more or less convinced herself that Sloane really didn’t have a father.
Quentin had nothing to do with them anymore. He was deeply entrenched in the past.
The following few years were never easy.
Juggling a baby and then a toddler with Yale’s difficult and demanding coursework left Ruth exhausted and foggy-brained.
She hated leaving Sloane at a daycare for more than a few hours at a time, but she often had to, and she cursed herself for doing it.
Dina, Kelly, and Reese picked up the slack whenever they could, and her professors reminded her to go easier on herself.
“Women all over the world go to work every single day. You’re working on your career from the bounds of Yale.
It’s all for your baby and for your future.
” Ruth tried to believe them, but it was tough. Guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Dina, Kelly, and Reese graduated from Yale in the spring of 2006.
Ruth and toddler Sloane were at the ceremony, all dressed up and eager to celebrate with them.
When the ceremony was over, Sloane threw her arms around her “aunts,” as she called them, then promptly fell asleep in Dina’s arms at the post-graduation dinner party.
Ruth couldn’t believe that her friends were moving to the city without her.
She couldn’t believe that she was still a semester behind.
The idea had been to stick together forever.
But Dina, Reese, and Kelly had all secured good jobs in the city.
They wanted to start dating “real men,” as they called them. They were so done with Yale.
What Ruth couldn’t say was how surprised she was that Quentin hadn’t graduated either.
She wondered what had happened to him. Maybe he’d changed his major and fallen behind, or maybe he’d failed a class and ruined his GPA, or maybe he’d gotten suspended.
He’d never been as smart as she was. They both knew that.
Through the grapevine, Ruth learned that Quentin was still at Yale that fall semester, and she made every effort not to run into him.
Sloane still looked remarkably like him.
The last thing she wanted was for Quentin to see Sloane and fall in love with her.
The last thing she wanted was for him to fight for custody.
Miraculously, she and Quentin didn’t cross paths, not once.
After graduation, Ruth accepted a job in publishing and moved herself and Sloane to New York City, where her friends had already begun their new and beautiful lives.
Sloane was three and already brilliant. She’d even begun to read on her own, and she could count far higher than any three-year-old Ruth had ever known.
With the money Ruth earned in publishing, she enrolled Sloane in a top Manhattan preschool, where toddlers were pushed to be creative, learn instruments, read, and tell stories.
Sloane’s co-preschool attendees were all the children of business people and famous artists and filmmakers, but Sloane fit right in with them.
Always, when Ruth picked Sloane up from preschool, she beamed with pride. She couldn’t believe how far the two of them had come. In her mind, they were both small-town Virginians.
Of course, on her worst days, on days during which she grew heavy with doubt, a voice in the back of her mind told her that Sloane only fit into these Manhattan elite toddlers because of who her father was.
“But she doesn’t know her father,” Dina told her one afternoon, as they strolled through Central Park. “He has no influence over her.”
“Maybe it’s genetic,” Ruth suggested.
Dina gave her a look that said, "You're being ridiculous." And then she asked, “Did you call that guy back?”
Ruth had recently been asked out on a date by a highly sought-after writer, with whom Ruth had worked closely on his novel.
Ruth had adored the novel. She adored the writer’s brain.
But how could she make time for any man now that her career was beginning and she and Sloane were only just fitting into Manhattan life?
“I don’t think it’s the right time,” she told Dina, kicking her boot against a large stone.
“Come on. When was the last time you went out with someone?” Dina demanded.
“You know when it was,” Ruth said under her breath.
Dina pressed her lips together. “Quentin Caldweck can’t be your last and only love, Ruth. You deserve so much better than that.”
“Maybe I don’t,” Ruth said.
Dina rolled her eyes back into her head.
“I told you,” Ruth said. “I’m in Manhattan for my work and for Sloane. I don’t care about romance. I don’t care about the messes it makes. I want to stay focused. I want to stay sharp.”
Dina looked hesitant. “I don’t want you to regret this, Ruth. I don’t want you to look around one day and realize you’re alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Ruth said, her voice cracking. “I have all of you.”
But something in Dina’s face made Ruth spin with sudden doubt.
Over the next few years, as Sloane graduated from preschool to kindergarten to a prestigious elementary school on the Upper West Side, Ruth watched as first Kelly, then Reese, and then Dina fell in love and married other members of Manhattan's elite.
Ruth was there for them for each milestone: carrying bouquets down wedding aisles and toasting champagne.
Sloane was, of course, the flower girl for all of their weddings, and she danced as long as she could at each reception before she fell asleep in a hotel room upstairs.
Privately, Sloane cried each time, asking Ruth if she would still see her aunts after they got married.
Ruth wasn’t sure what made Sloane so frightened of being abandoned.
Ruth had never left her, not even for a single night.
“Your aunts will always love you,” Ruth told Sloane, rubbing her back.
One after another, Ruth’s friends had their first babies, then second babies. While Dina announced she was done after two, Kelly and Reese had three.