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“Would you like a glass of water? Or I made lemon poppyseed muffins yesterday.”
“Water would be great, but I can’t eat anything right now.” Ruby wrapped her arms around her waist. “My stomach is tied up in too many knots.”
“Is everything okay? How’s your grandma?”
Esme walked into the kitchen with the young woman following her.
“She’s the one who told me I should come and talk to you.”
“Have a seat at the table.” Esme took two glasses from the cabinet, filled them with ice and then turned on the tap. “If you’re here to apologize, you don’t owe me anything, Ruby. We’re good.”
A horrifying thought streaked a trail across her mind like a firework in the sky, bright and terrible with its whistle reverberating through her chest. “If Ryder reached out to you...”
“Nothing like that. I haven’t talked to him since that day when he interviewed my grandma and me. It’s probably a blessing that he never called. Honestly, he was a safe guy to flirt with and give my number to. It was clear he only had eyes for you.”
“We’re not together like that.” Esme set the two glasses of water on the table. “Not anymore.”
Ruby gripped the glass but didn’t take a drink. “Really? I thought the two of you were the real deal. It was cute how you guys kept looking at each other like you were truly together.”
“We’re partners in co-parenting. There’s just—”
“I think I was the one who messed up the ID bracelets,” Ruby blurted.
Esme blinked. The young nursing assistant could have knocked her over with a feather.
“I don’t understand. You seemed certain it wasn’t you when we talked to you and your grandma.”
“A lot was going on that night, you know?”
Esme definitely knew.
“I mean, there was the storm, and then the regular L-and-D floor flooded, and we had to move you all down. It was my first week, and moms were screaming, and babies were crying. There was one mom in particular who was so loud. Nana said it was your other baby’s mom. I was new, and at first, one of the other nurses was putting the ID bracelets on the ankles. Then she got called out for an emergency.”
Ruby took a drink, her fingers shaking. “The thing that jogged my memory is that you and Ryder kept asking about the other volunteer. Not my grandma, but the woman who never came back after that night. I didn’t remember her at first, but after talking to you two, it started coming back to me.” She released a breath and gave Esme a pained look. “Honestly, after I got off that shift, I went over to The Corral and drank way too much. I didn’t remember much of anything the next day, and frankly, I didn’t want to. But I can picture that woman’s eyes. They were so blue, like the color of bluebonnets. I’d never seen anyone with eyes like that, and she was there.”
Esme felt her chest pinch. She placed her hands on the table as if the wood might ground her.
“She wasn’t doing the same job as me,” Ruby explained. “But I remember her standing in the doorway to the room we were using to do the footprints, bracelets and such. It was more like an oversize storage closet. She was staring like she knew something about me. I got pretty flustered and...well... I’m here to admit my mistake.”
After all the worry, Esme had almost no physical or emotional reaction to solving the mystery of who had switched the ID bracelets. It made sense, and Ruby seemed to be telling the truth as she remembered it.
Had the mystery volunteer, whoever she was, seen the mistake and not said anything? Esme couldn’t imagine it, but maybe that volunteer had been as shaken by that night as Ruby seemed to be.
“Say something, Esme,” Ruby pleaded. “I’m so sorry. If you and Ryder want to sue me or something, I understand. I don’t have much, but—”
“No. We wanted to know what happened the night Chase and Noah were born. Now we do.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ruby repeated. “I wish y’all could find the old woman. Maybe she’d remember something more. She had a cane and didn’t walk well, so she could have had bad eyesight. Likely she didn’t even realize what I was doing.”
“I appreciate you coming here to tell me. Ryder will, too.”
“He’s gonna be so mad,” Ruby said with a frown. “I hate people being mad at me, but I guess I deserve it.”
“He’ll be glad we don’t have to keep searching for an answer,” Esme assured the younger woman.
“Just so you know, I quit my job at the hospital. My grandma was right—I got my CNA license because of a crush on a doctor. I thought if I worked in the hospital, he would see me as a viable love interest. He started dating one of the scrub techs over at County—one of the male scrub techs, so I never had a shot.”
“That’s a tough break,” Esme said, still processing Ruby’s revelation as the woman continued to speak.
