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“Let’s leave,” he said. “I have a car waiting. We’ll go wherever you want to go. The beach. A restaurant.” He glanced down at her outfit, which made her look like a cast member who'd escaped the set ofBeverly Hills 90210.“Or bowling. You pick.”
Ruby weighed this carefully: walk out and upset the friend who’d hired her for this gig, or stay and possibly lose a date with the most interesting man she’d ever met?
She set their empty champagne flutes on an outdoor table and stared at Jack. “Let’s go.”
From there, things had snowballed. The flame between them burned hotly—throughout the entire marriage, if Ruby is being honest with herself—and there’s no one she’s ever admired more than she did Jack. He looked at her adoringly, and was over the moon with the birth of each of their girls. Ruby had needed no real work to be brought up to speed in terms of how to behave like a politician’s wife, and she’d set aside her own aspirations fairly easily, tucking her English degree away in a box and throwing herself headfirst into motherhood and marriage. As First Lady she’d focused and honed a platform that supported reading initiatives for children, and Ruby had been able to travel with her girls to elementary schools all around the country, donating books and sharing the joy of reading with young children and their parents. It had all been incredibly rewarding, and she’d been good at it. Good at talking to the parents she met, at connecting with the school administrators and teachers, and, frankly, she’d been beloved by the press.
Which leads her back to the same question that still runs through her mind on so many sleepless nights: what went wrong? Had their sex life grown cold, she might have understood better why Jack needed to look elsewhere for affection. But that wasn’t the case. As far as Ruby knows, she was always his closest confidante, and if she ever felt even the slightest twinge of wonderment about where her own life had veered off track and so fully merged with Jack’s, then she never let on about it to him. After all, he was busy running the country, and she was busy doing exactly what she’d signed on to do.
But Etienne was still a fact. Sheisstill a fact. She’d shown up at Jack’s memorial—she’d stayed quiet and at least attempted to shroud herself in discretion, but not enough that Ruby hadn’t known instantly who she was—and since then, Ruby’s lawyer has heard from Etienne’s lawyer, but Ruby has rebuffed all of Etienne’s attempts at making contact. It’s messy and it’s heartbreaking, and it’s nothing that Ruby wants in her new life.
When her plane lands in New York, she’s off the aircraft first, whisked away by a concierge sent to meet her. Banks is with her (he’d been seated right behind her in First Class because he preferred it that way), and they rush through JFK, find their car, and make it to Harlow’s apartment in record time.
The first thing Ruby does when she sees her daughter is break down. She drops her purse, her small carry-on bag, her sunglasses. Arms are wrapped tightly around one another as both women sob openly, the fear and the anger and the relief taking over and leaving them both a crying mess.
“Mom,” Harlow says, burying her face in the crook of Ruby’s neck. “I was so scared.”
“Baby, I know.” Ruby pulls Harlow into the apartment and leads her to the couch where they sit, thighs and shoulders touching one another. It’s as if now that they’re finally together, they can’t stand to be apart.
Harlow puts her hands to her face and lets her chin drop so that it’s almost touching her chest. “But, Mom…my friend Ulysses.”
Ruby puts her arm around Harlow and her daughter collapses, her head falling into her mother’s lap while she cries.
“He was a very brave man,” Ruby says. “I called his parents and gave them my sympathies. And I told them that we all know about his bravery. The last thing he did was get you behind the bar, and because of him, you’re still here. It’s cold comfort to a parent, but there is something to knowing that your child saved someone else before they died.”
The room stills. Banks and Eldrick are stationed right outside the door of the apartment, and the women have been left alone. The afternoon sun streams sideways through the window into Harlow’s small living room, falling on Ruby and Harlow at an angle.
Ruby’s eyes scan the room. There are potted plants on windowsills, hand-knotted throw rugs on the floor, a framed poster from a concert in Central Park on the wall, and a giant bean bag stationed on the floor in front of an oversized television. But over the arms of the couch, a chair near the kitchen, and on the table, there are piles of clothing. Discarded jackets, last minute wardrobe changes, and things that need to be dry cleaned or otherwise attended to. It’s so Harlow that Ruby almost laughs over the solid knot of tears in her throat.
“Mom,” Harlow says, picking at a loose thread on her couch. “I can’t sleep. I’m scared. Every time I close my eyes I see gunfire. I can see Ulysses’ face. I think of Dad dying. I’m afraid I’ll never be okay again.”
Ruby takes Harlow’s hand in hers. “You will be okay,” she promises. “The human heart has an amazing capacity to heal itself. And your brain knows how to sort through trauma and to take away the sharpness. Over time, it becomes more like a butter knife than a sword.”
Tears fall down Harlow’s smooth cheeks and she nods, staring at a spot on the wall in the distance.
“This might be crazy and it might be too soon, but what would you think about coming to Shipwreck Key for a while?” Ruby asks gently.
The first thing she’d wanted to do when she got the call from the police was to bring her daughter to her, to keep her safe, to never let her out of her sight again. But that’s unreasonable—Harlow is an adult—and Ruby needs to present it as an option, and not as though she thinks that Harlow can’t function on her own in New York City. Because she certainly can; she’s made from tough stuff, and Ruby believes wholeheartedly that both of her daughters can move mountains.
Harlow nods slowly, considering this. She sniffles. “I need to go to therapy,” she says, as if this is an answer to her mom’s question. “Not just because of what happened at the bar, but because of a lot of things.” She’s quiet for a long minute. “I thought a lot about Dad as I was hiding behind the bar, and I realized that I need to figure some things out. I always accepted him being President at face value, but there’s a lot more to it, you know?”
Ruby can’t hold back a hard little laugh. “Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.”
Harlow looks at her mother in surprise; it’s probably never occurred to her how Jack’s life and death have changed or derailed Ruby’s life, which is common for kids. Don’t they all pretty much assume their parents are totally functioning, self-reliant, and able to see the forest for the trees at all times?
“You too?” Harlow asks, looking oddly hopeful.
Ruby understands that her own lack of clarity, her own true emotions of anger, confusion, and uncertainty, will certainly be comforting for her daughter to hear about. Finding out that your mother—who successfully managed being the backseat driver to the most powerful man in the free world—doesn’t always have her it together either has to be a relief.
“Me too,” Ruby confirms with a sad smile. “And I’ve considered going to a therapist for a number of reasons, but…” She looks at Harlow sheepishly. “But can I really do that?”
Harlow blinks at her. “Yeah, Mom, you really can do that. A therapist is bound to secrecy—they have to keep whatever you tell them to themselves. So don’t worry that you can’t go just because you’re famous.”
Ruby laughs heartily. “Oh, honey. I don’t think of myself as famous. Not at all. I think of myself as someone who knows a lot of important secrets. Someone who knows things that she maybe shouldn’t share…with anyone.”
With a hard shake of her head, Harlow disagrees. “No way. You have as much right to access mental health support as anyone.”
Ruby reaches out to take Harlow’s hand in hers; she appreciates that her daughter, who has just been through a life-changing trauma of her own, wants to make her feel better about seeking help. But Ruby is firmly planted in Generation X, a group of humans who pride themselves on being self-sufficient, tough, and not in need of anyone’s help. She’d seen and heard plenty of jokes during the pandemic about how Gen X was the only generation fully prepared to withstand the boredom of quarantine. How, as a group, they were almost wholly self-sufficient, having come of age without much parental guidance (after all, most people’s parents were busy working, divorcing, and generally just doing their own thing while kids let themselves into the house after school, dug up a wildly unhealthy snack, and sat in front of MTV until they were sent to bed without bedtime stories or any other sort of fluff or frippery).
