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Even he had to admit that there was a better way than an icebox.
“Well, we would’ve come to get you.” Her mother opened the fridge and took out a bottle of orange juice, then retrieved a loaf from the bread box. Each movement decisive and economical as she put a slice of bread in the toaster.
“I know, Mom,” Ruby said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because I didn’t want you getting up and driving to Medford. Anyway, it was easy to get a car.”
Pear Blossom was almost an hour away from the larger town of Medford, the hub that many people used for hospitals and big box shopping. And for the airport. Ruby had never spent much time there.
Going mostly for special trips when some of her friends had convinced her mom that going shopping at the mall was an important rite of passage.
Andie preferred to get everything she could from Pear Blossom. It wasn’t part of that local movement or anything like that. Her parents had a deep sense of community, and they always had. Along with a lot of practicality. Even if small, local businesses couldn’t sell things for as cheap as a big box store, by the time they drove to go pick up an item, by the time they expended the time and the gas, and put money in the pockets of a stranger rather than a neighbor, it all truly didn’t seem worth it. Ruby’s meals had been farm-to-table far before it was cool.
“Did you just get in from England?”
“Yesterday.”
“You must be dead on your feet. Put down your suitcase and go get some sleep.” Then the toast popped up and her mom put it on a plate, slathered it in butter and set it on the table. In direct opposition to her words, she clearly thought Ruby needed food before sleep.
She took a juice cup down from the cabinet, and Ruby interrupted that. “I’ll take some coffee. I can’t go to sleep. I need to stay up. Otherwise I’m never going to get back on the right time zone.”
“What’s the rush?”
“I start at the historical society in a few days,” Ruby said.
“In a few days.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to let the grass grow under my feet. To sleep when I could just as easily power through and acclimate.”
“You sound like your father.”
“Who sounds like me?” Jed McKee walked into the room then, putting a hat over his bald head. His face had the set look of a man who smiled sparingly, but when he saw Ruby, the change was immediate. “Well, as I live and breathe.”
“Good to see you, Dad,” she said.
She found herself swept nearly off her feet as she was pulled in for a big hug, a decisive kiss dropped on her cheek. “Good to see you, kiddo. And you’re back with us. For keeps now.”
“Yeah,” she said. She waited for a sense of claustrophobia or failure or something to settle over her. But it didn’t.
“So, are we moving you into your old bedroom?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t have a place yet, but I’m going to find one.”
“I’m sure that there will be a lot of people who can find space for you,” her mom said.
“I don’t want the Ruby discount.”
It was a joke in her family. Free coffee, free candy and free ice cream had been a hallmark of Ruby’s growing up years. Another thing that she’d had to get used to when she’d gone away to the real world. People did not shower her with free items or treat her like she was a special, magical creature in any way.
And no, that wasn’t the reason she’d come back home.
“Does that mean I can have it?” her dad asked.
“By all means,” Ruby said.
“You know, we finished renovating the shed for Dahlia. There are two bedrooms in there now. Not sure it’s hugely different than living in the house here, but you don’t have your parents breathing down your neck.”
The shed was misnamed, because of course nothing under her father’s watch was anything half so shabby as a shed. Ruby preferred to call it a cottage, which was infinitely more charming and romantic. It had started its life as a shed and become a very cute garden cottage.
“Dee is living in the cottage?” Ruby asked.
