The house was cool and dark. A candle burned by the bed, splashing shadows on the walls. When dry lightning flashed, the walls turned silver, the silence broken by bass rumbles in the canyon. Later, it would rain again, soaking the linens on the line.
Kate had tidied the house, thrown out Troy’s socks, scrubbed away the noxious remains of Ruby’s crisis.
Snuggling into the pillow, Ruby said, “Tell me a story.”
The request was a sad reminder that Kate hadn’t felt needed by her daughter in a long, long time.
“Tell me a story about daddy,” she said, pushing her hip into Kate’s side.
Kate closed her eyes. She tried to bring Edwin to mind. There wasn’t a clear picture or story but once she started, the story would probably come.
“When your daddy was a little guy with Bepop and Memaw,” she said.
Ruby closed her eyes. She could see Bepop and Memaw on their porch in West Oakland. She’d last visited when she was ten. She loved the water, the bridges, the ships chugging across the bay.
“Your daddy loved to fish,” Kate said. “Even in the short time I knew him, if he had a free minute, he wanted to fish. I always thought fishing was an excuse to do nothing, but he educated me. He thought it was an art form.”
Ruby dozed to the sound of her mother’s voice. Her father was the precious missing piece of herself. Edwin Ryan, Edwin Ryan, Edwin Ryan. She used to scribble the name everywhere as a way to make him present.
“I believed I had to hold myself up,” Kate said warily.
Ruby lay still. Sleep slipped over her.
“I was heavy like you, Ruby. My mind was heavy like yours. It weighed a ton. I didn’t know then but I know now. The earth holds us up. Hear me, Ruby? Not our legs or will power or gods but the earth itself if you let it.”
Thunder pealed inside the night as the summer rain rinsed and wrung out the air like a giant sheet. There was deep silence. Out of the silent room, a small voice whispered, “Did you love him?”
Kate was startled from sleep herself.
In a voice even smaller, Ruby asked again, “Did you love him?”
“I loved him,” Kate sighed painfully.
Ruby didn’t let go. “Did you love him?”
It was hard for Kate to remember. Hard to separate what was fact from fabrication, the man from the young soldier.
“I got you,” Kate said. “That’s how much we loved. We made you.”
Ruby beamed. The answer pleased her. She was an embodiment of love: caramel skin, swampy green eyes, passion for water, a restless nature like her father. Ruby could claim she was almost all Ryan.