Page 61 of Housesitter

“Not this time,” Kel said.

Ruby spat the pills the nurse had given her into her hand. She dropped them onto the gravel path as Kel wheeled her toward the small, white-painted gazebo.

“So what you’re telling me is that your grandfather is…a demon from Hell?” she said.

Kel screwed up his face as he parked Ruby under the ivy and put the brake on. The urge to tell the truth had felt like a good idea at the time. Not so much now he heard it out loud.

“I guess, yeah,” Kel said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

Ruby wiped spit and chalky residue off her hand with a tissue.

“Well, thank God that didn’t come out when my daddy was alive,” she said. “I’d have never heard the end of how he’d pegged Ezekiel from the start.”

Shepherd, who’d fallen behind to watch the old people on golf carts like it was NASCAR, caught up with them. He handed Ruby a bottle of water.

“You’re taking this well,” he said.

Ruby took a drink. Water spilled from the corner of her mouth. She blotted it on the back of her hand.

“Always did have a hole in my chin,” she said with stubborn dismissiveness. Then she shrugged as she slotted the bottle of water carefully between her knees. Her hands, still bruised from IVs, fiddled with the cap. “And I’m a Laker; we roll with the punches. Besides, I nearly died. That makes a woman think. It’s good to know that when I get to where I’m going I’ll have friends.”

“...and Grandad being a demon isn’t a problem?”

Ruby snorted. She gave up on the cap and thrust the bottle impatiently toward Shepherd. He took it and twisted the cap back on, looking around for somewhere to set it.

“Well, I never thought he was an angel,” she said tartly. Then she reached up and touched her temple. “And I…She knew already. Or she did. That girl. Who was me.”

Kel traded a worried look with Shepherd.

“Ruby, you OK?” he asked.

She gave him a scathing look. “What sort of fucking question is that?” she asked. “I had a stroke, and now I have to try and understand why I remember a whole year of my life twice. Under the circumstances, I’m pulling this off pretty well.”

“I…yeah…fair enough,” Kel said. “So you remember Grandad.”

Ruby waved her hand at him. “I always remembered him,” she corrected. “But it’s like…it’s like if you took IT, and ripped out every page that mentioned Pennywise. Now I have all those pages back, but they’re not in any order.”

She gave a thin laugh and admitted, “Or I’m senile. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“You’re not senile,” Kel reassured her.

Ruby held up her hand in a ‘slow your roll’ gesture. “I’m also not sure which is better,” she said. “I’m not ruling anything out just yet, so I’d ask what you need now.”

Kel looked down at his feet as he organized his thoughts. …that was going to take him all day. He rubbed his knuckle against his forehead, jettisoned all the things he wanted to know and half of what he needed to know. That just left the problem in hand.

“Easy said that Albert hated him, that he’s thwarted Easy all these years just from spite?”

Ruby nodded. “Sounds like Albert,” she agreed. “He hated Easy. Always told me to…oh shit, he was my friend? We were friends. Me and Albert? That’s why he let you con him all those times. I thought that Dio Madden was just a slow learner, but it was Albert. Soft bastard.”

She looked soft for a second and then winced as she rubbed her forehead.

“It’s more than a year. Albert lived near me. His mama ran the funeral parlor, and his daddy ran off. It was Easy who had the money, who lived in Madden…Harlow. Harlow House. Everyone called it Hell House, back then. Now no one does. It wasn’t just me. The whole town forgot it? Why would Easy do that? What did it matter?”

“I don’t think he did,” Shepherd said. “The house did. It was trading under a new name, and it filed the proper paperwork.”

“Why didn’t Albert tell me?” Ruby said. “I wouldn’t have listened, but he could have tried.”

The memory of the thick, black cords that had squirmed out of Ruby’s mouth and down her nose was so bleakly vivid that Kel had to look away. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth, tasting smoke.