“Her whole life is different,” Marianne said. “And you know Mom and Dad try but they’re...they’re terrible at dealing with things like this.”
Ruby frowned. “What?”
“Ruby, come on. They want everyone to just soldier on when things are hard, and that’s what Lydia always tries to do, but it can’t be healthy.”
“I don’t think Mom and Dad are like that,” Ruby said.
Marianne’s mouth went firm for a moment. “Well, maybe they aren’t with you.”
Ruby seemed to shed that comment with ease. “I’m just really worried about her, and I want to help however I can.”
Mac and Lydia had been such a perfect fit. The kind of couple that had made Dahlia believe someday she could find a person that would fit her that way.
They’d both dreamed of a simple, homesteading life. Both of them committed to working their farm and raising their children. And since Mac had died, there had been a hole in the family. Ever since his diagnosis, really. They’d known that he would die. But given that he had an early onset version of the disease, his prognosis had been better than someone who showed signs of the disease in their later years.
But it hadn’t happened that way, and it was the black hole of numbness that Lydia had fallen into that terrified Dahlia the most. Because her sister hadn’t wailed or thrown herself on the ground and screamed at an endless, unfeeling sky. She had gotten up, smoothed her hands down the front of her apron and said:I have to feed the livestock.
And while Dahlia could understand the stoicism, she was also increasingly bothered by all of it.
It was that part of her that was always out for the truth that felt the dishonesty of it and feared it would eat her sister alive. She felt like a coward not charging in and saying it, but she’d learned a long time ago that her brand of honesty was often seen as abrasive and perhaps charging in and asking if Lydia had a moment to talk about her deep, unending grief would not be well received.
Ruby, on the other hand, was always well received.
“Shall we go?” Marianne asked.
“It’s not time for you to close, is it?” Dahlia asked.
“Not really. But it’s fine. Town is dead today anyway.”
Of course, Marianne thought nothing about closing the shop for Ruby.
And when she looked at Ruby, who was smiling effortlessly, her blue eyes sparkling that particular way they did, she could see why people thought of her as something miraculous.
Marianne turned the sign, picked up her phone and used it to turn all the lights in the room off, along with locking the place up tight.
“Dahlia finds my modernization of this classic building appalling,” Marianne said as they stepped out onto the street.
“I’m not your ally for that,” Ruby said. “I’m even more analog than Dahlia.”
“It makes no sense,” Marianne said. “You know you can appreciate all the charm of this small historic town without living in the Dark Ages.”
“I love the Dark Ages,” Ruby said, practically skipping down the street. And of course not tripping.
“You do not love the Dark Ages,” Marianne said, maddeningly sage, as she was wont to be. “You love the idea of a desperately handsome and brooding man wiping your fevered brow while younearlyperish from an illness. Only nearly.”
“True,” Ruby said. “And I do like my men to have all their teeth, so it’s more a vague fantasy than any real yearning.”
“Hmm,” Marianne agreed.
They paused at the end of the sidewalk. “Where are you parked?” Marianne asked.
“Oh, I parked down at the supermarket.”
“I’m parked at the newspaper office,” Dahlia said.
“I’m parked behind The Apothecary. So I have gone in the wrong direction.”
“See you at Mom and Dad’s?”