What should she do with this information? Should she imagine that Cynthia means that she, Ruby Heartwood, in skinny jeans and a plain T-shirt, tinted moisturizer her only makeup, hair bundled into a twist, resembles this long-ago seer? Or that she, Madame Ruby, draped in gold brocade and stage makeup does? After all, Ruby modeled herself after Madame Celestine, who modeled herself after Madame somebody else in a long line of traditional psychics and seers all dressed like a dime novel depiction of a fortune-teller. Let’s face it, we do all resemble one another, she thinks, and shrugs off the shaky feeling of being on the verge of an important discovery. Cynthia could just as easily be yanking her chain. “Okay, let’s deal with the situation at hand and dwell on the possibilities later.” Ruby gathers the dog’s leash in her hand and pulls the keys to Doug’s car out of her pocket.
The dog presses her forefeet against Ruby’s thigh. “Sit. Stay.” She looks pointedly at a park bench.
“No, we need to get the bus back.” Ruby gives her a pat and points the key fob at the car to unlock it.
As they drive along Main Street, Ruby can’t help but look at all the store fronts and wonder which one had been the hippy head shop, which one might have offered the services of a part-time fortune-teller. Could it be the card shop? Or the gourmet cookware store? The froufrou baby clothes place? Or the corner store that has paperback books and bins full of plastic toys spilling out of its doors?
At the impound lot, Ruby braces herself to be told that her car has either disappeared or been wrecked, such has been her last twenty-four hours. But Cynthia has been true to her word and the guy behind the plexiglass window slides Ruby a release form to sign. “Got the keys?”
Ruby slides him her set. It gives her the willies to let anyone into her “house” without her, but she knows that he’s just doing his job. She can hear the Westfalia before she sees it, a bass note just a little noisier than usual, and she rolls her eyes. Can she please keep it on the road for just a bit longer before attending to the exhaust system?
Ruby is now one driver with two vehicles. The Dew Drop is close enough to the impound lot that she will ask Ravi if she can leave the van there until she picks up Doug in his car after school and they return to collect it. She’ll walk back to the impound lot, giving the dog a nice outing, pick up Doug’s car, and then meander over to visit with Polly. It’s on her mind to ask Polly, who has lived in Harmony Farms forever, if she has any recollection of the woman Cynthia claims to have encountered. If not Polly, then maybe Bull has an idea. He’s quiet, but well attuned to the goings on around town.
There are no cars parked in Ravi’s lot, and Ruby has to hope that the emptiness suggests only that the guests are all out enjoying the area. His vacancy sign is lit, but she refuses to look at that as a bad sign. After all, it is a weekday and unofficially the end of summer. Surely he’ll be full over the weekend if the weather continues to be as beautiful as it has been.
“Ruby, hello. Welcome back.” Ravi is alongside the well-trimmed edge of the circular garden, which now boasts a heavy concentration of begonias, a broom in hand. Leaf and plant detritus gathered in a neat pile. “I have your usual room available.”
Ruby is about to say that she’s not there to stay, and then thinks otherwise. It is for sure going to be too late to start off for New Hampshire by the time she accomplishes all the steps involved in sorting out the complications of having two cars. It was lovely last night being with Doug, but she’s not about to make that a habit she’ll have to break. “That would be perfect, Ravi.”
The room in all its slightly askew affect is comfortingly familiar. The dog jumps onto the bed as if arriving home after a long absence. She immediately flops onto her back and looks at Ruby expectantly, clearly a belly rub is in order. Ruby accommodates her, and the fluffy white tail sweeps back and forth in her ecstatic delight. “Okay, enough indulgence, my dear, get your sneakers on and let’s go.”
The Hitchhiker really only understands the word go. She jumps down from the bed and barks at the closed door, hurrying Ruby, having no idea where they might be going, but happy to be included.
The walk back to the impound lot doesn’t take long and the two of them collect Doug’s car. Ruby points it in the direction of the shelter, about ten minutes from where they are. Arriving at the shelter, the Hitchhiker balks at getting out of the car, turning gimlet eyes on Ruby.
“Sweetheart, don’t you know by now that I’ll never leave you anywhere?”
“Everyone in there believed that about their people too.”
“No, some of the animals in there got lost on their own.”
“No. Their people got lost. They forgot to find them.”
Sometimes this Vulcan mind meld of what passes for conversation between Ruby and her dog is exhausting, like arguing with a three-year-old. Which, if she thinks about it, is exactly what she is doing. “If you come in with me, there’s treats.”
Finally, a word that penetrates the little dog’s stubbornness. “Okay. Two.”
“Two.”
Ruby is pretty sure this whole reluctance thing is an act meant to earn the treats.
Polly puts the tea on the moment Ruby walks in the door. She is still beaming with the success of the fund-raiser. “Cramden’s Appliances will be delivering the washer and dryer tomorrow. I’m going to have a field day. Look.” She points to a Mt. Everest of dirty towels and bedding.
“Funny the things that make us happy.”
“You bet. I remember when I was a new bride, a new umbrella-style clothesline was the joy of my life. Can you imagine?”
“Not exactly.” Ruby doesn’t mention that having enough quarters for the Laundromat to wash Sabine’s two school dresses was often joy enough. “Hey, question for you…”
Ruby gives an edited-down version of the past day, leaving out her overnight with Doug for the moment, leading up to the question of Cynthia’s real or imagined fortune-teller. “Do you remember a hippy shop? What we used to call a head shop? With a psychic?”
Polly sets the mugs of tea down, reaches for the sugar from the shelf behind her. “Maybe. There was a shop with incense and candles, Indian print skirts. That kind of stuff. I suppose it might have been a head shop, but I never went in there. I’m well past the era of hippiedom. I was raising kids in the seventies. And they all wore clothes and shoes.”
“I sometimes believe that I should have been a part of the counterculture, but as my whole life was counterculture, I never felt the need to celebrate it.”
Full-figured Polly admits, “I did go braless for a bit. I didn’t like it.”
Ruby laughs, dunks her teabag up and down. “Where was that hippy shop, if that’s what it was. Do you recall?”
Polly considers the question. “I’m thinking the same block with the hardware store. Bet they’d remember. Heralds Hardware has been there since Harmony Farms was founded.” She shakes some sugar into her tea, tastes, shakes in some more. “Course, I bet Bull Harrison would know. He was very active around here in the late sixties, early seventies. If you know what I mean.”
“A bad habit brought back from Vietnam?”
“For a long time.”
Ruby glances at the wall clock; it’s after two. “Oops, I’ve got to go.” It wouldn’t do to be late picking Doug up from school after he’s been kind enough to loan her his car.
Polly walks Ruby out and notices the car. “I thought you got the van out of jail.”
“I did. But, well, long story. That’s why I’m in a hurry, I’ve got to return this car to its owner.”
“You mean Doug Cross?” One Volvo might look like another, but Doug’s is a distinct shade of red.
“Yes.”
“You’re a dark horse, Ruby Heartwood.”
Ruby arrives in the circular driveway of the high school a few minutes after three. She has a ready excuse for her tardiness: the highway had been bogged down by road work seemingly every three miles. Ruby wishes that she’d taken the longer, much more scenic back roads and will say so, but then she gets a text from Doug apologizing in turn for being caught up in a meeting he cannot ditch. She finds a parking space, switches to the passenger seat, lowers the seat back, and settles in to wait. She hasn’t waited for anyone in a very long time. The dog climbs over the console and onto Ruby’s lap. It isn’t unpleasant, this forced stillness. Ruby entertains herself with watching the students on their way to various after-school activities, being picked up by parents, slinging overweight book bags over their shoulders. They look so young for high schoolers. She wonders if she would have seemed that young had her life not taken the route that it did. At fifteen, Ruby was no child. She was a survivor and a summa cum laude graduate of the school of life.
Before long, her eyes begin to droop and Ruby finds herself drifting into a doze, not quite asleep, not quite awake. She is aware of the sound of cars starting, traffic in the street, voices of students grumbling about assignments, but all of that seems muted, an understory to her own patternless thoughts. She dreams voices speaking softly. She looks like you.
It’s what they always said about Sabine; but who, then, could she have possibly looked like if not her only parent? On very bad days, Ruby could sometimes see a shadow of Buck in Sabine’s jawline, the rise of her cheek.
She looked like you. Everyone says Molly looks like Sabine. Auburn hair just wavy enough. Green eyes, just a shade more turquoise than hazel. Brownish flecks. But Ruby can see her daddy in her lean athletic body, her single dimple.
She’s looking for you.
“Sorry I’m late.” Doug’s very real voice startles Ruby out of her suspended animation.
Ruby pushes the seat back upright and hands Doug his keys. “I was actually enjoying the break. It’s been a busy day.”
Through the open window, the Hitchhiker greets Doug like a returning hero, or maybe like she thought she’d never see him again. Her hind legs on Ruby’s lap, her forepaws on the open window, her tail fans Ruby’s face. She shoos the dog back into the rear of the car. Doug climbs in, pushes back the driver’s seat, and off they go, once more to Harmony Farms.
“So, how was your day?” Ruby hears herself ask this most couple-ish of questions. As if they’ve been together since forever.
“Good enough for a first day. No crises.”
“Nobody complaining about their class schedules?”
“That’s not my bailiwick. I tend to their emotional needs. Broken hearts. Broken homes. Bullying.”
“When you said counselor, I naturally thought guidance.”
“Nope. I’m a psychologist.”
“Should I call you Doctor?”
“Only people I wouldn’t lend my car to have to do that.” Doug knows detours around the worst of the road work, and they are on back country roads passing lovely old homes and farmland. Ruby sees the pretty little yellow house with the maple trees, now commencing their autumnal transformation. She points it out to Doug. “I noticed that place the night I arrived in Harmony Farms. Just perfect.”
“Oh, I’ve always loved that place. I tell you, if ever a for sale sign went up…”
“I was hoping it might be a bed and breakfast.”
Doug comes to a full stop at the T-intersection. Looks left and right. “You got your van out all right?” Turns right.
“Almost without incident.” Ruby lays out her confrontation with Cynthia. “It’s hard to imagine someone having that much animus for a complete stranger based on an experience so long ago.”
“So, she really said that you looked like this fortune-teller?”
“She did. But I think that she’s conflating me with this likely charlatan.”
“Why charlatan?”
“Because she was so specific. At least according to Cynthia. That’s hardly a true psychic’s stock in trade. We keep to shadowy pronouncements. No one wants to be blamed.”
“Pitchforks and torches?”
“Exactly. Who among us in the profession hasn’t been accused of witchcraft at one time or another?”
“I’ve never dated a witch before,” Doug deadpans. “That could explain a lot.”
“About what?”
“You put a spell on me…” Doug sings in a pretty serviceable baritone.
“Ha-ha.”
“The bigger question is, are you thinking that this woman might be related to you in some way? Based on what Cynthia said.”
Ruby waits; a left turn and then a right. The Dew Drop Inn is in sight. “Yes. I can’t help but wonder…”
“If she’s who you’ve been looking for?”
“I thought I was the psychic.”
“I’m pretty good at reading people. Kind of my job.” Doug pulls into the parking lot and into a place beside the Westfalia. “Can you bear another trip back to my place?”
“Well, you see…”
“You’re booked in here?”
“Yes. I think it’s best.”
Doug nods. “Of course. Wise.” He leans in and gives Ruby a friendly kiss. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Thanks for lending me your car. And for, well, for last night.” Ruby gets out of the car, opens the rear door for the Hitchhiker, who immediately runs around to her favorite rest area. As she shuts the passenger door, Ruby leans in. “Do you have to rush back?”
“No, ma’am.”