“Yes,” he said wearily, sitting on the sofa. “I’d like that a lot, Ruby.”
So she made him a cup. But before she brewed it, she slipped into her room and retrieved something she wished she’d had the foresight to put to use much sooner.
• • •
Afterward, she called Shepherd.
When he arrived—parking in the cemetery and finding his way through the darkened woods to the birdcage—she enfolded herself in his arms and in a low voice and in the way she could bare her soul only to him, she told Shepherd everything.
As she spoke, he stared at her father’s body in the living room—lying motionless on the floor in front of the hearth, coffee table askew from her father kicking it as he convulsed, as Ruby watched him die. Viewing the tableau—it looked like the final scene in a box-office thriller, something Ruby’s mother would have appreciated—Shepherd’s shoulders began to shake and his expression crumbled.
“It’s all right,” Ruby told him. “It’s not right—she’s gone, and that means it can never be right again—but we can fix things up.” She stepped back and took both of Shepherd’s hands in hers. “I have a plan. I just need your help.”
Shepherd did what she asked of him. He put on the work gloves Ruby gave him and easily hauled her father’s body onto his big shoulders. He carried the body to the woods and pushed it around under the oak tree Ruby pointed to, leaving marks in the dirt and fallen leaves that would indicate convulsions. Then Shepherd slumped the body at the base of the tree.
Ruby’s father had taught her all about fingerprinting. He’d emphasized that carelessly left fingerprints were the simplest way to detect a criminal. So Ruby was scrupulous. She donned gloves, then used a handkerchief to wipe her fingerprints from her father’s empty teacup. She braced it in his hand and pressed his stiffening fingers around the handle. Then she unwrapped his hand from the cup and placed it by her father’s side.
The setup was good. It looked like something a heartsick man might do.
Ruby stepped back. “We should go see about her now.”
In the darkness, Shepherd gave her a long look. “Are you sure?” He glanced up at the tangled treetops, then back at Ruby. “You could leave her where she is. How she is. You could tell the police that it happened almost the way it did: he killed her in a fit of rage, and then killed himself in remorse.”
Ruby had already thought through the same scenario. But she shook her head. “No. I want to see her. I want to make sure she looks all right.” She blinked. “I don’t want anyone to know she’s down there. I don’t want anyone messing around with her.” Her eyes meeting Shepherd’s, she added, “Please.”
He hesitated a moment, and then he agreed.
She brought her mother’s eyeglasses, pocketbook, and high heels along; the Shelter was the safest place to store them. It was a slow, dark walk through her family’s forest until Shepherd and Ruby reached the Shelter.
They rolled back the boulder and Ruby opened the metal door. She started down the ladder, then saw that Shepherd was standing still, watching her in the half-light of the moon.
She went back up and poked her head through the opening. “Aren’t you coming?”
He bent down next to her and touched her shoulder. “I just . . . I don’t think I can.” He looked toward the cemetery, then back at Ruby. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I just can’t see her like that.”
Ruby stared into his dog-kind eyes. He’d done so much for her; she wouldn’t push him about this.
She reached across to put her hand over his, on her opposite shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand. Wait for me; I won’t be long.”
At the bottom of the iron ladder, Ruby stumbled onto something bulky and knew what it was. She stepped over it and entered the main room, grabbing a flashlight from the shelf. She turned back to the entrance and saw that she’d been right: her mother’s body lay motionless on the concrete floor near the lowest ladder rung. Seeing her that way brought a sob to Ruby’s throat. It was the only time in the past week, except for last night outside the motel room with Aunt Angie, that Ruby has cried.
Her face flushed and her eyes stinging with tears, Ruby went to work. She set her mother up properly—as properly, anyway, as you can for a person who died by such violent means. Ruby dragged her body—it was too heavy to lift—and laid it on the floor between the bunks. As best she could, she straightened her mother’s broken neck. She spread her mother’s hair on a pillow and made sure her clothes were in place—her skirt smooth, the collar of her blouse straight. There was some blood; not a lot. Ruby thought her mother’s body must have started miscarrying the baby, probably when she landed. She used a wool blanket to cover her lower half. She folded her mother’s hands into one another, across her belly where Ruby’s baby brother or sister was.
It sounds creepy but it actually made Ruby feel better—making sure her mother looked so dignified.
Ruby remembered her grandmother’s funeral. She unclasped her mother’s sapphire necklace, just like the Finnish pastor did with Grandma’s locket, and fastened it around her own neck.
When there was nothing else to do, she stood back and looked at her mother. She didn’t know what to say. She tried to remember how to say “Rest in peace” in Finnish, but the words weren’t there. So she said it in English, and then she touched her mother’s cheek and then she backed away.
She climbed out of the Shelter and closed it up. Shepherd was sitting on the cemetery wall, waiting for her. Together they rolled the boulder on top of the metal door, then sat side by side on the wall.
Shepherd didn’t ask, but even so, Ruby told him, “She looks all right now. She looks peaceful.” Ruby stared up at the glove of the sky, holding a handful of stars. “She’s not where she should be, but she’s at peace.”
“Thank you for . . . attending to her,” Shepherd said. “I couldn’t have done it.” His face darkened, and he added, “But I could have done what you did to him. I wish I’d had the chance. Bastard, that’s what he was. I’m sorry, Ruby, but it’s true.”
She nodded, because it was true.
“Ruby, I’m astonished by you,” Shepherd said quietly. “By what you’re capable of.” He turned toward her. “You got the water hemlock yourself? Boiled the roots yourself? Where did you learn to do that?”
“The library. I’ve been reading up on it ever since you mentioned it.”
“I see.” Shepherd stood. “Do you want me to walk you back to the house?”
Ruby rose from her seat and shook her head.
“You have someone to call?” he said. “The police, of course, but is there anyone else? Someone you can stay with tonight?”
She thought of Miss Wells and told him that yes, she could call her English teacher.
Shepherd touched her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do now,” he whispered, and his eyes filled with tears.
Ruby was heartbroken for him. She put her arms around his neck, her head resting against his jacket collar. “There’s nothing else to be done now,” she told him. “Nothing except miss her.”
68
* * *
Angie
His mouth tightly drawn, Dr. Shepherd looked away. He glanced around the crowded airport gate, then back at me. “Ruby told you everything, then?”
I nodded. “Except for this: I’ve been wondering about one thing.” I adjusted PJ on my lap, sitting him upright so he could look out the big windows to my left, watching airplanes come and go. “What made the police suspect Silja?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Shepherd said. “Perhaps some commuter came forward and said he’d seen Silja leave the Stonekill station after work that night. Or maybe someone saw Ruby leave Silja’s car at the station later in the evening, and thought it was Silja. Ruby said she thought no one saw that, but . . . ”
Dr. Shepherd shrugged. “There’s another potential explanation,” he said. “I didn’t ask Ruby about this, but when I think about it, I believe it’s possib
le. Ruby might have called the cops herself and gave them that tip anonymously.”
I stared at him. “Why would she do such a risky thing?”
“It was risky, all right. But she wanted to leave. And she had to make sure Paul was scared enough that he’d be convinced he had to take her away.”
“She wanted to leave with Paul.” I bit my lip. “She wanted to be with my husband.”
Dr. Shepherd shook his head. “That’s not it—not quite. She had to get away—as far away as possible, and she knows he’s the only one who has the means to take her. He has her passport. He has plenty of money; she told me he drained her father’s savings account yesterday. She knew I couldn’t take her, because I have other obligations here . . . my father . . . ” He looked over my head and PJ’s, toward the airplane parked outside my gate. “Ruby couldn’t run the bigger risk of being caged up,” he said. “Not for a second.”
I thought about that. “You’re an accessory to this crime, doctor. I could turn you in, you know.”
He glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “You certainly could. But I don’t think you will.”
“What makes you think that?”
He smiled. “Because you, my dear, understand love. I can tell, just by seeing you with this child—you understand that love transcends justice.”
I didn’t answer. I snuggled my son closer. My beautiful, wonderful son.
Dr. Shepherd stood. “I think we’ve talked enough. I wish you all the best, Mrs. Glass.”
“Wait.” I fished in my purse until I found the little photograph album. “You should have this.”
Dr. Shepherd took the album. “Well, I’ll be,” he said softly. “Did Ruby give you this?”
I nodded. “She said to make sure it was in my purse, not my luggage.”
Dr. Shepherd laughed aloud. “I’m going to miss that girl.”
• • •
Safely on the ground in Milwaukee, I stepped off the plane and looked around. I was at the top of the stairway leading down to the tarmac.
The wind blew. The plane had come in over Lake Michigan; the airport is only a few miles from the shoreline. I could feel the lake’s effects, and they spoke of home to me. The water, the air, was different from what I’d experienced in New York. What was the difference? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but somehow—even though I was at a busy metropolitan airport in Wisconsin, and I’d come from a remote wooded area in New York—the atmosphere felt purer to me.
Like there was nothing here to hide.
I held the baby on my hip and stepped down. “Careful, ma’am,” a porter said as I reached the last stair tread. He pointed toward the doorway to the airport.
From here, I would make my way inside and find my parents. I would go home and start my life over.
I clutched PJ tighter. I thought about how I could—almost—turn the trip to New York into an invented story. It felt like something that hadn’t actually happened.
Not just that. If not for the babe in my arms, I could make up the entire experience of being married to Paul Glass in the first place.
But here was my son—soft and real and every bit mine.
I nestled PJ against my chest and went inside. I stepped into the warmth, the familiarity, of home.
69
* * *
Ruby
Ruby and Paul return the rental car and take a shuttle bus from LaGuardia to Idlewild, the airport from which most international flights leave New York. He has their passports and a lot of cash. It wasn’t difficult for Paul to pretend to be her father and close out the account her father kept in a bank in Ossining.
Paul even had identification that showed who he was. Henry Glass, with his photograph right there in the passport. Clear as day.
Ruby is thinking about how Shepherd once asked her, “If you could go anywhere in the world, Ruby, where would you go?” And she told him she’d always wanted to see the Greek islands.
It’s a shame she has to leave Shepherd. She’ll miss him and she knows he’ll miss her. But there was no other option.
• • •
“I still think it was a mistake, letting her go like that,” Paul says on the shuttle bus.
Ruby shakes her head. “It will be fine,” she tells him. “She’s not going to say anything, Paul.” She shifts in her seat and looks out the window at the office and government buildings, the diners and filling stations, lining Grand Central Parkway. “Aunt Angie just wants to get on with her life and forget about all of this.”
“Well,” Paul says. “I would have preferred the insurance of knowing she couldn’t ever speak up.”
“She won’t,” Ruby says. “And even if she does, it won’t matter. No one will find us.”
“Let’s hope not.” Paul frowns, and then goes on. “That doctor, too. How do we know he won’t speak up?”
“Because he doesn’t know anything,” Ruby lies. “He’s just somebody I met. Somebody who told me a little bit about plants—and that’s what gave me the idea of what to do.” She rubs her fingers on her mother’s sapphire necklace, which is around her neck as always. She wraps her arms around herself, cozy in Shepherd’s sweater. “He isn’t anybody, Paul. Trust me.”
Paul mumbles something under his breath, then changes the subject. “I’m sorry you don’t have your suitcase,” he says. “We can buy a few necessities at the airport, and anything else you need once we reach our destination.”
Ruby nods, patting her pocketbook. It has To Kill a Mockingbird. It has her grandmother’s locket. It has one photo of her mother and Shepherd from the day they went boating on the river—one she took out of the album before she gave it to Aunt Angie.
She also took some photographs from the shoe box in her mother’s closet—pictures of her mother and grandmother when they were young, pictures of Ruby herself as a baby.
She glanced at the pictures of the birdcage. She picked up her father’s army picture, the one he sent her mother when she was pregnant with Ruby. But in the end, Ruby didn’t take those photographs.
Let them burn.
• • •
The other day, when he told her his plan, Paul ventured that the river would be a good place for a body. “Or, if that isn’t to your liking,” he said, “there’s extra space in that deep grave out in the forest.”
His grin was callous, almost sinister, and Ruby knew Paul was being his truest self in that moment.
But he was right—there was plenty of room in the Shelter. And no one would ever know. Or perhaps they would, but by the time they did, Ruby and Paul would be long gone.
She tried to talk him out of it. But she knew he wasn’t easily letting go of the idea. When he tried to bring Aunt Angie inside the house this morning, Ruby knew exactly why. She’s thankful Aunt Angie stood up to him.
Still, all of this helps her understand Paul better. She understands what he’s capable of.
She hopes he doesn’t—prematurely—realize the same about her.
• • •
“Where to?” Paul asks as they walk up to the Pan Am ticket counter. “Anywhere you want, Ruby.”
Ruby thinks about it. There’s Greece, of course, but that’s better saved for another day. So she glances at the list of departing flights to see which one leaves soonest.
Then she says, “I’ve heard Spain is beautiful this time of year.”
EPILOGUE
* * *
Angie
1962
It was the first truly chilly morning of the fall, but at least it wasn’t windy. I wore a heavy cardigan and dungarees. I left my son—now an active toddler—in my mother’s care, saying only that I wished to borrow my parents’ boat and take it out on the lake alone.
“Suit yourself,” my mother said. “Willie and I will be fine—won’t we, buddy?” The boy nodded and asked his grandmother for a cookie.
I kissed my son, staring into his gorgeous dark eyes, my hands gently squeezing his tiny shoulders. Even when my mother or another
trusted adult is watching him, I find it difficult to pull away.
I’m not an overprotective mother—I have no reason to be. My child has a brigade of parental figures; even without a father in the picture, he wants for nothing. So it’s not that I worry about his well-being. The reason I gaze so deeply at him is that I’m looking for indications of the type of man he’ll become. Fortunately, thus far I’ve seen nothing resembling his father’s demeanor.
It’s hard to remember calling him anything besides Willie. Not long after my return from New York, I told my family I could no longer think of my son as Paul Junior. “He needs his own name,” I said. “We can call him by his middle name, William.”
After reluctantly pulling away and waving good-bye to my mother and Willie, I walked down the wooden steps—these much sturdier than the stairs leading from my cottage to North Bay—to the dock where my parents keep their motorboat.
I looked back at the clapboard-sided, dormered house. I took in the manicured lawn and the tidy pots of gold and purple mums on the porch. Everything so genuine, so familiar.
I’d been tempted, when I returned from New York, to move back home. It would have been so easy. Between my parents living there and my sisters coming over daily, there would have been plenty of people to rock my baby, feed him, find him clothes to wear.
But I couldn’t do it. After a few days resting up at my parents’, the baby and I moved back to the cottage on North Bay. The first night there, alone under a quilt in the old-fashioned, iron-framed bed that had once belonged to my grandparents—and for a year had been my marriage bed—I slept soundly and solidly. A deep, dreamless sleep.
For days, I did nothing but play with the baby, clean, and organize. I scrubbed everything, though it was already spotless. I removed Paul’s meager wardrobe from the closet and dresser, packing his clothes in an old hatbox I found in the attic. In the studio, I crated Paul’s supplies and stored his paintings in shallow cardboard boxes with sheets of tissue paper in between each piece.
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