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Patty lifted an eyebrow and poured herself another splash of wine. "A baby definitely changes that."
"Please don't tell me about you and Dad and how I altered your sex life," Ruby said, holding up a hand to stop her mother. "I'm not emotionally prepared for that talk."
"I'll save it for when you turn forty," Patty said wryly. “But, darling girl, you had to know that a new human being invading your space was going to change things."
Ruby shrugged and turned her back to the table as she looked out her mom's window at the backyard with its lemon and avocado trees. "I did. I just thought I was totally competent. I thought I'd breeze through pregnancy, labor, delivery, and recovery like I do everything else."
Patty chuckled. "You are a competent woman, I'll give you that, but you aren't Wonder Woman. You need to cut yourself some slack. And if you're suffering from something bigger than just lack of sleep, a doctor can help with that. There's no shame."
"I want to feel good," Ruby said forlornly. She folded her arms across her chest. "I want to look in the mirror and seeme. I want to look at Jack and see a partner, not a man who expects me to do all the changing to suit our new situation while he does none. I want to not feel exhausted every second of every day."
Patty set down her wine glass and stood up, walking over to where Ruby stood. She wrapped her arms around Ruby from behind and rested her cheek against her daughter's back. "You will feel good again. You will see yourself in the mirror again. How you view your husband from childbirth on is partially the reality of who he is, and partially what youdecideyou'll feel towards him. You will not be the first nor the last woman in history to make the conscious choice to keep loving a man when he's making it challenging to do so. And you will sleep again at night--at some point--just not yet. Let me make an appointment for you with my doctor. Please."
Ruby stood there, letting her mom hug her and feeling all the love that was flowing in her direction. It helped.
"Thanks, Mom," she said, stepping out of her embrace. "Thank you for letting us come, for helping me with Athena, and for not calling me crazy. I'll go to the doctor if you think I should."
"I definitely think you should, and I don't think you're crazy." Patty shook her head.
"I better go and feed the baby," Ruby said. "And when I'm done, I'll clean up the kitchen since you cooked dinner." It had been their routine after Ruby's father died when she was eleven: her mom worked hard as a lawyer all day, and whichever of them cooked dinner, the other would clean. It had been a fair system, and one that taught Ruby a lot about how to be a working mother who juggled everything.
"How about for tonight you let me do both, babe," Patty said, gathering dishes off the table. "We'll fall into a pattern here overthis next month, but I want you to start breathing normally again. I could feel it just now when I hugged you--you're taking shallow breaths, and you're not centered at all." Patty began to walk back into the kitchen with the serving dish of leftover chicken and baby potatoes they hadn't eaten. "Get yourself centered."
It was Patty's final word on the subject, and Ruby knew well enough to listen. For the next few weeks, she'd take deep breaths. She'd focus her thoughts and intentions. She would talk to a professional. She would rediscover her own center.
Dexter
Some of it is challenging to hear; he can't lie. Dexter is working hard to keep his journalist's hat firmly on his head rather than switching it out for the hat of the man who is falling for Ruby Hudson. But it isn't always easy to sit with her as she reads the emotionally charged words of her late husband, and it's growing increasingly difficult for him to not have personal feelings about all of it.
"What's Ruby doing now?" Dexter's cousin June asks him as he walks along the shoreline, bare feet digging into the sand. He's hung up after his call with his editor and dialed his cousin directly. Always a voice of calm and reason in his life, June is a stay-at-home mom of quadruplets with a million nuggets of wisdom to share.
"She's sitting under the umbrella still, reading," Dexter says, casting a glance back at Ruby from the edge of the water, where he's been walking and talking. He lifts a hand and waves at Ruby, who smiles and waves back from the striped towel. "I think she's having some breakthroughs with these journals, but man, Junie, sometimes I want to throw them all in the fireplace, light amatch, and just beg her to have a fresh start with me. To forget him. To pretend he never did all the crap he did to her."
"Hmm," June says. She's quiet for a moment and Dexter can imagine her sitting at the round table in her Austin, Texas kitchen, watching as her five-year-olds play quietly with educational toys in the sun-drenched living space. "So what I'm hearing you say is that you don't feel confident dealing with the baggage she's carrying?" Her words are not accusatory or unkind, June just has a way of phrasing things that feels honest.
Dexter considers this as he walks farther down the beach. "No, I don't think it's that--not entirely. I've known all along the full scope of her history, but I think watching a person wade through the wreckage of a thirty-plus year relationship is a lot. And I've never been married, Junie. I'm not a parent. I don't know some of these emotions from firsthand experience." He pauses his train of thought, but continues to walk. "I guess I feel like maybe I'm not enough of a grown up for her?"
"Psssshhhh." Junie makes a disbelieving sound. "Nonsense. You're a mature man with enough confidence and common sense for any woman. You've seen the world, and you're accomplished in your own right. I'm not going to fluff your feathers here, Dex, but trust me on this: you can handle her stuff."
Dexter wants to laugh because his cousin is, in fact, fluffing his feathers a little, but he knows that ultimately, she's right: hecanhandle Ruby's history.
"I think I might be jealous," Dexter says with a laugh of mild embarrassment. "Of Jack Hudson. He got to live a long life with a woman who I'm growing crazier about by the minute, and he got to do things with her that I never will. Which means he'll occupy a spot in her heart that I can never access."
"Like what, Dex? Have babies?" June is starting to sound exasperated. "I mean, okay, at fifty years old, Ruby is unlikely toget pregnant and give you a little Dexter Jr., but you had to know when you started this thing with her that things were never going to be conventional."
"Yes. But it's not the kid thing...not entirely."
"Okay. Can you formulate a few thoughts about what's really bugging you?"
"I just don't want to share her, I guess. I don't want to share her with the memories they had together. I don't want us to be doing something and have her say, 'Oh, I used to do this with Jack, too.' Which is selfish, but it's how I feel."
"When we fall in love with someone, we don't get to erase their pasts, Dex," June says gently. She's speaking from experience, as her own husband has been married before and has two children with his first wife, and plenty of life history that June has to contend with on a daily basis. "But I think that we probably wouldn't want to, you know? When we love someone, we love them as they are, and they're only that specific personbecauseof the things they've gone through."
Dexter feels like an idiot. He and June are the same age and have been more like friends than cousins their entire lives, but he knows she's right. "I hear you, Junebug. I do. And thank you for letting me whine about it like a big baby. And for keeping my secrets."
"My pleasure," she says just as one of her kids starts calling for Mama. "I think that's my cue to end this conversation and forget about drinking the rest of my coffee while it's still hot," June says dryly. "But call me anytime if you need to. I'll be right here, pulling bits of Play-Doh out of Bentley's hair, or making sure Heath and Margeaux aren't beating one another with drumsticks. Right now, Amanda is the only five-year-old in this house who is behaving herself," she says in a loud, pointed way that Dexter knows is meant for all four of her children to hear.
"Okay, I'll talk to you soon. High five the kids for me," Dexter says, ending the call.
