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Dexter folds his arms across his chest. "Okay. You're angry," he says calmly. "Go with that."
But Ruby needs no encouragement. "I was modeling a life for my daughters and for the world that was absolutely false. Dexter," she says pleadingly, "I never even so much as looked at another man during the course of my marriage. Does that sound like I'm lying to you? Maybe it does, but I was focused. I was dedicated. Was I always wildly in love with Jack Hudson? I don't know--is anyone always wildly in love with their spouse?"
Dexter nods to show her that he's listening. "That's fair. There are undoubtedly peaks and valleys, as with anything."
"But I did love and respect him enough to keep my promises, which is something he clearly didn't reciprocate."
Another boat passes by them in the distance, motor on, and they both stop talking to watch as it cuts a smooth path across the blue water. A seagull swoops low, dips, then flies high and away again, and Dexter turns back to Ruby.
"If he were here to give it, would you want an apology from him?" Dexter asks, pushing himself back up to a sitting position with his bare feet on the bottom of the boat. He takes off his sunglasses and looks up at Ruby questioningly. "Would that make you less angry?"
Ruby isn't sure. She just knows that the emotions she's feeling are unsettling, and that some of Jack's words are making her more and not less confused. Instead of finding closure in his writings, she's ending up with more questions than she had before she ever opened the first box of leather-bound journals.
Ruby blows out a breath and runs her hands up and down both of her bare arms like she's got the chills, though it's a hot August day on the Gulf of Mexico with very little breeze. "I don't think so," she admits. "Less angry? No. But if he were here, at least I could yell at him and he'd be forced to hear the things I want to say."
Dexter is still sitting, looking up at Ruby. "So pretend he is here."
This gets Ruby's attention. She turns her head quickly to look at Dexter. "What?" She laughs disbelievingly.
Dexter stands and moves behind Ruby, putting his hands on her sun-warmed shoulders. He steers her to the side of the boat and points at the bench seat there. Next to it is a steel post that she can hang onto. "Get up there and shout at the sky. Yell at the water. Say what you need to say, but say it like you're talking to Jack."
Ruby hesitates and backs up a step so that she's leaning against Dexter. "You want me to stand up there and yell like a crazy person?" she asks, her head turned and her chin tilted up so that she's looking into his eyes.
"Yes." Dexter gives her a soft push, all the while holding her under one elbow gently to help her up onto the bench seat."Pretend you're all alone. Molly and I aren't here, it's just you, the wind, and Jack. Tell him how you feel."
Ruby steps up onto the seat but casts another doubtful look at Dexter. She's dubious about yelling out her feelings right there on the boat, but there's a part of her that feels she might burst if she doesn't get them out of the bubble of emotion that's growing inside of her chest.
The boat rocks gently as Ruby holds firmly to the metal post, her feet planted on the white bench seat. She looks out at the horizon and the small waves, then back at Dexter once again, and up to Molly, who is crunching into a shiny green apple, her face pointed the other direction.
"This is about you," Dexter says softly, "not about us." He turns and walks away from Ruby, heading for the bow of the boat to give her some privacy.
It takes a moment for Ruby to find the same anger and disappointment that she felt earlier, but as she thinks of Jack writing the journal entry that compared her to Etienne, she gets a heady rush of fury that burns through her veins like wildfire.
"Goddamn you, Jack Hudson," she says, hearing the snarl in her own voice. Out of habit, she glances around, but Molly is minding her own business up on the captain's chair, and Dexter is not in sight. Ruby turns back to the water. "You let me down. You let your daughters down," she says, feeling tears catch in her throat. But the very thought of crying makes her even angrier, and she pushes the emotion down, tossing her hair as she lifts her chin and refuses to cry. "You had no right to carry on with another woman. To father a child. To leave me to raise our kids alone while your heart split in two."
No one argues with her, obviously, and no response comes, so Ruby pushes ahead, finding that she's full of the steam that's necessary to propel her own words forward.
"How could you callmeboring? How could you make me sound like some sort of elderly nana in a cardigan with a tissue up my sleeve, while making Etienne sound like a vixen from a rock video?" This actually makes her give a hiccupy laugh as she calls to mind the image of the old lady who'd ended up on the ground in the "I've fallen and I can't get up" television commercial of her childhood. Next to that mental picture, she imagines a toned, tanned supermodel rolling around on the hood of a car in a Whitesnake video. She might be exaggerating these pictures in her mind, but it doesn't feel that way after reading Jack's words. He clearly saw one of them as the height of dull predictability, and the other as the epitome of sex appeal and spontaneity.
"You weren't exactly the picture of excitement yourself, Jack," Ruby says now, holding more tightly to the shiny pole next to her as the boat hits a rogue wave and rocks a bit. "How many times do you think I asked you to do things with me and you turned me down? Too busy running the country; too busy answering to everyone around you." Ruby's eyes fill with tears again and this time she presses her hot cheek to the metal post, feeling it against her skin as she remembers Jack and the way he always seemed to be too busy and too important to act like a true family man.
"Do you think that golfing and reading books about submarines made you exotic and fascinating?" she shouts, feeling like a traitor but also feeling a sense of release as she lets loose on her dead husband. "Because itdidn't--I hated when you went out golfing and came back smelling like cigars, and you know what? I never cared one bit about those damn submarines you always wanted to talk about. And don't even get me started on airplanes. I know, I know, you could fly an airplane--but so what?" she says, remembering Jack's fascination with planes. "The only thing you ever did that surprised me was to have asecond life--a secret life. Otherwise, you were totally predictable. I guarantee you never picked up Kafka yourself, or woke up one day and decided to drive across half a country to see an old pile of rocks that someone decided to call a church. It would have taken the influence of someone far more exciting than you to do those things." Ruby swipes now at the tears that are falling, but she doesn't stop yelling out at the water. "You never said anything romantic to me that stuck in my heart, and you never once did anything unexpected. Even our proposal," she says, shaking her head, "was exactly the way I knew it would be: you on one knee on the beach during a weekend away. I'm sure you'd already pre-selected the exact spot and time of day, and you probably had some assistant pick the damn ring."
Ruby takes her left hand off the pole now and holds it up so that she's looking at her naked ring finger. For so many years she wore the diamond solitaire there, nestled up next to a band of diamonds, all of it in platinum. She wore it for six months after Jack's death as well, trying her best not to set tongues wagging by taking it off too soon, but by then it had all been out there--Etienne, Julien, Jack's secret life. Now the ring is tucked into a jewelry box in her bedroom, waiting for her to decide what to do with it. She might give it to one of her girls, or she might melt it down and turn it into something else, but at the moment, all she feels about the ring is that it represents a life she never truly had.
All of a sudden, the flash of anger dims and in its place is just sadness. Ruby lets her hand fall, and her voice is quieter now when she speaks. "I forgive you, Jack," she says, shocked as the words come out of her own mouth. "I forgive you for thinking you had the right to set me up like one of your many assistants, letting me run your home, raise your children, and put a good face on your public persona. I forgive you for falling out of love with me, because I feel like you must have stopped loving me at some point, and I forgive you for falling in love with the kindof woman who wants to go dancing at midnight, who probably wears a bra under a blazer and calls it an outfit, and who has the free spirit to breastfeed your child on the street. I just..." Ruby sniffles now, crying openly. "I forgive you. I forgive you not for you, but forme."
She stands there a moment longer, tears sparkling on her cheeks the way the sun glints off the water. When Ruby finally steps down, she turns to see that Dexter has stepped inside the cabin of the boat, and Molly has continued to watch the horizon and eat her apple. Neither of them looks at her. They may have heard some of the things she's said, but Ruby knows that they won't say anything about her words, nor will they judge her for them. Molly has lived a big life of her own, and out of everyone Ruby knows on Shipwreck Key, she is perhaps the one best acquainted with the need for closure. For catharsis. For finality.
The words have just slipped from her lips as if she'd planned them, but they were impulsive and from the heart. Ruby meant them--all of them. Her confused questions, her angry declarations, and--maybe most of all--the forgiveness. She forgives Jack, and in realizing this, she feels her chest open up and a tightness she's been carrying around with her vanishes.
Dexter catches her eye, and with a nod, he steps back out of the cabin, looking at her curiously.
"I forgive him," Ruby says softly as Dexter approaches her. He says nothing, but opens his arms for her to walk into them. "I think I really do.”
“Then I think we should keep reading.”
Ruby nods in Dexter’s arms. He’s right. “We absolutely should.”
