The Search for Baby Ruby

by Susan Shreve

  She had thought in the car, after the doctor had examined the baby at the police station, about what she would say when they arrived with Ruby at the hotel.

  “What do you think?” she asked Teddy.

  “Try me,” Teddy said.

  “I am sorry and ashamed. That’s what I was thinking. Just straight off. I am sorry and ashamed.”

  “Don’t say ashamed.”

  “Why not? I am.”

  “Of course you are, but just hold back on ashamed until you have to use it and then — use it.”

  “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “I think nothing,” Teddy said. “Not just because everyone’s so relieved that Ruby is found — but really, Jess, the only mistake you made was shutting the door to the bathroom.”

  “Well, pretty big mistake. And I tried on all that stuff of Whee’s.”

  “That was a small mistake, not criminal, not dangerous. Sort of like shoplifting, but from your sister.”

  The spirit in room 618 was jubilant.

  “I’m really sorry, Danny,” Jess said.

  “Me too, Jess. Really sorry I put you in that position.”

  And that was that.

  Aldie ordered room service for breakfast with extra coffee, since it was already seven thirty and no one had slept. Whee went for a run with Victor along the water, and Delilah went to get her hair done in an upsweep.

  Jess and Teddy turned over on the bed and slept as close together as they could get without suffocating.

  “I’ll hear about it later,” Jess said when they woke up. It was still morning, a bright and perfect day.

  “Maybe you won’t, Jess,” Teddy said. “Maybe everyone will talk about losing and finding Baby Ruby but they won’t blame you. Not like you think they will.”

  “The only thing that really upsets me is that everyone else is holding Baby Ruby — did you notice? “ Jess said. “Even you, Teddy, who doesn’t even want to hold her.”

  “Don’t take it personally, Jess.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course it’s personal, Teddy. They don’t want me near her.”

  Teddy leaned back against a pillow, stretched, took a cigarette from the side table.

  “Is this a smoking room?” she asked.

  “Nonsmoking,” Jess said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Teddy said, putting the cigarette back in the package. “Maybe they are punishing you the way they can. But who knows? Sometimes things change pretty fast.”

  Delilah wandered around the bedroom doing this and that, zipping up Beet’s dress, using a safety pin to replace the broken clasp on Teddy’s short lavender sundress.

  Delilah was wearing a matching pink-flowered bikini and bra.

  “Hope you have another outfit to wear for the wedding, Mom,” Teddy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not the best look for your figure right now.”

  “I bought two dresses — one is a little wider in the bottom than the dress I had on last night and the other is formfitting — both are rose-colored, so you girls can choose.”

  “I can choose already,” Teddy said. “Wider in the bottom.”

  Jess got her dress out of the closet and held it up to look at it one more time, checking the shape without her in it. Her dress was lavender as well, not the same dress as Teddy’s since her sister’s was made for someone so skinny she could be mistaken for a pencil, but straight around Jess’s belly so the rolls of flesh were hidden. It had a square neck and a floaty hemline, and she had strappy shoes in lavender with high heels.

  Whatever was going on with her body, Jess could always count on looking good in heels.

  “Don’t think that, Jess,” Teddy said.

  “Think what?” Jess asked.

  “About your baby fat,” she said. “I can tell what you’re thinking.”

  “Your baby fat is disappearing,” Delilah said. “Check it out.”

  “I did,” Jess said. “In the shower. There’s been no change since yesterday.”

  But since yesterday, there had been other changes for Jess. At least one, she thought, sitting on the end of the bed in her towel.

  “If Danny asked me now to babysit Ruby, I’d say no. Even if he whined and cried and Delilah told me how he had to deliver the important speech at the rehearsal dinner, I’d say No.”

  “It wasn’t Danny’s fault,” Delilah said. “He was giving the important speech at the rehearsal dinner.”

  “A doozy,” Teddy said. “I was on the edge of my seat.”

  “I didn’t say it was Danny’s fault, Mom. It was mine,” Jess said. “I’m practicing NO. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, thank you. No, I’m sorry. No, but thanks for asking. That’s what I’m practicing to be — a little more like Teddy and a little less like me.”

  “And since we’re on the subject of me, Mom, I am done with the Home for Girls with Problems, just for your information,” Teddy said, putting on wild-grape blush.

  “Not your choice,” Delilah said.

  “My choice, Mom.”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  “I’m not going back,” Teddy said, sitting down with Jess in the oversized chair in front of the television, which was off.

  “I know,” Jess said. “Everything is kind of different now, isn’t it?”

  “We’re like heroes.”

  “Well, you are, Teddy,” Jess said. “Not me.”

  “Wrong, Jess. You are amazing.”

  Whee came out of the bathroom in her dress, her hair up, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright blue as the afternoon.

  “Wooo wooo,” Teddy said.

  “Gorgeous,” Delilah said. “My baby girl. You are breathtaking.”

  “Not bad, Whee,” Danny said. “Good enough to get married this afternoon.”

  On the bed, Beet was holding Baby Ruby, who was softly sleeping in her arms.

  “Does Dad get to see you before you walk down the aisle?” Danny asked.

  “Nope. Not Dad and not Victor. Just you,” Whee said. “And, Mom, put on your dress. You’re going to a wedding.”

  “So now we go downstairs, right?” Danny asked.

  “Downstairs and across the lobby, where there’s a room right next to the garden where we’ll stay until the music starts to play.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we walk in to the music, Danny, except you stand outside and pass out programs. First Mom, then Beet, and then my three girls. I come in last with Aldie, who will be crying although I’ve asked him not to.”

  “Who are your girls?” Delilah asked, surprised. “Did you change your mind? I thought it was Teddy and Jess.”

  “And Baby Ruby,” Whee said. “I added one.”

  “Ruby? A bridesmaid?” Delilah said. “I thought Beet was holding her and sitting next to me.”

  “No, Beet isn’t holding her. She’s walking down the aisle with Teddy and Jess.”

  Beet had gotten up and was walking across the room with Baby Ruby.

  Jess was standing with Teddy next to the door.

  “Here, Jess,” Beet said, putting Baby Ruby in Jess’s arms. “Whee thought that you should carry the littlest bridesmaid down the aisle.”

  And she put Ruby, Baby Ruby, in Jess’s arms.

  Huge thanks to Nick Thomas — for his ear for voice in fiction, his great editorial skills, and his generosity of spirit.

  To Carrie Hannigan, my former and longtime children’s book agent and friend, whose sensitivity and care with a writer is remarkable … years of thanks for many things.

  To Lilly Palmer for being the first child reader of this book.

  And always to my own grandchildren from two to eleven — Theo and Noah and Izy, Henry and Julian, Padget and Eliza, Aden and Elodie, who all eat up books like cupcakes.

  Susan Richards Shreve has published a memoir, fourteen novels, and thirty books for children, including Blister and The Lovely Shoes. She is a professor at George Mason University and has r
eceived several grants for fiction, including grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Susan lives in Washington, DC.

  Copyright © 2015 by Susan Shreve

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Shreve, Susan, author.

  The search for Baby Ruby / by Susan Shreve. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: Twelve-year-old Jess O’Fines is resentful that she is expected to watch her baby niece in a Los Angeles hotel room while the rest of her dysfunctional family go off to a wedding rehearsal party — but when Baby Ruby disappears, Jess is convinced she knows who kidnapped her and determined to get her back on her own, whatever the danger.

  ISBN 978-0-545-41783-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Kidnapping — Juvenile fiction. 2. Infants — Juvenile fiction. 3. Nieces — Juvenile fiction. 4. Dysfunctional families — Juvenile fiction. 5. Los Angeles (Calif.) — Juvenile fiction. [1. Kidnapping — Fiction. 2. Babies — Fiction. 3. Nieces — Fiction. 4. Family problems — Fiction. 5. Los Angeles (Calif.) — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S55915Se 2015

  813.54 — dc23

  2014033340

  First edition, June 2015

  Cover art © 2015 by Michael Heath

  Cover design by Ellen Duda

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-82572-6

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