Chapter 20
Warning Sloane about her boyfriend, Jimmy, was perhaps the worst mistake of Ruth’s life, which was saying something, given the mistakes she’d made over the years.
Before Ruth knew what to make of it, before she knew to apologize and fully wash away the distrust between them, Sloane was all packed up and headed back to Yale.
The Manhattan apartment was vacuous, echoey.
Ruth cursed herself for not fixing things when she had the chance.
But Dina, Kelly, and Reese told Ruth she was overreacting and that Sloane would come back to her. She always would.
When Ruth tried to call her that first week, Sloane’s new friends told her via the dorm’s hallway phone that Sloane wasn’t in, that she was studying at the library.
When they kept telling Ruth that over the second, third, and fourth weeks, Ruth began to get the hint that her daughter didn’t want anything to do with her. Sloane was angry.
Ruth was too embarrassed to tell her friends how bad it had gotten.
Ruth prayed that Sloane’s anger would dissipate. She wrote numerous letters that she didn’t feel strong enough to send.
Midway through February, Ruth appeared outside Dina’s office door, sobbing. “She won’t talk to me,” she said. “She’s so angry.”
Dina took Ruth out for drinks and begged her for more information. As Dina liked to say, drawing information out of Ruth was one of the most difficult tricks of all—far more difficult than a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
“When she talked to me about Jimmy, when I heard that he’d been to that party and not invited her, I got so worried,” Ruth sobbed over her cocktail.
“I didn’t want the same thing to happen to Sloane that happened to me.
After that Christmas in Bluebell Cove, I was mortified, Dina.
I knew that I would never stack up next to Quentin’s family friends. I knew I would always be less than.”
Dina hugged Ruth close and urged her to go to Yale to see Sloane in person. But Ruth didn’t want to alienate Sloane even more. “She’s taking the time she needs from me,” Ruth stammered. “She’ll figure out what she wants soon.”
Privately, Ruth hoped that Sloane would realize she wanted nothing to do with any of them, not with Rachel Caldweck, nor with Jimmy, nor with any of the Yale elite.
Sloane was far too good for them, too intellectual, too kind, too beautiful.
Late at night, Ruth sobbed and sobbed about it. She’d never felt lonelier in her life.
It wasn’t till the end of May, a few weeks after Yale’s semester was finished, that Ruth got a call from her daughter. Sloane’s voice was like a string. “Mom,” she breathed. “Can you come get me?”
Ruth shot to her feet, panic rushing through her. “Of course, sweetie. Are you at Yale?”
Sloane was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said. “I’m in Bluebell Cove. I think you might know where that is.”
Immediately, a headache set in. Ruth closed her eyes and willed herself to stay upright. “Are you at the Caldwecks’ place?”
Sloane said that she was.
Ruth considered asking Sloane to put someone on the phone, Henrietta, maybe, Quentin’s mother.
But what on earth could she say to her? Maybe, rather than have Ruth stand up for it, Sloane wanted to sneak away from the Caldwecks.
Maybe she didn’t want them to know that she’d caught on to how sinister they were.
“I’ll be there tonight,” Ruth said. “Hang tight, sweetie.”
Ruth rushed to the airport to catch the first available flight to Bangor.
From there, she rented a car and sped to Bluebell Cove.
She could hardly remember the version of herself who’d been here, who’d dreamed of marrying Quentin Caldweck, who’d believed in happily ever afters.
How old had she been? Barely nineteen? The same age as Sloane.
Of course, it wasn’t hard to figure out how Sloane had ended up at the Caldwecks’ place in Bluebell Cove. Rachel had clearly spoken of her, of how alike they were. Maybe Quentin had put two and two together. Maybe they’d made her take a DNA test. Maybe they’d lured her into their luxurious life.
But it didn’t matter, Ruth reminded herself, gripping her steering wheel so hard that her hands turned white. Ruth was here now. She’d won.
Once in Bluebell Cove, Ruth had to ask for directions to the Caldweck place. The gas station attendant who warned them said the Caldwecks didn’t like people stopping by their place without an appointment. “They don’t mess around, if you know what I mean.”
“They’re expecting me,” she said, shimmying out of the station and back to her rental car.
At the gate that separated the Caldweck mansion from the rest of the big, chaotic world, Ruth smashed the buzzer and waited. Eventually, a voice rang out. “Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here for Sloane Landers,” Ruth stammered.
“Is Miss Caldweck expecting you?” the voice asked.
“You mean Miss Landers,” Ruth shot, her ears burning. “Miss Landers is, in fact, expecting me. But tell the rest of them that Ruth Landers is here to see them. It’s been a long time.”
For nearly five minutes, Ruth waited in her car, staring at the gate and willing it to move.
She could imagine the conversations going on in that mansion, the Caldwecks’ way of talking around things as though they ruled the world and everything in it.
She wondered how they referred to her. She knew what trash they thought she was.
Finally, the gate swung open, and Ruth drove onto the driveway and cut the engine.
She got out of the car and walked toward the front door, wondering which Caldweck she would see first. She reminded herself to be cordial, to keep things formal, as she didn’t know what the Caldwecks could do to her if she weren’t.
But before she reached the front door, it swung open to reveal Sloane.
Sloane was bug-eyed, wearing an enormous T-shirt and shorts.
She wore no makeup. The way she ran toward Ruth made Ruth feel as though she were running away from a monster.
Sloane crashed into Ruth’s arms and began to sob uncontrollably, as Ruth wrapped her arms around her daughter tightly. Tears sprang to her eyes.
As she hugged her daughter, there in the Maine sunlight, she realized what was going on.
She could feel her daughter’s pregnant stomach, straining against her.
Ruth’s heart pounded. It had happened. History was repeating itself, just as Ruth had feared it would.
But she had no interest in making Sloane feel guilty.
She had no interest in demonizing her. Ruth had her daughter back.
She’d defeated the Caldwecks yet again. Rather than wait around for one of them to come out and talk to her, she led her daughter to the passenger seat, made sure she was buckled in, then sped them out of there.
As the tires screeched, she told herself that she would never return to Bluebell Cove, not for all the money in the world. She was done with these people.
That night in the hotel Ruth rented for them three hours away from Bluebell, Sloane broke down and explained what had happened.
She told Ruth that she’d discovered she was pregnant in February, long after Jimmy had broken up with her for good.
“You were right about him, Mom,” Sloane said, her cheeks stained with tears.
“I wanted him to love me so badly, I guess because it made me feel so, like, important. To be loved like that. When I heard he was at that party in Greenwich, that one he didn’t invite me to, it made me double down on my efforts.
I couldn’t believe it! I was supposed to be a smart girl, and I was doing everything to get with a guy. ”
Ruth smoothed Sloane’s hair and told her that many women before her had done the same. “Love makes us blind, sometimes,” she said. “It’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“When I figured out I was pregnant, I was mortified,” Sloane said.
“I hadn’t talked to you in over a month, and Jimmy hadn’t spoken to me in more than a week, and I felt so used and awful.
I didn’t talk to anyone for a little while.
I dug my heels in and studied. But there was no running away from this.
I just got more and more pregnant. Eventually, Rachel Caldweck cornered me and asked what was going on.
I told her about the pregnancy. I begged her not to tell anyone, but I guess she reached out to her mom. ”
Ruth’s jaw dropped, but she said nothing.
“Listen, Mom.” Sloane rubbed her eyes with her fists.
“I knew there was something about Rachel. I knew we were related, or something, that we had to be. I mean, we took one look at one another and figured it out. It was eerie. I guess she called home to Bluebell Cove right away. She told me during our first semester that her family thought I was the daughter of her uncle, that we were cousins. I didn’t want to believe it at first, since you’d told me my dad wasn’t in the picture at all.
But when she showed me pictures of Quentin, of my dad, I knew she was right.
It’s part of the reason I wanted to go to Nantucket Island for Christmas.
They were all going to be gathered there.
Despite everything, I wanted to meet him. And I couldn’t trust you anymore.”
Ruth nodded. She’d already suspected that, but she hadn’t wanted Sloane to fall into her father’s arms. She hadn’t wanted her to become one of them.
She’d worked too hard to lose Sloane like that.
“After Rachel told her mom about my pregnancy, my grandmother Henrietta came to the dorms to talk to me,” Sloane went on. “I didn’t know who she was at first, but there are similarities in our features. It was like looking at a version of myself fifty years down the line.
“She took me out for lunch. It was this swanky restaurant right on campus that usually only hosts elite alums. I’d only ever walked by.
Suddenly, I was there with an elegant woman who told me she was my grandmother,” Sloane said, shaking her head.
“I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say.
But she told me that you and her son dated during the summer and autumn of 2002, and I did the math, and, yeah.
It made sense.” Sloane shrugged. “I told her that you obviously didn’t want me to be a part of their lives, and Henrietta said it was complicated.
She said that you hadn’t fit into their world, but that it had never been right that you’d taken me away from me.
She said that nobody had wanted that. She said she would have loved to get to know me while we were growing up.
At that moment, I was so alone, so frightened of being pregnant.
I wanted to believe everything she said.
“But then, she started talking about Jimmy. She told me that Jimmy’s father owned a company that her husband really wanted to work with, and that uniting the Caldwecks with Jimmy’s family wouldn’t be a bad thing.
I was mystified. The baby was a collection of cells in my body, and already, this strange woman was talking about ways that the baby could benefit her family.
Our family, I guess. I don’t know. I told her I had to think about it.
But she told me it was essential to tell Jimmy about the baby, at least, so he could decide whether he wanted to be involved.
If he said no, she explained, the Caldwecks would have to deal with it.
I didn’t ask what that meant. I assumed they would force him to marry me or something. I don’t know.
“I couldn’t get through the rest of lunch.
I felt too ill. Eventually, I made an excuse and headed back to my dorm to find Rachel.
I was upset with her for telling her grandmother about me.
Our grandmother about me. But she managed to talk me down.
She told me that the Caldwecks really do care about their family members and would give me all the financial support I would ever need.
That sounded so good, especially since I knew you and I weren’t talking.
She suggested that we come to Bluebell Cove together after the semester was through so I could meet everyone and see how I fit in.
I told her that I had no plans at all to bring Jimmy into my life or the baby’s life.
She said she was sure we could work that out.
” Sloane closed her eyes. “I was too scared to tell you what I’d done.
I dreamed of picking up the phone every day… ”
Ruth’s heart cracked. She couldn’t believe that all this had happened without her knowledge. She’d been in Manhattan, worried sick about a daughter who, she now learned, had been pregnant and manipulated and frightened.
Incredibly, her daughter had ended up at the very house where, all those years ago, Ruth had realized she could never be a Caldweck. She’d realized that she couldn’t live in a fantasy world.
“I met Dad,” Sloane said, sniffling. “I met his wife, CeeCee, and his three kids. It was awkward, to say the least. CeeCee looked at me like she hated me. And the kids were confused. Quentin kept asking me what I planned to do about the baby and Jimmy, and each time I said, ‘I plan to raise the baby? On my own?’ Like, I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. ”
Ruth wrapped her arms around her daughter and breathed into her ear. “You’re safe. You’re with me. You don’t ever have to deal with the Caldwecks again. Your baby is not their baby. Your life doesn’t belong to them. Not legally. Not ever.”
Sloane shook in Ruth’s arms but said nothing.
Outside, a storm rumbled overhead, and rain stuttered across the hotel’s roof.
Over and over again, Ruth promised her daughter that she would keep her safe.
Over and over again, she promised her daughter that all the pain was over.
Maybe Ruth shouldn’t have been so sure of that.
Maybe she shouldn’t have made promises she couldn’t keep.