She was inside, through a sliding glass door, wide awake and choosing between waffle flavors, sundress and boots on. Her legs were gleaming and I couldn’t see any trace of dirt. The memory of caked mud was so out of place now, I wondered if I’d dreamed it.
“Buttermilk or blueberry?” she asked me. “You get first pick.”
“Blueberry,” I said without a second thought. “So did you hear? About the keys?”
“I heard.” She popped two waffles into the toaster and watched the coils go red. She pushed aside a stack of shoe catalogs and unopened envelopes on the table so I’d have room for a plate. She somehow wrangled up a clean fork, but only one, so one of us would have to eat the waffle with our fingers.
“I wish I could give Pete his keys,” she said, “since that would get rid of him faster.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because.” She held out her fists to show me. She opened each one to reveal her palm. On which, in both cases, there was no key.
“They fell,” she said. “The keys. They’re gone.”
“Fell where?”
The toaster gave a sharp ping, and at that Ruby turned to retrieve the waffles. Mine, she put on a plate; hers, she nibbled at from the empty palm of one hand, her mouth soon stuffed so full, she couldn’t possibly answer.
I ate my waffle and decided not to push further. I didn’t want her to say it, didn’t want to know for sure where she went out walking last night.
Finally she stopped chewing and said, “I wonder what he’s going to do about those keys.” She licked some crumbs off her fingers. “Poor Petey. He was one of my very first boyfriends—you remember. The first of them all, actually. Maybe I should go apologize or something. Make nice.”
I nodded, though she didn’t move for the door.
“Speaking of boyfriends . . .” she said. “I guess you met Jonah?”
I nodded once more but didn’t comment.
“He’s good with his hands, huh?”
I made a face.
“He’s useful, Chlo. Don’t you go and be mean to him yet. So who else is out there? I don’t want to let them see me till I know.”
“Some guy, Pete’s friend, I dunno. And . . . and I guess, uh, yeah, I saw Pete’s brother, Owen, out there with them, too.”
The heat of my cheeks warmed the kitchen, like she’d left the oven on. I wasn’t sure if she noticed.
Ruby never got this kind of heat in her cheeks. She didn’t have to stop short inside a doorway to catch her breath after she’d been standing near someone. Didn’t pause longer than she should, wondering if he’d followed her. Pause a long time wondering, until it was clear he wasn’t following, because why would he? Boys didn’t follow me the way they did my sister. A boy once followed her around town for miles, tailgating her car and trailing her cart in the supermarket, and when she whirled around to ask what he wanted, he said he only wanted to say hi.
Come to think of it, maybe that had been Pete.
Ruby headed for the door and slipped out. She was gone for awhile. She was gone long enough for me to shower and get dressed and put on a dab of her lipstick and make myself a second waffle. She was out there for so long that I wondered if maybe she wanted me to join her and I’d missed the signal or something.
But then I looked out the great window in the living room, a window as wide as the room itself and showing the full expanse of the reservoir as if our whole world was made of it. There, in the backyard, were Pete and Pete’s friend and Pete’s brother and Jonah, and they were all working together, lifting boards of wood in an assembly line, apparently inspired to do some work on the veranda.