JUNE
Ruby and Nick are by the window.
Griff and I are by the door.
We are the room.
Ruby screams, “Thea!” with such force I am afraid she will accidentally take Nick’s head off. Panic explodes through his face; he quiets every muscle with visible effort, forcing himself from tippy-toe heaves to flat-footed deep breaths.
Griff, eyes on Ruby, says to me, “You shouldn’t be here.”
Scottie must have started searching the basement.
I deconstruct my previous theory and try to fathom how Ruby—the closest person I’ve had to a mom for years—could hurt Nick. Hurt anyone. Ruby, as the Gemini Thief.
I don’t know what I’ve interrupted, but that can’t be what this is. I swivel toward Griff, begging for a silent explanation. Tears fall from his chin.
“Honey, let Nick go.”
Agitated, eyes flying from door to gun to Griff, she says, “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
Griff dumps buckets of love into two words. “You can.”
“It’s too late. Chris . . . ,” she cries, and as she heaves, the gun jabs Nick’s skull. His shoulders curl away from her.
“Hey . . .” Griff’s hands are outstretched, pleading. “I promise you can. You always let your June Boys go, right? You take those boys to love them, right? Love them the way their parents don’t. Help fill the holes in their lives. That’s good-hearted”—and completely psycho—“and letting Nick go would also be good-heart—”
“Shut up!” Ruby taps the gun. Metal clicks against bone. “Shut up!” she says again, her voice rising.
A screech rebounds around the room. I don’t realize I’m the one making the noise until the words empty from my mouth. “Why? Why would you do this?”
Griff pats the air in warning. “Don’t. You’ll set her off,” he says. I can’t tell Griff’s involvement, but there’s no doubt he’s shielding me with his body.
He addresses his wife again. “Honey, let Nick go. Nick’s not a June Boy.”
“Neither was Tank. But Aulus needed him after . . .” She’s not making sense. “Doesn’t matter now. Dead boys. Dead boys. I should have fed them. I didn’t feed them.” Her tone flattens. “I’m dead too.”
Griff inches slightly forward. “You’re not. Warren said Chris drowned. His ribs were broken from someone trying to resuscitate him. Was that you?”
Her shoulders drop, the gun wobbles momentarily. “That was Aulus. All Aulus. I left them down there in the flood. I didn’t know the bunker would leak. Fill. I didn’t—” She’s dissolving, the gun’s shaking.
In her own way, she loved Chris and she’s mourning his loss. While we have her attention diverted, I chime in. “Ruby, I know you’d never hurt Chris on purpose.”
“You do?” she asks like a child on the first day of school, full of uncertainties.
“Of course,” Griff agrees and nods at me.
“Absolutely,” I say. “You are always kind.”
“But I’m not,” Ruby says. “I took them because I wanted them. I wanted to take more. Save more.” She looks dead at me. “I even wanted to take you.”
Nick’s eyes dart toward the floor. He wants to duck under Ruby’s grip. He might have been able to if Scottie hadn’t arrived, gun drawn, letting fly a string of curses and threats.
We are right back in the danger zone.
Ruby’s more rattled than ever. She stares at her husband, me, Scottie’s gun. She says a single word, “Can’t.”
The sirens wheeze their arrival from the street.
I raise my voice over the noise. “Why not?”
Ruby pitches forward, her weight on Nick. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” she says, almost apologetically. She lifts Nick’s chin with the gun. “Stop right there, Griff.”
Griff, who has been advancing in baby scoots and shuffles, stops. “Honey, I’d never hurt you. Let Nick go. Tell us where Aulus and the others are. This will be okay.”
“Please,” I beg. “Are they still alive?”
“Dead boys,” she says, her sadness profound. “And I only took him because you were back.” She spits this accusation at Scottie. “He pulled me aside. Me. Showed me a pill bottle and said you’d showed up and wanted to be part of his life again, and then you disappeared. He wanted to search for you. I couldn’t let him waste his life on someone as miserable as you.”
Monsters don’t always look like monsters on the outside, and maybe they’re not always monsters, but this is a horrific thing Ruby has done, and done, and done, and done. Boys are dead.
I hear the billboards from I-65. The Gemini Thief could be anyone. Your father, your mother, your best friend’s crazy uncle. Some country music star’s deranged sister. Anyone. Someone’s stealing Tennessee’s boys. Report suspicious behavior.
The Gemini Thief could be the person who does your laundry and makes you mac and cheese and slathers you with sunscreen on the way into Holiday World.
She could be your Ruby.
“You wanted babies, didn’t you?” Griff asks softly.
Ruby brushes sweat from her forehead with her arm. “Boys. I was going to have so many boys.”
“And it’s my fault we couldn’t,” he says. “My fault we lost Tony. I should have been there to take you to the hospital.”
Tony? I’ve spent hours, days, even weeks at Griff and Ruby’s, and I don’t know a single Tony story. Dad never said they’d lost a child. I never noticed a gap in their two-person family. In fact, Griff used to tease me, saying, Send that rascal home. But now I see a couple who surrounded themselves with other people’s children. I remember streaks of blue paint near the ceiling of my room at their house and Ruby lifting me to the bathroom sink as a child, brushing my hair, shoving her nose into the crown of my head and saying, You smell like my dreams.
“Ruby, I don’t know about Tony, but Nick’s parents love him. His sister loves him. I love him. You don’t want us to lose him the way you lost Tony, do you?”
Ruby says, “June Boys weren’t lost. I borrow them. I borrow them for a year. I love them for a year. Half the parents of those kids downstairs would thank me if I took their child off their hands.”
Scottie can’t contain himself anymore. “You crazy bi—”
“Don’t you dare judge me, Scott McClaghen. You don’t even know your son and he’s a marvel. I love that kid more than you ever c—”
Scottie lunges forward, but Griff wraps his arms around his old friend. “Slow down. Calm. Down. She’s going to tell us where the boys are. Right, honey?”
“That’s right.” Ruby taps the gun against Nick’s chin.
Nick’s quiet. Sweating, but still. Everyone takes a breath.
Nick asks, “Are they here in Wildwood?”
Ruby nods.
Griff says, “Where in Wildwood?”
Ruby’s finger dances on the trigger.
“Hey,” Griff says again. “We’re calm. No one’s getting hurt today. Not you. Not us. Not the June Boys.”
“No one’s hurt,” Ruby repeats.
“No one’s going to get hurt.”
“No one’s going to get hurt,” she parrots.
He’s doing it, he’s gonna talk her down.
Dana’s voice threads the air behind me. “Ruby Holtz, lower your weapon and release my brother.” The agent’s body is tucked against the doorframe behind me, gun raised. “You do that and tell us where the boys are, and I swear we’ll make you a deal.”
A deal.
A legal transaction that would likely put Ruby behind bars for the rest of her life.
Everyone processes the offer.
When you love someone, even the smallest muscle move—a blink, an eye darting right to left, parting lips—speaks volumes.
Griff and I see her decide.
She’d rather join Tony than go to prison.
Griff and I yell together. “Nooo!”
Dana says, “Tell me where—”
Our words overlap.
“I’m sorry,” she says in Nick’s ear and swings her gun toward Dana.
Ruby’s first shot is not the accidental result of trembling fingers; it is intentional and steady. The catalyst for the end.
Simultaneous gunshots, an eruption of sound and fury—I count one, two, three, four—and cries, bodies moving.
Nick drops to his knees, falls forward. Blood pools. His blood? Hers?
She’s standing. Holding a place near her shoulder.
Two more shots.
A third.
The room quiets—there’s hurried motion—but I hear nothing over the ringing. The tower bell? I wonder. No, the gunshots. This is such a small room.
Nick’s lying on the floor. I scream, “Nick!” like I’m yelling across a football field. The haze fades like twilight to night. “Nick,” I say, this time a whisper.
The pressure in my chest is enormous. I gasp for breath and fall. Someone’s trying to wake me up. But if I wake up, they’ll tell me what I already know. Nick’s dead. I spent this year trying to save Aulus, and my obsession got Nick killed.
“Thea.” I open my eyes a slit. Dana has blood on her face and hands. Nick’s blood. Don’t die, Nick. Please don’t die.
Dana’s face hovers, blurry and insubstantial.
“Help Nick,” I whisper.
“Thea?”
I risk opening my eyes again. Dana’s jaw shudders and I know that means Nick is dead. My head lolls. The blood on the floor pools toward me.
“Thea.”
It comes to me that the pressure on my chest is Dana. She’s jabbing her fist into my rib cage and she won’t stop. I swat at her hand and feel the haze again.
“Thea, honey . . . Hey, stay with me.”
I close my eyes.