“But you’d wait and wait up on the widow’s walk and you wouldn’t see any skull and crossbones on the water, not for years. And that’s because they weren’t coming back, the pirate husbands. They used to drown at sea—which is what happens when you don’t take swimming lessons.” She shook her head. “In the end, I guess a wife could only hope his ghost would decide to come home and keep her company. She’d go up to the top of her house, and when she saw her husband on the wind, she’d catch him like a firefly and keep him in a jar, on the windowsill, forever. And that’s why widow’s walks were built on houses.”
It was Ruby’s favorite kind of story: where the boys lost and the girls won and got a souvenir in the bargain. It was also factually inaccurate and made no sense if you thought on it too hard.
“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,” I said.
“I didn’t say I’d catch my husband and keep him in a jar,” she said. “If I ever even have a husband.”
“Besides,” I said, pointing out at the water. “That’s not an ocean.”
“I know that,” she said softly.
The widow’s walk had been built, clearly, because she wanted to keep an eye on the water, ocean-size or no. Here, she could watch over what she said lay drowned at the bottom, as this spot was the best view in all of town.
“This patch of land used to be in Olive,” Ruby said, jolting me by saying its name aloud. “Before the suits in New York City said there was no such place anymore because they were erasing it. Right up this hill and halfway down the driveway: Olive. Not anymore, of course. Can you believe we’re standing in Olive right now, Chlo? Isn’t it funny how you’d never even know?”
“I guess,” I said. Each time she said its name—Olive—I felt a sharp tug. I had to step away from the railing, sure I’d tip over. Sure I’d fall.
She’d forgotten about doing the braids in my hair like she used to when I was a girl. Instead, she began another one of her stories, telling me again about the people who wouldn’t go. How the city bought up their land and forced them to tear down their houses and move someplace else—and some people, they refused. Because who says? Who says they could come up here with their bags of money and make our town their bathtub? She was getting worked up now, saying she understood why they wouldn’t leave.
None of this was new and yet, somehow, with the reservoir at my back and the wind spooling out my hair, I felt like I was hearing it for the first time. Really hearing it.
Her eyes glimmered at the idea of the loyal people who refused to abandon the town where they were born and raised. These were Ruby’s people. This was practically her town. She wouldn’t have been a pirate gone off to pillage vast oceans; she would have been one of those who stayed.
She startled me by telling a part of the story I’d never heard before. Maybe she was making it up, right here, on the spot. Inventing it piece by piece, and girl by girl—for me.
“Back then there were these two girls,” she said. “One was the big sister and one was the baby sister, and of course the big sister was the one who took care of them both, because there was no one else to do it, you know?” I did know. She kept going. “The people of Olive didn’t understand how close the sisters were. They were jealous. Most people don’t have another person who’d do anything for you. Anything. Most people, in the end, really are all on their own.”
“Didn’t the girls have a mother?” I asked.
“I’ve got no idea,” she said dismissively. “Probably she died. Consumption. Fever. Mountain lion. I don’t know.”
I kept quiet.
“The sisters had the same dad though. That’s why they looked so much alike. Their dad . . . guess who he was. Someone important. The mayor of the whole town.”
“Really?” I watched her warily. “Who was he?”
“You know Winchell’s Corners, on the way to the high school?” That was a lone intersection on Route 28 made up of a pizzeria, an antique store that I was sure had closed, and a traffic light. Ruby tended to ignore all existence of the traffic light, so we always sped right through.
I nodded.
“That was named for him. Mayor Winchell, the last known mayor of Olive. He died before the town got demolished, and no new mayor came after. Once he was gone, the two girls were left all on their own. No one in town would help them—jealous, like I said. The big sister knew she had to take care of her baby sister, because no one else could be trusted to do it.”