Chapter 8: What Ruth's House Felt Like
Ruth lived forty minutes away in a terraced house with a small garden and a dog named Pocket who was too old to do much except sleep on the kitchen tiles and thump his tail when someone came in.
She showed me to the spare room, which had a blue duvet and a lamp on the nightstand and a window that looked out onto the back garden.
It was quiet in a way that felt different from the quiet at home.
At home, quiet meant Claire was nearby and thinking.
Here it just meant it was evening.
"Bathroom's across the hall," Ruth said.
"Towels on the rail.
I'll make something to eat."
"You don't have to —"
"I want to," she said.
"Sit down when you're ready."
I unpacked my bag slowly and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the garden.
There was a bird feeder on a pole near the fence.
A robin was sitting on top of it, not eating, just sitting.
I watched it until Ruth called me down.
She had made pasta with a sauce from a jar and garlic bread from the freezer, and she put it on the table without any ceremony and poured me a glass of juice and sat across from me.
"You don't have to talk," she said.
"We can just eat."
So we ate.
Halfway through, she said, "Your mum used to eat the garlic bread first.
Before anything else.
Every time."
I looked up.
"She said if you filled up on the good part first, the rest of the meal tasted better." Ruth smiled at the table.
"It made no sense.
But she did it every time."
I looked down at my plate.
"I do that," I said.
"I know," Ruth said.
"I've seen you do it."
We were quiet for a moment.
"She would have been so angry," Ruth said.
Not loudly.
Just as a fact.
"Your mum.
She would have been absolutely furious."
I didn't say anything.
But something in my chest shifted, the way a window shifts when someone opens it in a room that's been closed too long.
"She was fierce," Ruth said.
"People didn't always see it because she was quiet about it.
But she was fierce about the people she loved."
"I don't really remember her being angry," I said.
"She saved it for when it mattered." Ruth pushed the garlic bread toward me.
"Have another piece."
I took one.
Later, when the plates were cleared and Pocket had relocated from the tiles to the rug, Ruth sat back in her chair and said, "Your dad called while you were unpacking."
"What did he say?"
"He said Claire left the house after you did.
Took Mason and Lily to her sister's."
I turned that over.
"For how long?"
"He doesn't know yet." Ruth folded her hands on the table.
"He also said he's going to speak to a solicitor tomorrow."
The word landed quietly but heavily.
"Is he going to ask her to leave?" I said.
"I think he's going to find out what his options are," Ruth said.
"He's not rushing.
But he's not waiting either."
I looked at the table.
"She said he always calms down," I said.
"Last night.
She came into my room when she thought I was asleep and she said he always calms down."
Ruth was very still.
"She said that to you?"
"She thought I was asleep."
Ruth looked at the window for a long moment.
Then she said, "I want you to remember that, Ethan.
Exactly those words.
Can you do that?"
"I already remember them."
"Good." She stood and began clearing the glasses.
"Because your father is going to need to hear that."
Outside, the garden had gone dark.
May you like
The bird feeder was just a shape against the fence now, the robin long gone.
But for the first time in three years, I went to bed without listening for footsteps.
