Quintin Edwin Bass was Marnie’s baby, named for her cousin, Edwin Ryan, who was killed by “friendly fire” during the last days of the Gulf War. His death precipitated the family’s decision to move out of Oakland, away from the home wars of gangs and crime to a ramshackle house in Idaho that Marnie’s husband had inherited. They would go there. Accustomed as they were to the mores of the Bay Area, they believed “folks were folks,” meaning they were hopeful as they packed up their household and set out. The adjustment was difficult, especially for the three children. Only after a swastika appeared on their mailbox did the community rally. Sunday sermons were delivered, the town council passed a proclamation of tolerance, and the schools held special assemblies. Marnie and Ian became a welcome sight. They made good friends. Marnie was elected to the school board.
Shortly after they arrived in Salmon, Marnie received a letter from a woman who called herself Edwin’s wife. She described their brief romance, the rash decision to marry, and later after Edwin left for Iraq, the discovery she was pregnant. She now lived in a village in northern New Mexico with Ruby Rosen Ryan, Edwin’s daughter.
Kate wrote, I want Ruby to know her father’s family.
“If Edwin was married, he’d have let us know,” Marnie told her husband. “He would have brought her home, white or any color. It wouldn’t have been a problem. They were already used to you.”
Marnie wrote back, Come visit us anytime.
A couple of months later, Kate appeared in a battered Datsun station wagon with a playpen in the rear of the vehicle, a string of diapers hung to dry around a makeshift roof-rack, and chubby island-brown Ruby. When Marnie saw them, her doubts fell away. Ruby looked exactly like Edwin.
For several summers, Kate and Ruby visited the Bass family in their large accommodating clapboard house, part Victorian and part improvisation with a spacious kitchen, two small bedrooms, a parlor downstairs, and a roomy attic with bunk beds that served as a dormitory for the children. A screened porch wrapped around the sides of the house where eating and socializing took place, weather permitting.
When Quinn was eleven, they moved back to California. Marnie tried to keep the house in Salmon rented out but there had been no occupants in a year. At the end of his first year of college, Quinn headed to Idaho to fix the roof, replace the broken windows, paint the interior, and clear the overgrown yard.
Half asleep, he lay on the porch’s daybed, inhaling honeysuckle and fresh-mown grass, daydreaming.
“What the hell!” he jumped.
Beside him was a spooky version of Ruby, older, taller, hollow-eyed with a cap of fuzz for hair. She’d traveled forty hours from Albuquerque to Twin Falls, changing buses in Denver and Salt Lake.
“Ruby?” he whispered.
“Quinn, it’s me.”