Since Ruby had arrived, Olivia had stopped answering her phone. Instead, she watched as the counter on the answering machine accumulated messages—three, then six, then eight. It rang and rang as Ruby watched for Olivia to pick it up. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to explain Ruby to any of them. Not yet. It would be more important to explain later, after everything with the baby was settled.
But after their slow, silent walk home from the large weathered shingled house, when the phone started to ring, Olivia simply picked it up. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t, but it was too late. There was a man on the other end, sounding relieved to hear her curt hello.
“Well, good,” the man said, instead of hello. “Now I can tell Janice you’re okay. When I told her I’d left you three messages and hadn’t heard back, she said that was impossible. She said you hate to go out.” The man lowered his voice. “To tell you the truth, she was worried sick.”
“Excuse me,” Olivia said as she watched Ruby gulp orange juice straight from the container. “Who are you?”
The man chuckled. “Oops. I was so excited to find you alive, and, well, I forgot the appropriate introductions. Pete Lancelotta. Carl’s friend.”
Olivia almost groaned out loud.
Now Ruby was watching her.
“I’m sort of busy right now,” Olivia said.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Pete said. He chuckled again. “I swore two things to Janice. One: If I found you, I’d let her know you were okay. And B: I would buy you dinner tonight. At Spain. We’ll share a paella and some sangria and call it a night.”
One and B? Olivia thought, and groaned.
“Not tonight,” she said. It was supposed to be Ruby’s last night here. Unless Olivia convinced her to stay until the baby came. Unless she convinced her to give her the baby.
Ruby had a way of staring at Olivia that was almost creepy. Olivia turned her back to Ruby, but she still felt her eyes on her.
Another chuckle. Olivia couldn’t stand chuckling. A nervous habit, maybe, but still.
“This is not optional,” Pete was saying. “I promised Janice.” Then he added, “Look, if we can’t stand each other, then at least our duty to Janice is done. Right?”
Olivia wanted to tell him she had no duty to Janice. The day she walked in front of three hundred people as a bridesmaid in emerald green taffeta with French curls that rivaled Marie Antoinette’s was the day she’d paid off any debt to Janice.
But Pete said, “See you at seven,” and hung up before she could argue.
There was Ruby, waiting. Olivia had planned a seduction of sorts—dinner out, a movie, an effort at camaraderie that would make it impossible for the girl to refuse Olivia’s offer: stay here until you have the baby. Then let me adopt the baby. She would make her strongest pitch of all: I am a good person, too. I will give this baby a family.
But now Pete Lancelotta was coming at seven and there was no time for Olivia’s grand plans.
“Going somewhere?” Ruby said, raising her eyebrows.
“No. Yes.” Olivia took a breath. “Look,” she said, “I want you to stay here. I’ll do all the things you need, make you good food and make sure you’re comfortable. Whatever it is you need. I want you to stay until you have the baby.”
They both knew how long that was: The doctor had told them Ruby was twenty-eight weeks pregnant. “I’d estimate your due date at”—he’d swung a little dial around, matching up lines and numbers, then looked up, grinning—“Labor Day. Ironic, huh?”
Olivia took a deep breath. “And if you’re going to stay here for three months, we’ve got to come clean with each other. About Ben. And everything.” Asking for the baby was harder than she’d imagined. How do you ask someone for something like that?
Ruby leaned against the wall. Olivia thought, If it wasn’t for her stomach being so big, she’d look cocky standing there like that—head tilted up, shoulders pushed back, legs apart.
“Okay,” Ruby said. “You go first.”
It’s best to just say it, Olivia decided, and did. “My husband,” she began. The words were scratchy in her throat, like broken glass, like threads of fiberglass. “He’s not away,” she said. “He’s dead. He died.”
“So your husband is dead,” Ruby said flatly, “and you want my baby.”
This startled Olivia. It was true; she did want that baby. But wouldn’t a person who thought David was in New York on business say something else? Wouldn’t a person be surprised he was, in fact, dead?
Ruby’s eyes flickered, just for an instant, toward the wall covered with fragments of Olivia’s life. How long has she known? Olivia wondered. And she realized that she could not toy with this girl. Ruby was too smart. Maybe smarter than Olivia.
“Yes. I want your baby,” Olivia said. “Yes.”
Ruby waited, expressionless.
“You don’t want it,” Olivia said. “You said so yourself.” She tried not to sound too desperate.
“Sometimes I do,” Ruby said.
“But you always say—”
“I say I’m scared. I say I wish I wasn’t knocked up. But I mean, this baby moves around inside me. You know what happened this morning? He got the hiccups. I felt them, little gasps of air.”