Chapter 22
One week to the day after Sloane celebrated her twentieth birthday, Sloane went into labor.
Ruth called a cab and rushed them to the hospital, holding Sloane’s hand the entire way.
Not far from Ruth’s mind were memories of her own labor and delivery, twenty years ago, when she and Dina had gone to the hospital not far from Yale’s campus and returned to their college home with an infant girl.
Now, in the wake of Ruth going to Bluebell Cove to take her daughter away from those heinous Caldwecks, Ruth and Sloane were living in Manhattan again, at the very apartment where Ruth had raised Sloane.
The idea was that Sloane would take the semester off from school, then transfer from Yale to Columbia.
Sloane had decided this herself, telling Ruth that she didn’t want to be far from her for long, that she wanted her baby to know and love his grandmother.
Sloane’s labor was more difficult than Ruth’s had been. At least, this was how Ruth experienced it. Dina pointed out later that, probably, as Ruth was Sloane’s mother and therefore the most empathetic person in Sloane’s life, Ruth felt Sloane’s pain more than she’d felt her own.
At two in the morning, Sloane delivered a baby boy. She named him Kellen.
Together, Ruth and Sloane gazed adoringly at this brand-new, sleeping baby.
Ruth was overwhelmed with the desire to keep him safe, to watch him grow and not miss a single moment.
Sloane looked mystified, as though she’d always known that a baby was possible, that she could deliver one if it came to that, but hadn’t known she would experience so much love.
A few days later, as Kellen slept in his crib in the living room and Sloane and Ruth relaxed with mugs of tea and a bit of television, Sloane turned to Ruth and said, “I don’t know how you did it. I don’t know how you kept going to Yale and raised me, too.”
Ruth shifted to look at her weary daughter, who had big bags under her eyes. “I had help,” she said. “Dina and Kelly and Reese.”
“They told me they didn’t help as much as you give them credit for,” Sloane said.
Ruth laughed and shook her head. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Sloane sipped her tea, her eyes on her son. “I keep thinking about Jimmy. Like, should I tell him Kellen’s here?”
“It’s up to you,” Ruth said.
“You didn’t tell my father when I was born, I guess.”
“No. I didn’t.” Ruth swallowed the lump in her throat. “But I didn’t want him to be in our lives.”
Sloane nodded. “I talked to him a bit. When I was in Bluebell, I could tell he didn’t know what to say to me, so he just started to brag about anything he could think of. About his job. About his wife, CeeCee. About his other children. It turned me off.”
Ruth laughed. “He wasn’t like that as much, not when we were younger. I imagine living in Bluebell Cove, surrounded by the people in his family, did something to him.”
“I think he wanted me to tell you how well he’s done without you,” Sloane said.
Ruth remembered how, when Quentin had learned she was pregnant, he’d come to the door and begged her to be with him. But he’d been out of his mind. Maybe he still was.
“It all worked out the way it was supposed to,” she said gently.
Because they had one another. Ruth and Sloane and baby Kellen. What else could they possibly need?
That first year was tough but manageable.
Ruth and Sloane took every opportunity to celebrate, throwing mini-parties with Dina and her family whenever anything of note happened.
When Kellen took his first steps, they popped champagne.
When Kellen finally slept through the night a few days in a row, allowing them more space and time to think, they cooked an elaborate Thai dish.
When Sloane finally went back to university, attending Columbia—a full year after Kellen was born—they threw a bigger party, inviting many of Sloane’s high school friends.
At the party, Ruth and Dina sat on the sofa, plates of cake balanced on their thighs.
They watched as Sloane laughed and joked with a guy friend, a guy Ruth had always secretly hoped would become Sloane’s boyfriend one day.
Now, Ruth understood that she couldn’t hope for anything in her daughter’s life.
All she could hope for was that her daughter loved and loved well.
“He’s cute,” Dina said under her breath.
“She has plenty of time,” Ruth said.
“And what about you?” Dina asked.
“When are you going to stop asking me about my love life?” Ruth laughed.
Dina rolled her eyes. “I’ll stop asking when you finally take a chance. Put yourself out there. There are so many dating apps these days. There are so many ways to meet people.”
“I have enough people,” Ruth said.
Dina gave her a look that meant, give me a break.
That first year back in school was rocky.
Sloane spent long hours at the library, trying to make up for lost time, while Ruth stayed at home with Kellen.
Eventually, they got Kellen a good spot at a daycare near their apartment, which gave both Ruth and Sloane more time for their university studies and writing projects.
Ruth took fewer travel writing jobs, if only to keep things stable at home.
“This is a season of our lives,” she told Dina over the phone when Dina suggested that Ruth was putting her career aside too much for her family.
“We’ll get through it, just like we’ve gotten through everything else. ”
And then, everything changed.
It was October, three weeks after Kellen’s second birthday.
Daycare was closed because too many kids had various illnesses, and all the staff was out sick.
Ruth was at home, watching Kellen and making notes for her upcoming article.
Kellen played with blocks on the floor. Out the window, Ruth could see the treetops of Manhattan, lined with red.
Sloane was supposed to be coming home soon.
She’d said that she’d pick up Mexican food.
But seven turned to eight, and Sloane was still not home. This wasn’t like her. Ruth texted her, trying to find her. When she finally called Sloane to see what was going on, a voice she didn’t recognize answered. “Hello? Who am I speaking with?” the male voice asked.
Ruth bristled. For reasons that would never be clear, she immediately thought the voice belonged to one of the Caldwecks. She assumed that one of them had whisked into their Manhattan lives and taken Sloane away again. How had they gotten to her? How did their manipulation run so deep?
But of course, the voice did not actually belong to a Caldweck.
The voice belonged to a nurse at the very hospital where Kellen had been born.
During the hazy hours, weeks, and months after that fateful day, Ruth tried to make sense of a world that would do this to her. She tried to understand.
One moment, Sloane had been hurrying to the Mexican restaurant, the one with the really good queso and Ruth’s favorite burrito in the city.
She’d been hurrying so that she could get home to Ruth and her baby Kellen.
The next moment, two blocks away from the Mexican restaurant and five blocks from home, she’d been struck and killed by a car.
The officers who’d come to the scene first were eager to tell Ruth that Sloane hadn’t been at fault in the accident, that someone had run a red light and skidded around the corner, that Sloane couldn’t have gotten out of the way if she tried.
Ruth didn’t like hearing that. She liked to imagine a world in which Sloane hadn’t gone to the Mexican restaurant, in which Sloane had decided to come home first and order pizza instead.
Ruth liked to imagine that she and Sloane could have made a different decision, one that would ensure Sloane was safe.
As it was, Sloane was dead.
Just as they’d done back in the early 2000s, Dina, Kelly, and Reese pulled out all the stops for Ruth.
They took turns watching Kellen so that she could shower and go for walks.
They made her meals and stayed around to make sure she ate them.
They took her on a little vacation to Florida, telling her to get into the ocean and feel the sun on her cheeks.
But the truth was, Ruth was sleepwalking. She had nightmares almost all the time.
Sloane was dead, and Ruth couldn’t help but feel that it was her fault.
“How?” Dina demanded. “Tell me how it could be your fault.”
Ruth stuttered, unable to explain herself.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have taken her away from them,” she said, thinking of the Caldwecks, of how much money they had, of all the safety nets they had beneath them.
Maybe, if Sloane had stayed in their midst, or if she’d married that heinous Jimmy boyfriend of hers, maybe she’d be safe.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Dina said. “Sloane wanted to be with you. She wanted Kellen to be with you. Not them. Never them.”
Ruth had always read about women having nervous breakdowns. In some of her favorite twentieth-century novels, women broke down. They couldn’t handle their marriages, their desires, or their children. Ruth had never imagined herself to be someone who could lose it the way they had.
But suddenly, she found herself waking up after a multi-hour fugue state.
She was in Central Park in the mid-afternoon, and she had no idea how she’d gotten there.
She began to sob uncontrollably, so much so that several people approached her.
She was screaming Sloane’s name, and Kellen’s name, and even, twice, Quentin’s.
After all, he was the only man she’d ever loved.
It was not clear how the Caldwecks learned about Ruth’s mental health. Ruth speculated that one of the doctors who handled her case somehow knew the Caldwecks, and that news of her breakdown had gone through the grapevine and reached Quentin, Henrietta, and his father, George.
But Ruth was otherwise occupied. Dina helped her check into an institution, telling her that she’d watch Kellen until she got back. Of course, things didn’t work out that way.
Something Ruth hadn’t known was this. During Sloane’s time with the Caldwecks, they’d demanded a DNA test to prove that Sloane was really one of their own.
It wasn’t so difficult to point out that Ruth wasn’t a fit guardian for Kellen.
It wasn’t so difficult to take Kellen from his home, to whisk him off to Bluebell Cove and away from the grandmother who loved him more than she could explain.
The Caldwecks had moved quickly. While Ruth was in the institution, they'd petitioned for emergency temporary guardianship, arguing that Kellen had no other fit caretaker.
A sympathetic judge had signed off within days.
By the time Ruth was released, Kellen had been living in Bluebell Cove for weeks, and the Caldwecks were already filing to make the arrangement permanent.
As soon as Ruth was better, as soon as she was mentally sharp and clear again, she hired a lawyer and fought tooth and nail to get Kellen back.
But the Caldwecks had excellent lawyers.
They were able to point to Ruth’s mental breakdown as reason enough to keep Kellen with them.
Over and over again, Ruth dragged them to court until she had to give up her apartment in New York City and move to a smaller, cheaper place.
The Caldwecks used that against her as well, asking the court why Ruth was “so good” for Kellen if she couldn’t even maintain her home.
For months, and then years, Ruth fought tooth and nail.
And then, one day, while reading about the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge in Bluebell Cove, Maine, she had an idea.
She broke her lease, pitched her article idea to her editor, and went to Bluebell Cove.
Somehow, some way, she’d get her grandson out of the powerful claws of the Caldweck family.
Somehow, she’d prove that they were unfit to be his guardians.
But she had to be tactful. She had to wait for the perfect moment to strike.