“Dahlia is a fake rebel.”
“I like her.”
That was exceedingly high praise coming from Dana.
Ruby and Dana walked out the front door, and Ruby paused for a moment to take in the golden evening. The sun was beginning to lower, but the air still had that rich cast to it. There was something about October. It was particularly beautiful here. She’d always thought so.
A crisp breeze blew up, and she held the strap of her bag more tightly, lowering her head, her hair blowing in the wind.
As they made their way down the street, no one stopped to chat. A few people waved at Ruby, but several people looked away quickly and acted like they didn’t see them. Ruby had never been quite so conscious of how different it was than when she walked alone—or with one of her sisters or a friend.
“I saw Heath earlier,” Ruby said, determined to push past the odd sensation inside her. “You remember Heath? He was my... I dated him in high school.”
“Yes,” Dana said. “Floppy-haired boy. He used to hang around waiting for you to be finished with your shift.”
“Yes. That is him. Floppy hair and all.” She cleared her throat. “He called me the town mascot.”
Dana did something totally unexpected then. She laughed. Rusty and in the back of her throat, like it wasn’t a sound she was accustomed to making. “Well, he isn’t wrong.”
“He isn’t?” Ruby asked, feeling betrayed by this.
Dana should have said it was ridiculous and validated her earlier feelings, identified it as stupidity. Silliness.
“It says nothing about you, Ruby McKee, and everything about them. You were...a miracle.” But she didn’t say the word the way most people did. “And now you’re...well, the mascot of how great we all are. Not all of us, of course.” That was accompanied by a wry smile, stretched thin on Dana’s narrow face.
Ruby paused and stared at Dana, at the grooves in her forehead and between her brows, by her mouth, etched into her skin. And she saw the ghosts of laugh lines by her blue eyes. Evidence of joy that had passed away before those lines had become deep and decisive. The grooves worn the deepest were anger, sorrow.
“You don’t think I’m a miracle, Dana?” She tried to ask it in a light tone. Self-deprecating, even, but it came out...seeking, and Ruby was left embarrassed by it.
“You’re a smart, capable young woman with a good head on your shoulders, when it isn’t in the clouds. That’s a kind of miraculous, I suppose.” They carried on walking. “But... You know when they found you it was...it was like you were supposed to replace what we lost. And I suppose for them you did.”
Ruby’s stomach turned sour.
Caitlin.
Dana had never, ever talked to her about this before. And Ruby didn’t know why she was doing it now. Ruby wanted her to stop, in fact. Which she realized with a certain amount of horror and shame. Because she considered Dana a friend, and she should want to hear her hard truths, and here she was, wanting to cover her ears while the older woman spoke.
“Miraculous,” Dana said. “That’s what they thought and I... Ruby, it was a tragedy. I... I couldn’t believe some woman would leave her child, her baby, like that. Not after my own baby was taken from me. I...” Dana stopped walking and Ruby looked at her, expecting to see tears.
But she didn’t.
All she saw was anger.
“I couldn’t fathom who would do that. Who would...she left you to die.”
The words punctured Ruby’s stomach, made her feel deflated and hurt andtragic. And she wished she had covered her ears.
But she didn’t.
And Dana didn’t stop talking.
“Of course, my first thought was to blame her. But that’s what we do. It’s what we do.”
“What is?”
Dana looked her square in the face. “We blame the mother.”
Ruby hadn’t. Ruby hadn’t blamed anyone. She was...she had been rescued, and that was what counted, not the rest of it.