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RUBY
Ruby stood in the school hallway with her dad and Brooke after the show, eyeing the doors to the auditorium where other parents were streaming out. She knew Adam was in there because she’d spotted him in the crowd, had felt his gaze on the back of her head like a supernatural force, then turned to find him staring at her a few rows back.
“Seems like not that long ago I was standing in one of these hallways with your mother, waiting for you girls,” her dad said.
Ruby smiled at him. He’d never even dated anyone in the fifteen years since the murder of Ruby’s mother. As a kid, Ruby had been glad. Some of her friends at school had single parents who dated and it always seemed messy and complicated. Ruby had liked Friday night pizza with her dad and Brooke, their Saturdays at the movies and lunch in Chinatown afterwards.
Now she looked at her dad and wished he would find someone. He was only in his fifties, still strong and handsome, his dark hair threaded with silver.
“She looked so small up there,” Brooke said. “They all did. Hard to believe we were ever that little.”
“Hard for me to believe too,” their dad said.
Ruby stiffened as Adam’s blond head appeared in the crowd of parents exiting the auditorium. He was only a little over six feet tall, but it was enough height to make him stand out from the crowd.
That, and he was still good-looking, something Ruby could admit even though he made her blood run cold.
“Fucking great,” her sister mumbled as Adam walked toward them with Maggie, his mother.
Ruby forced a smile, the scrape on her cheek burning. “Hello,” she said to her former mother-in-law. “Thanks for coming.”
She hated making small talk with her former mother-in-law, but at least Richard, Adam’s father, hadn’t come. He was a hard man, a retired cop, and Ruby was grateful he’d seemed to wash his hands of Ruby and Olivia, at least in a group setting.
“Of course,” Maggie said. She was small, with fair hair and a meekness that had probably been beaten into her by Adam’s father. “She’s getting so big.”
“She is.” Ruby could feel Adam’s gaze burning a hole into her profile as she tried to avoid his eyes. It was a tactic she’d used when they’d been married, like trying not to make eye contact with a rabid animal, and she’d found the habit hard to break in the year since their divorce.
It wasn’t lost on her that there had been no greeting between Adam and his mother and her family. Maggie was convinced Ruby should have stayed married to her son for Olivia’s sake, Ruby’s sister thought Maggie was an enabler (or afucking enablerto put it more accurately) for expecting Ruby to put up with her son’s abuse, and Ruby’s dad could barely contain his rage at the man who’d beaten his daughter and had no patience for the woman who’d raised him.
The group stood awkwardly together in a kind of forced communion that made Ruby’s skin crawl.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Adam asked.
She turned to look at him, willing herself to be calm.
I am safe in my body. I am safe in my body. I am safe in my body.
He was angry. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, the mean light in his eyes.
“Ms. Moretti will be releasing the kids soon.” Ms. Moretti was Olivia’s teacher, as good an excuse as any to avoid talking one-on-one with Adam.
“We can watch for Olivia,” Maggie said.
“Or you can talk another time if that’s what you prefer,” her sister said coldly.
“We can talk here, in front of our families, if that’s how you want it,” Adam said.
There was a threat in his voice. Things would be uncomfortable for their families if they talked in front of them. Was that what Ruby wanted? To air their private business in front of their families? To make everyone uncomfortable because she was afraid to talk to him alone?
Her father put a reassuring hand on her back. “You can stay right here if that’s what you want. Or you can step across the hall. Either way, I’ll be watching.”
He looked at Adam as he said the last few words, the warning clear.
Ruby’s father wasn’t a big man, and he definitely wasn’t a fighter, but once he’d realized the full scope of Adam’s abuse, it had taken both his daughters to keep him from going after his son-in-law.
“I can give you a couple of minutes,” Ruby said, stepping past Adam toward the tiny vestibule leading to the stairs.
Her body screamed as she turned her back on him, the early-warning system it had developed during the five years of their marriage on high alert, but she breathed through it until she reached the vestibule and could turn to face him again.
