AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Patty had given her a throaty, amused laugh. “Honey, you aren’t marrying a shoe salesman from Encino—you’re marrying a state senator. This was to be expected.”
Ruby turned back around and faced her own reflection in the mirror. Maybe it had been expected by everyone else, but not by her. Not like this. She felt like crying that day as she imagined herself stumbling drunkenly down the aisle of the massive church, but instead of handing her mother’s drink back and stopping herself from getting tipsy, Ruby drank the rest and then inhaled a long, deep breath.
“Picture time,” Ruby had said, waving off a makeup artist who wanted to contour her cheeks a bit more. “Let’s go get this done.”
Patty had laughed with mirth and followed her daughter out of the dressing room.
The tea is cooling at Ruby’s elbow now, but she wants to read more—to remember more—from this time of her life.
It had been such a whirlwind! Such a time of change! In the span of a year, she’d gone from a young commercial actress, bustling around Los Angeles in her Honda Civic and fighting for gigs, going to the beach with friends, and subsisting on sushi and egg salad sandwiches, to a woman who was married to a senator. In the blink of an eye, she’d stopped letting the sun lighten her hair through the sunroof of her car, and had instead started going to Maxxx (yes, three Xs) in Beverly Hills so that he could streak her hair with honeyed strips and trim it into a classic bob. She’d traded in her cutoffs, her clunky Doc Martens, and her Honda for linen pants with silk blouses, Louboutin pumps, and a Lexus. She'd been afraid to let him see the small tattoo on her hip, but instead of looking at it with displeasure, the first time they'd lain in bed together Jack had traced it with one finger, looking at her with surprise and delight.
While Ruby had spent her life to that point as a book-loving girl who preferred the beach to the mall, it had been a fairly easy transition for her, given her new position as a senator's wife. It had felt to her as though she'd been biding her time until Jackcame along and showed her how to be a wife; how to put the simplicity of youth behind her and become a woman.
October 20, 1998
The wedding was beautiful and well-attended, but the honeymoon so far is even better. I surprised my bride with a trip to Bali, and while Ruby had at first seemed hesitant to spend ten days in a house with a butler and a chef, she has fallen easily into the routine here, sleeping in an open-air bedroom filled with bamboo furniture and netting, rising to a strong coffee fixed for her by Ina, the chef, and then wandering the beach all morning in a sarong, listening to the waves and sitting down to read a book in a hammock in the afternoon. Much to her surprise, this life seems to suit her, and of course I love seeing her happy and content.
I've been giving some thought to what I hope to offer as a husband. My own father was a hard man in so many ways, and all I observed from him and my mother was a grudging acceptance of one another. Passion? Never. Laughter? Rarely. For my wife, I want to only bring my best. I want to come home with stories from my day that entertain her. I want to bring her flowers on random occasions and catch her off-guard. I want to always feel the same fervor that I feel for her now, even when time takes its inevitable toll, adding fine lines to her smooth skin, folds in her stomach where (hopefully) our children will have lived and grown, and even the grays that will shoot through her blonde hair eventually. I can see it all, and I already love it all.
Unlike a younger man, I don't feel the same pressing claustrophobia that comes with committing to one woman; to me, this is a gift and not a curse. In securing my bonds with this amazing woman, I am not only promising to love andtake care of her, I'm also building a lifetime commitment, a friendship that will endure even when times get hard (which they undoubtedly will), and a deep, abiding love that will, with any luck at all, result in a partnership that takes us both into old age.
As I write this, sitting on the polished teak deck of this Balinese home amidst the lush, jungled treetops, I can see her walking up the path in her sarong and flip-flops, holding her hair back from her sweaty neck. She is so beautiful. Ruby. My Ruby.
Ruby closes the journal at the end of this entry. This is enough for now. This is enough reminiscing about the wildness she and Jack felt when they'd realized how intensely they felt for one another. This is enough of recalling the way they fit their lives together with intention, sharing goals, hopes, and promises for the future. It feels good to remember how much he'd loved her, and in a way, these words remind Ruby that she hadn't been blind, hadn't been some idiot who tricked herself into believing that a man had truly loved her--he had, and it's completely evident.
But reading his words hurts, too--even the good memories hurt. Remembering what they'd had and ultimately lost is painful in a way that somehow stingsmorethan the diary entries she'd read about Etienne and Julien. Readingthosewords strips her bare and leaves her wondering who the hell she was even married to, but readingthesewords reminds her who she was married to; it lets her mourn the man she actually knew.
Ruby walks her tea mug to the sink and pours the tepid water out, setting the empty mug on the counter.
It's the middle of the night in Canada where Harlow is camping with friends, and it's still quite early in the U.K., whereAthena is staying in London, visiting museums and spending time with Marigold Pim's sweet son, but Ruby picks up her phone and opens her group chat with her daughters.
I just want you both to know how loved and wanted you were, are, and will always be. You are the light of my life, and I think the world of you as my girls, and as amazing young women who are out there conquering the world. I love you.
Ruby knows that neither of her daughters have ever questioned for one moment whether they were loved and wanted, but it never hurts to hear it. And, furthermore, it never hurts to say it.
She turns out the kitchen light and walks back upstairs to her bedroom, where Dexter has slept through the entire storm.
Etienne
Etienne is in Paris for a meeting with a woman who wants to write a story about her enduring love affair with Jack Hudson. Etienne does not want anyone to write a story about her enduring love affair with Jack Hudson. Etienne wants Jack Hudson to simply be alive, to be flying in soon to visit her and their son, to be reading things aloud in the passable French that he'd acquired over the years, to be laughing at her mixed idioms and forgotten English phrases. She wants to watch him walking down the lane in a village in Bordeaux next to Julien, talking to the boy about life, about flying airplanes, about books.
But instead, Etienne rises early, orders a tray of strong coffee and croissants from room service, and sits before the vanity mirror to put on a face mask and to think.
This request for a meeting has thrown her for a loop. She's recently spoken to Dexter North, which is somehow different from this; Dexter is working with Ruby on an official biography, and she's met the man, let him stay in her home, even. She trusts that Dexter will take care to present both her and, especially, Julien in a good light. There's no avoiding the topic of herexistence or of her son's, but Dexter will find a way to make it factual rather than sensational. Etienne has put her faith in this.
The woman who reached out to her and invited her to Paris is called Lou Perot. She is known for her intense, provocative exposés on a variety of topics, and the magazine she is working for has offered Etienne a hundred thousand dollars to lay her soul bare for Lou Perot to pick at it like a crow dismantling a carcass.
Etienne's phone beeps just as the room service attendant knocks. She answers the door first and signs the check, then goes to her phone.
There is an email from Ruby, which startles her. Could Ruby have heard about this discussion with Lou Perot? Of course she could have--anything is possible. Etienne pours herself a coffee, stirs in cream, and then opens the email as she sits on the foot of her unmade bed in nothing but a satin dressing gown.
From: Ruby Hudson
To: Etienne Boucher
Etienne--
I assume you know that Jack kept detailed diaries for the majority of his life. He started early in his teenage years, and maintained a vivid and lively correspondence with himself up until his death. I knew him to write daily in his journals, and saw him do it many times; I would imagine you observed this too.
