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Everything in me is on high alert as Ruthie listens to whoever’s on the other line.
She started by asking if it was another ear infection, but the woman’s response, while negative, obviously was not comforting. Something worse than an ear infection, then.
Her lips are pressed into a tight line, her color pale. Her cake fork drops onto the plate, forgotten. And if Ruthie is forgetting chocolate, something is definitely fucking wrong.
“I’d like to pick her up early,” she says quickly. “I’ll be right there.”
There’s a tightening in my gut, because nothing can be allowed to happen to Izzy. She’s sweet and innocent and everything that’s missing from my day-to-day life.
I push out of my seat, then watch, numb, as Ruthie pockets her phone and stands. Eden, who was sitting next to her in the outside seat, gets out, giving her room to leave.
“Ruthie, what happened?” I ask, trying not to sound worried. Failing, probably.
“My mother showed up at the school at recess,” she says, her voice shaky. “She found Izzy. I don’t know how she knew—”
“She looks just like you, that’s how. Did she try to take her?” My voice is quavering with rage, so I take a deep breath and stuff it down. I need my poker face. I need to be the cool, collected lawyer who stares down witnesses—the one who doesn’t appear to have any emotions other than the drive for justice.
I don’t need to be the lawyer who secretly pukes in the bathroom before every closing statement because the pressure is too much.
Danny and Ruthie’s mother is a pestilence. She and her ex-husband made my friend’s childhood a living hell, first by convincing him something’s wrong with him because he’s different, and then by using him to support the whole family so they could spend all of their time drinking and pretending to be twenty. I’ve kept her out of jail for Danny—getting her free and clear of a couple of Drunk and Disorderlies—and in return she was to leave her children alone, just like they want. But apparently she’s pickled herself enough to forget her promises.
I fully intend to help remind her of them.
She will not bother Ruthie or Izzy if I have anything to say about it, and it turns out I have plenty to say.
“I don’t know,” Ruthie finally responds. “I don’t think so, but she’s been trying to call me for weeks now. Maybe months. I haven’t answered, so maybe…”
Her voice is small, her expression frightened. This isn’t Ruthie the Ballbuster. She’s vulnerable and scared, and something inside of me cracks. I feel the need to wrap her up, to keep her and Izzy safe, to do something.
“It seems like she’s trying to get your attention in a different way. Well, she has it. Let’s go.”
“Together?” she asks, lifting her eyebrows.
“Yes, I want to hear what happened. I can help you.”
She gives me a dubious look that hits like a fucking stab wound to the gut. “Why would you want to help me?”
“You’re my wife,” I say, my tone glib. She doesn’t need to know about this protectiveness unfurling in my gut. She doesn’t need to know that I’ve felt it before, almost always for her and Izzy. For Danny. They’re the only real family I have left, because my mother checked out years ago, and my father is dead. We may not always see eye to eye, we may dislike each other half the time, but Ruthie is mine to protect. She always has been.
“Lucky me,” she says sarcastically, but she doesn’t ask me not to come. Thank fuck, because I would have had to do it anyway, and then I never would have heard the end of it.
“You go see to that little girl,” Eden says, nodding.
Ruthie nods back. “Can you tell Charlie—”
“Don’t you worry about Charlie, he’s a grown-ass man.”
We’re out in the parking lot before I realize Ruthie left her coat behind—a dirty puffer that’s seen better days.
I shrug off my peacoat and wrap it around her shoulders.
“I don’t need it,” she says. “And what will Izzy think?”
“What will she think when she sees us dressed up like this?” I ask, leading the way to my Range Rover. “She’s going to know we were up to something.”
“We’re taking my car,” she insists.
“Ruthie…”
