Winnie had taken Olivia’s life. The one she was supposed to have had with David.
Olivia’s gaze settled on the stretched-out macramé bag that Ruby had left hung across the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Upstairs, the girl slept so soundly that Olivia had actually waited in the doorway of her room, watching until she saw Ruby’s chest rise and fall. The last thing Olivia needed was a dead runaway. But Ruby was alive, even emitting a tiny snore before Olivia had made her way downstairs.
The bag, Olivia thought as she picked it up, could be from her own teenage closet. She’d had a belt made from the same stuff, with two cheap round metal circles for looping the ends through. It felt familiar in her hands, the bumpy texture, the bulky weight of it. The inside was lined with cheap shiny material that had been stained red from a spill of some kind. Olivia glanced up at the ceiling, waiting for a sound of Ruby waking. But the house was still and quiet.
“I have a right,” Olivia explained to the empty room before she plunged her hand into the bag. “After all, a person could go to jail for harboring a runaway. For being an accessory.”
An accessory to what, she wasn’t certain. The word conjured Winnie, who had told her the last time they’d talked that citrus colors were in style now, and Jackie O sunglasses, and small handbags shaped like flowers. Winnie, who, along with Jeff, the investment banker, was living Olivia’s life with the perfect accessories. She had bought a country house in Rhinebeck. She had started to take yoga for pregnant women. They had bought a station wagon to drive back and forth to their house in Rhinebeck.
Olivia took a deep breath, then looked through the bag in earnest. She remembered her own outrage and betrayal at her mother looking through her things when she was Ruby’s age. But the memory didn’t stop her from snooping herself. Her mother had feared all the stories going around about teenagers smoking marijuana and taking the pill. “I have a right,” her mother had said, indignant.
She hadn’t found anything in Olivia’s drawers or pockets; Olivia had been smarter than that. Apparently, so was Ruby. Two tubes of cheap lipstick, a pot of Carmex, a broken emery board, some loose pennies and a few French francs jangling around at the bottom of the bag. There was an address book, a cheap Hallmark giveaway, with all the names and phone numbers written in a loopy childish hand. Olivia flipped through the pages, but the name Ben did not appear there.
When a folded piece of paper fell out, Olivia opened it almost gleefully. She was disappointed to recognize it as a snippet of an Elizabeth Bishop poem that the girl had copied down: “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here …” Olivia tucked it back into the book, then continued her search. Her hand settled on another square object that could be yet another address book. But when she pulled it from the bag, she saw that it was a wallet, the kind one might give a child as a toy. Small and pink plastic, with a cracked image of the Brady Bunch on it, bulging with school photos of adolescents.
A fortune from a fortune cookie read: “You are special and will travel far.” A daily horoscope cut from a newspaper: “Keep your eyes open today, Aquarius! You and your soul mate will cross paths!” Some mimeographed lavatory passes. Half of a letter setting up an appointment with the principal: “… unexcused absences, cutting classes, and persistent tardiness.” Olivia smiled in spite of herself. She thought of the term wayward teen, of movies of the week. With some makeup and better clothes, Ruby could star in one of those, and then she’d turn out all right in the end.