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Along the back wall stands Banks, who has ditched his sunglasses but not his earpiece, which tethers him tonight to the girls’ Secret Service agents—Corbin, who is there with Athena, and Watkins, there as Harlow’s guard. Just to aggravate her father, Harlow had once threatened to date Eldrick Watkins, who’d played tight end for Ohio State before enlisting in the Marines and eventually being recruited into the Secret Service. Of course the mere idea of Harlow acting up—yet again—had aggravated Jack to no end, but Ruby had soothed him, swearing up and down that Harlow was only doing it to get his goat. As Ruby’s eyes flick over her daughter and Watkins now she isn’t one hundred percent sure that Harlow hasn’t harbored some sort of naughty intentions for the poor man, but Watkins is tough, strong, and silent, and surely he would never bend or break to the whims of a young woman when it would put his job on the line.
Probably.
Maybe.
Ruby pushes the thought from her mind as her eyes graze Watkins, who is stationed at the front door, and Corbin, a short, stocky, ginger-haired bodybuilder who has taken the spot in the center room. They are attempting to be as unobtrusive as possible, but Ruby finds that it’s more difficult for them to blend in here on Shipwreck Key than it was in D.C. After all, people expect Secret Service agents to trail and track the First Family in Washington, but no one knows quite what to do with men who look like tanks with serious faces and boring fashion sense on an island that’s been cultivated almost entirely for fun and relaxation.
Ruby spots her mom and Heather talking and laughing amongst the shelves of romance novels in the back room, and as she passes by two women and two men who are clearly in the throes of early retirement from the kind of white collar jobs that afford vacation homes on tropical islands, she overhears their heated whispers.
“Everyone knows he was assassinated. No question,” says a tall man whose right hand is tucked casually into the pocket of creased trousers that break cleanly across a pair of polished loafers.
“But when they found his body,” says a woman wearing a tangle of pearl necklaces and a giant ruby ring, “it left even more unanswered questions.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken,” says the other woman, looking as though she is about to solve a great mystery. “The questions weren’t unanswerable, but the answers were not passed on tous, the general public. Trust me—people on the inside knowexactlywhat happened.”
Ruby can tell by the tone and by the content of the conversation that it’s about Jack. Rather than slink away from it, she knows she needs to press forward. In order to truly begin living her life amongst civilians, Ruby is going to need to buck up and accept that there will be conversation about her, about Jack, and about how he died…maybe for the rest of her life.
“Are you kidding?” says the man who hasn’t yet spoken. “This is one of the great presidential mysteries in history, and—“
“Welcome to the bookstore,” Ruby interrupts, stepping up to the group and forcing herself to hold a firm, unwavering smile. “I’m so glad to have you here on opening night. Ruby Hudson,” she says, offering a hand to the woman closest to her, then shaking hands with each person as they sheepishly introduce themselves. No one acknowledges what they all know—that Ruby walked up and overhead them indiscreetly discussing her husband’s death.
“So happy to have you here on Shipwreck Key,” says the woman with the pile of pearls. She twists her fingers through them nervously as she speaks. “My husband and I are here for six months of the year,” she says, nodding at the man in the polished loafers. “We’re both voracious readers,” she adds, “so I’m sure you’ll see us in here far more often than you’d like.”
“Oh, that can’t be true,” Ruby says, shaking her head. “After all, how will I keep the doors open if you all aren’t in here buying up my Elin Hilderbrands and John Grishams?”
Those particular authors are a random guess based on their ages and appearances, but Pile of Pearls laughs and cocks her head to one side as she lets go of her necklaces.
“You got me there,” Pearls says. “I do love my beach books!”
“And I’m not above a good Grisham to read by the pool,” Loafers says, lifting a graying eyebrow. “In fact, can you point me there now?”
Ruby gives them all a quick overview of where each genre is shelved in the store, then excuses herself with a smile and moves on.
By the end of the evening, the two young women she’s hired to work in the shop have rung up an impressive two thousand dollars in sales (Ruby really only expected to have people in to see the shop and to meet her and her daughters out of curiosity), and she’s handed out over a hundred business cards. There have been requests to bring authors in for book signings, questions about where Carl Sagan, Jack’s beloved Golden Retriever, was (sadly, he’d died of cancer not long after his master’s death), and several people had wondered whether Ruby might have any famous visitors dropping in to the shop in the near future. Not too surprisingly, there were also a few comments about her February appearance on Leeza’s show, and one woman asked if it had felt good to bring such a sanctimonious bitch to her knees on live television. Ruby had blinked at this in surprise and was surprised at the words that came out of her own mouth: “Yeah, actually it felt great!”
All in all, it’s been a successful opening night, and Ruby feels satisfied that Marooned With a Book has been met by the locals with open arms.
After Athena and Harlow have taken their grandmother back to the house in Ruby’s golf cart, accompanied by Corbin and Watkins, Banks is left behind to keep an eye on the shop and on Ruby, and things are finally quiet. Ruby kicks off her sandals and walks through the store barefoot, watching as the catering crew cleans up and packs everything away efficiently.
Ruby is wearing a gingham dress with an oversized white collar, the skirt of which is pleated at the waist, giving it a 1950s feel. It brushes against tables and bookshelves as she walks through, straightening piles and picking up discarded cocktail napkins and champagne flutes. The shop isn’t a mess, by any means, but it still makes Ruby shake her head as she wonders what kind of people set trash next to brand new books and then just walk away.
“Ma’am?” The woman from the catering crew is standing near the front counter, her black apron rolled up in her hands as she waits for Ruby to walk through the shop. Ruby is still in her bare feet and holding a stack of paper plates and napkins. She tosses them all in the trash and brushes her hands together.
“All done?” Ruby asks with a smile. “You guys were incredible. I think the salmon puffs and bruschetta were a huge hit.”
“Thank you, ma’am. We were thrilled that you chose us for the job.”
Ruby takes the bill from the woman and skims it. The fact that she’s had to bring the catering crew over from the mainland adds to the cost of hosting the event, but it's worth it.
“Can I pay this online?” Ruby asks, glancing up from the bill as she sets it on the counter next to the register.
“Oh, of course,” the woman says, nodding her head slightly in what almost looks like a bow.
Ruby is used to this kind of deference, though she’s never grown comfortable with it. She watches the woman, wondering when and if it will ever end. Will there be a day when people stop calling her “ma’am” and acting like they’re in the presence of royalty? She certainly hopes so. For a girl who grew up on a beach in the 80s—even with a mother who never wore jeans and who served lunch with mineral water in wine goblets—Ruby has never truly felt at ease with a household staff or with strangers who get visibly excited while speaking to her.
“Have a safe trip back to Destin,” Ruby says, waving at the catering crew as they pack their crates and boxes out the front door and down to the dock to meet the boat that’s waiting there for them. She steps out onto the front step of her shop, putting her hands into the pockets of her gingham dress as she watches them go. “I’ll definitely book you guys again the next time I have an event!”
She knows it’s unnecessary to stand out there shoeless, waving at the team of tired caterers, and for a moment Ruby feels a wave of loneliness. It’s been a long time since she had a core group of friends in her life, people who have nothing to do with politics and nothing to do with the White House, and she longs for that. More than anything, she wants a group of ladies with whom she can talk about music and books, ladies she can drink wine with while they laugh about the indignities of being middle-aged women. It’s a void in her life that she feels more frequently now that she’s a widow and not in the public eye, and it’s something that she hopes to remedy as she embarks upon Act Two of her life.
