“Yep, me and Cissy.” Ruby reached down and lifted the girl to her lap.
The gesture felt like nothing. Miss Cis was whisper-light, always a new astonishment to Ruby, given all her mettle and grit.
“And of course we have Mrs. Grimsbury, too,” Ruby added. “It’s funny, my entire life I was surrounded by boys, nothing but men every which way. Rough-and-tumble rascals, Wyatt and Topper and P.J., though him less so.” She smiled. “Your husband was definitely the most gentlemanly of the three.”
“Not a high hurdle,” Mary said with a wink.
Ruby sniggered, recalling her sister-in-law’s old grievances. Yes, indeed, Topper was handsome as the devil. Acts like the devil, besides.
“All those men,” Ruby said, “and now I look around and it’s only the women who endure.”
Mary set down her teacup, nodding grimly.
“Do you ever talk to your old friend Hattie?” she asked.
“No, God no,” Ruby said.
She wondered if Mary had seen the article. Probably not, having been overseas.
“That’s quite the ardent response,” Mary said as a ripple of discomfort passed over her face.
“I didn’t mean it like that. She’s a journalist. Hadn’t you heard? Quite a success from the looks of it.”
“How nice,” Mary said primly. “And what about Sam?”
“Sam?”
The name was an arrow straight to the chest.
“Yes, Sam,” she said. “Have you spoken?”
Mary appeared so much the same. The gray, the plainness. Ruby could almost hear her old friend-come-traitor Hattie R. You know Mary joined the army because it gave her an excuse to wear all that beige. Yet, somehow the gal had new sparks. Like a certain directness, a drive to get to the nut of things in one swift move.
“There’s been no contact at all,” Ruby answered. “Not since the day Sam left. I wouldn’t even know where to find him, or what to say if I did. He has no idea about Cissy.”
She thought of the items packed away. Sam’s suits, pressed and wrapped and relegated to the guesthouse. Their wedding china, boxed up and shoved on to the linen closet’s highest shelf. She’d stored scads of crystal and silver, too, gifted to them for parties they’d never host. It seemed cruel to throw out such considerate presents, but all those pretty things were too painful to allow among the everyday.
“Really?” Mary’s eyes widened. “He doesn’t know about Caroline? Don’t you think he should? She’s his daughter.”
“Maybe.” Ruby shrugged. “I don’t know. He sent me a postcard, way back, after he read about Daddy’s death. It was postmarked Manhattan and I came within an inch of hiring a PI to track him down. I was alone and distraught and starting to miscarry, or so I assumed. Then the storm hit and all communication went down. When we came out on the other end, I decided to let that dog lie.”
“And his parents?” Mary asked. “Surely they know.”
Ruby shook her head.
“They don’t either. Rather, they might, depending on your view of the afterworld. Both passed in the last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, it was properly awful.”
Ruby didn’t admit to the details. Sam’s mother died of a heart attack. His father, a gunshot wound to the head. He couldn’t face life as a widower, or as the father to one son killed in battle, and a second son who wasn’t allowed to battle anymore.
“Would you care to contact him?” Mary asked. “Sam? Now that Caroline’s arrived? Whatever he’s become, he would want to meet his daughter. He loved his family. He’d love her.”
“The man was not short on love, giving or receiving.”
Ruby set Cissy down and grabbed a cigarette. She offered one to Mary, who waved her away.
“I quit ages ago,” she said. “As it happens, smoking would be a great habit to have when you’re at war. I often regret that unforeseen bout of healthfulness.”
Ruby laughed.
“Are you truly ready?” Mary said. “To surrender the idea of a genuine family?”
“I’m not sure that I have a choice. And some days I do want Sam here, with us. Yet others I think, to hell with him. We are a family. She and I.”
Ruby took a big old smack of her cigarette.
“A girl should have her father, if she can,” Mary said.
“I don’t disagree,” Ruby said, thinking of her own. “But even if I wanted to find him, I wouldn’t know where to look.”
Mary nodded slowly and let her eyes drift out to the grass beyond.
“I’ve been keeping track,” Mary said after some time. “Of Sam. Just in case.”
“What?!” Ruby gasped.
She nearly dropped her smoke onto Cissy’s head.
“Just in case,” Mary repeated. “It’s not that difficult to learn such things, with my position in the armed forces.”
Ruby looked at her cross-eyed. What kind of dirt could an army gal gin up on a guy booted from the navy?
“I know some folks in intelligence,” Mary added.
Unbeknownst to Ruby, Mary had met an intelligence officer here and there and even engaged in a brief fling with one. But most of her intelligence on Sam Packard came from a plucky news reporter in Manhattan who made it her job to keep tabs on him.
“Okay, then,” Ruby said and cleared her throat. “Is he well?”
“Relatively speaking,” Mary explained. “He was in San Francisco for a while, then hanging around the Seven Seas locker room in San Diego. Last check had him in New York City staying at the Sloane House YMCA and drinking—a lot—at the Pink Elephant in Times Square. ‘Well’ might be a subjective term, but he is alive and, er, active in whatever city he lands.”
“Wow,” Ruby said. “Wow.”
She could find him. If she wanted to. Of course, whether she wanted to was the very question.
Ruby craved her old life and her old Sam, no question. More than that, she longed for a real family, since the vagaries of Ruby’s woman parts meant Cissy would be an only child. And Ruby knew from experience that a life without siblings was a lonely one. The least she could do was give her sweet sprite a dad.
“Whaddya think?” Mary asked. “Want me to track him down?”
“Maybe,” Ruby said, and glanced at Cissy. “Maybe. It’s just too damned hard to decide.”
*
They stood on the bright white driveway, two bags at their feet. Mary had on her full dress uniform: a light beige skirt, a darker beige jacket. A taxi rumbled on the street.
“Thanks for coming,” Ruby said, and gave her a squeeze. “It means everything that you’d take a furlough just to see me.”
“I had to meet little Caroline,” Mary said. “She’s even more precious than expected. Plus, I needed one more Cliff House hurrah.”
Ruby smirked, wondering when there’d ever been a hurrah with the broad to start.
“I’ll miss the old house,” Mary said.
“Miss it!” Ruby quacked. “What do you mean? You can always come back. Always! When I picture this place, I see you inside. It’s yours as much as mine.”
The skin between Mary’s brows became pinched and tight.
“But Ruby,” she said in her measured Mary tone. “P.J. is gone.”
“You’re still family though! You’re still a Young!”