“Fine,” I said, sighing. “Why do you think Ruby, of all people, can help?”
I looked from Adam to Ruby. Ruby’s eyes flashed briefly before she looked away.
Adam clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes at me before turning his back to me and facing Ruby.
“I don’t know if you’ve given any thought to coming back to work now that Jeremy is in college, but I could really use your help,” he said to Ruby. “If Oscar wasn’t being such a stubborn pain in the ass, he would acknowledge that we’re close to losing this contract.”
“I can’t,” Ruby said, her voice barely audible.
“I know you can,” Adam said. “I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon and tell you about the project. You designed everything for our first project, and those floor plans are so good we’re still using them. I think if you looked at this project, you could really help. You have the eye they need. Just hear me out. That’s all I ask. What do you think?”
Chapter 3
Ruby
"Fine. Why do you think Ruby, of all people, can help?"
The words felt like a punch in the stomach.
Of all people. Heat rose into my cheeks and I felt my eyes narrowing at Oscar as anger fueled by hurt flashed behind them. I quickly looked away and straightened my face, as my mother used to instruct me as a child. I relaxed my face and looked at the rim of the glass of Coke Oscar got for me, and took a sip to help me swallow the feelings that came up as they did for the past twenty years.
Oscar didn't mean it. That was the thing I always reminded myself. He never meant it. He said these things the way other people commented on the weather, and when I tried, years ago, to explain how his words made me feel, he said I was being sensitive. So I stopped explaining. I had gotten very good at straightening my face. I was an expert at wearing the mask, putting on the smile, and just being his accessory.
But underneath it, the old feeling stirred anyway, hot and familiar. Hurt, first. Then the anger that always came in behind the hurt like a second wave.Of all people. How could he say that?As if I didn’t help start the company. As if I wasn’t an integral part of it.
I left the company because of this. I told everyone I was stepping back to be home with Jeremy, and that was true, but there was more to it. I wanted to raise Jeremy myself, without the help of nannies, which we could easily afford, but I could have worked during naps or at night while he slept. I stepped away from working because I couldn’t take the comments anymore. Oscar’s off-handed comments chipped away at me to the point where even the minor ones hurt. I didn’t want Jeremy growing up hearing those comments about his mother. I didn’t want him seeing how small I let myself become to work with Oscar. So I quit.
When Adam started talking about Ocean City, I found myself listening harder than I wanted to.
"You designed everything for our first project," he said, still facing me, his back half-turned to Oscar in a way I don't think Oscar even noticed. "Those floor plans are so good we're still using them. I think if you looked at this, you could really help. You have the eye they need."
The eye they need. I turned the phrase over. It had been a long time since anyone had described any part of me as needed.
"Tell me about the project.” The words escaped my mouth before I had a chance to think.
"Ocean City," he said. "Down the shore. We've got the land, we've got the capital, we've got plans the town keeps sending back. They don't want what we're offering."
"Which is?"
Adam's mouth tipped. "Forty traditional houses with two-car garages and a clubhouse. They’re saying it’s ‘cookie-cutter’."
I knew Ocean City. The boardwalk that smelled like Johnson's caramel popcorn and Manco and Manco’s pizza. The dry town where family came first, the streets where people had lived in the same houses for generations and waved at you from porches whether they knew you or not. It was a town that knewexactly what it was. You couldn't drop forty colonials into it and expect them to say thank you. It could be a great project for us. I knew Oscar had been wanting to start developing at the shore, and this could be that opportunity that started it all. If they didn’t lose it first.
Something in me leaned toward the idea before I'd decided to let it. I could see it, that was the problem. The minute Adam said the town didn't want what they were offering, a version of what the town might want started assembling itself behind my eyes, unasked. Porches. Real ones, deep enough to sit on. Rooflines that talked to the houses already there instead of shouting over them.
I made myself stop. The idea of walking back through that door, of being once again the wife who'd beenallowedto help, made something in me close like a fist.
Plus, something kept gnawing at me. Why was I hearing about this from Adam? Oscar hadn't said a word to me about Ocean City. Not the land, not the stalled plans, not the contract Adam clearly thought they were about to lose. We rode an hour into the city together tonight, and he told me nothing. How long had this even been a thing? If there was a possibility of losing the contract they had to be working on it for a while.
Oscar knew I loved the shore. Was that why he hadn’t mentioned it? Was he afraid I would want to help?
"Let me think about it," I said.
Adam nodded, but I could see it wasn't the answer he wanted. He had the patient look of a man who knew how to get what he wanted.
"At least let me tell you the rest," he said. "Properly. Not here, with him scowling at me." He tilted his head at Oscar without looking at him.
"I'm not scowling," Oscar said.
