Then she saw the note on the counter by the sink, held in place under a glass.
“Olivia” was written on the front. Ruby’s penmanship was the opposite of Ben’s, the kind Olivia’s mother would call “chicken scratch.”
Olivia unfolded the note and read it. The message was simple and clear:
I am so sorry, but I just couldn’t do it. Please don’t hate me.
Love,
Ruby
PS. I’m not in labor or anything, so don’t worry about me like that.
When the phone rang and Olivia answered it, she heard Winnie’s voice.
“Do we have a baby yet?” Winnie asked.
“No,” Olivia said.
“Isn’t this D-day?”
“She’s gone,” Olivia blurted. “She changed her mind and left.”
“You mean she took the baby?”
“I mean she’s keeping it,” Olivia said.
Winnie tried to sort it out: “Where did she go? Should we call the police? Didn’t she already sign those papers? Olivia? Olivia, are you okay? Maybe you should just come home.”
But Olivia could only think of how much those nouns still hurt.
She thought, Home. Baby. Ruby.
Olivia drove to Jake Maxwell’s house. It looked different in the daylight. There was a splendid stained-glass window that, Olivia noticed as she climbed the stairs to the front door, caught the sunlight and sparkled, amber, blue, and gold. She rang the doorbell, clutching the papers with Ben’s signature, even though she knew they were worthless.
When Jake answered the door and saw her there, he looked more suspicious than surprised.
“She’s gone,” Olivia told him.
Jake opened the door wider and motioned her inside.
“I don’t suppose she ever signed those papers?” he said. Then he added, “Not that it matters now.”
Olivia saw a woman standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing a man’s robe. It was the woman from Amy’s Fourth of July party, probably the same woman he’d tried to have a baby with. The on-again, off-again girlfriend, clearly on-again.
“Shit,” Olivia said.
Jake followed her gaze over to Patricia and said, “We’ve got some business to discuss.”
When Patricia didn’t move, Jake did, taking Olivia by the elbow and leading her into one of the parlors. The walls were pink, like cotton candy.
“You know,” Jake told her, “she might just be scared. Need some time to think things over. I’ve seen it happen. The birth mother changes her mind one way, then the other.”
“And where does she end up?” Olivia asked.
Jake shrugged. “I’ve seen it go both ways.”
“Shit,” Olivia said again.
“I wish I could do something.”
“Why?”
“The thing is,” Jake said, “I like you. And I want—”
Olivia put her fingers against his lips to quiet him. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t want anything. I don’t want anything.”
That night, when the quiet of the house grew too loud, Olivia drove to the A&W.
She did that every night for three nights.
The teenagers were still there, in the far corner of the parking lot, stoned and pierced, frightening. But Ruby was not one of them.
When Olivia asked if they had seen her, waving twenty-dollar bills at them, they laughed. One of the boys, a tall, skinny one with a ponytail hanging out from under a captain’s hat, grabbed at the money.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Olivia told him.
“Whoa,” someone said. “Tough lady.”
After that, she stopped going.
On the fourth night without Ruby, Olivia called Jake Maxwell. He wasn’t there, so she left him a message. “I lied,” she said. “I want everything. I want it all.”
“Dear Amanda,” Olivia wrote over and over, starting a new letter each time. “Dear Amanda.” But she could not for the life of her think of what to say to the girl. She just wrote “Dear Amanda” and stared at the blank paper until she gave up and threw it away.
In the middle of the night, when the phone rang, Olivia hoped it was Ruby. She hoped it was Jake. She hoped it was good news.
“Olivia?” Winnie said, her voice shrill and high. “It’s a girl. My water broke and all of a sudden there was the worst fucking pain I’ve ever felt and the next thing I know, we’re in a cab racing to Beth Israel and I’m screaming, ‘Give me drugs!’ But it was too late. The whole thing took under three hours and I’ve got a daughter! A baby girl! Aida, like the opera. What do you think?”
Although Olivia made all the right noises of excitement and asked all the right questions—“How much does she weigh? Does she have hair?”—what she really thought was that she wanted Ruby back even more.
On the fifth night, when there was a knock on the door, Olivia jumped to answer it. Ruby was back and Olivia was going to keep her. The thought took Olivia’s breath away. Keep Ruby? She realized that it wasn’t so much the baby she missed; it was Ruby herself. Somehow, the girl had become her family. Somehow, the girl had gotten her through these months.
But it was Jake Maxwell at the door.
“You called?” he said.