I smile. If Chase knew the kind of trouble I’m in, he’d kick me out of his apartment right now and lock every door and window.
“You have such a nice place here, Chase,” I say, diverting the subject. “Where are Alex’s egg-smeared plates, her trail of toast crumbs?”
“Her what?”
“Never mind. So … Alex works with kids, right?”
“Yes. Kids who need help. She’s really good at it.” Chase sighs, part resigned, part proud. “I know she doesn’t like to talk about the difficult parts of her life. I thought you might know more.”
“Have you asked her about the difficult parts?”
“Yes, but she’s not all that forthcoming.” He scratches an itch between his shoulder blades. “I do want to know her.”
I study his quarterback-stud face. Alex always went for the poster boys. This one seems like a decent-enough guy, but he has no clue who he’s living with. He’s completely out of his depth.
“So … you say you two were pretty close?” he says. “What kind of things did you get up to?”
“This and that. We grew apart as teenagers,” I say. “If you have questions, you should ask her.”
He takes his glass and places it into the sink, pressing it there for longer than he needs.
“What do you do for work?” There’s a tone in his voice. He doesn’t want a freeloader in his home.
“I wouldn’t say I’m career-oriented.”
“No? That’s interesting. Because Alex is very driven. I have this thing where I like to give everyone I know a word to describe them. It’s helpful—like a radar, or a GPS. Anyway, that’s my word for Alex. Driven.”
I drum my fingers on the counter. It’s clear his word for me is less flattering, but that’s okay. I’m used to sideways insults, and besides, his GPS is broken.
“So what? You don’t … work?” he asks.
“Not presently.” I don’t tell him about our ramshackle house in Pittsburgh, ashtrays on tables, whiskey bottles with no caps. I don’t tell him about what happened with Hal, or later with Eli. I don’t tell him any of that because none of it will help me. “Alex says you’re a ski racer,” I say.
His whole face brightens. Bingo. He can’t help himself. I’m free.
“I used to race, yes. I was kind of a big deal, to be honest, on the national team, but I blew out my knee at twenty-four, so I had to quit competing. It is what it is.”
“Oh.” I try to sound disappointed for him.
“It’s okay, it all worked out. I took four years of school in Cali for marketing and resort management. The hill here is just starting to explode, and I’m the face of all the advertisements. It’s more modeling than it is me running Powderkeg, but it’s pretty cool, all the same. Right now it’s my off-season, but I’m on billboards all over Colorado.”
“Wow,” I say because I think he wants me to be impressed. I’m tempted to ask if Alex skis, but my stomach growls and I shift in my seat. He must have heard it, too, because he opens the fridge to reveal rows of marked Tupperware and a fully stacked vegetable drawer. There’s soy milk in the side compartment. No ketchup. No beer.
“Can I make you some breakfast?” Chase asks. “Something healthy?” He looks down at my belly, which I don’t like. I instinctively rest my hand on the small bump there.
“Do you mean toast?”
“No.”
“An omelet would be great. Lots of cheese, please. Thank you.”
Chase grabs eggs and what appears to be ham, juggling both to the countertop. “So Alex said you guys grew up on a farm. That must have been pretty great. A farm in Horizon, North Dakota.” He sighs as if relaxing, but I know what’s coming. “Why did you leave?”
He’s persistent. Careful, Ruth. He really doesn’t know the basics of what went down. Or perhaps he does know, and this is a test. Maybe he wants to feel powerful, to make me say it. He’s hoping my face will crease or go pale. That I’ll act grief-stricken and traumatized. Is that what he wants? Is that what she wants? Well, I’m not playing that game: I’ve played it my whole life.
“There was a problem,” I say. “Something happened. It was better for everyone that I leave.” It was better for everyone except me.
“A problem,” he says. He slices ham with a ridiculously sharp knife, shaking his head as he does so. “You and your sister have something in common, I see. Not big on sharing details from the past. I wonder why that is.”
I blink and say nothing. When the omelet arrives, it tastes of cloth, and Chase isn’t generous with the salt. I eat silently, and as soon as I’m chewing the last bite, he whips the plate away.
“Did Alex and you decide if I could stay here?” I ask as he stashes the plate in the dishwasher.
“You need to talk to your sister.” He won’t look me in the eye. “That’s her department.”
“Her department, but your apartment. Interesting.” I cough into my hand. “I think I’ll take a shower … if that’s okay.”
He sweeps one hand in front of him, a magnanimous gesture although his expression doesn’t match it. “Knock yourself out.”
I slide off the stool, grab my bag from the hook by the front door, then creep to the bathroom, where I kneel, unpacking everything I brought with me onto the mat. A passport, outdated. A toothbrush, fuzzed with lint from the bottom of the bag. I forgot toothpaste anyway. My purse, old-fashioned. It used to be Mom’s. Eli’s Folgers coffee tin that I’ve wrapped shut with Scotch tape. A weathered old clothespin, the wood smooth as silk with R-A-W scratched into the side, that I held all the way here on the bus. And the photo, taken on the farm the summer before everything went wrong. I’m thirteen in this picture, so Alex must be eight. Pim, my brother, he’s four. It’s the summer when we were all still smiling.
I stow everything but the toothbrush and the purse back into my bag and jam it into the cupboard under the sink. She won’t find it. She’s so repulsed by me she would probably never touch my bag anyhow. Then I shower and dress in the same clothes I wore yesterday.
In the living room, Chase is sitting on the couch reading a magazine about fit people.
“I’m going to go check out the town,” I say as I hover by the front door.
He looks up but only for a second.
“Bye,” he says. “Maybe later we can have another chat.”
That’s definitely not happening. I nod and head straight out of the door.
ALEX
I texted Sully because I needed to talk. Yesterday was a brutal day, followed by a shocking night. First, Buster. Then my sister appearing back in my life out of nowhere. After I finally drifted off to sleep, leaving Ruth in the living room, I had a nightmare about the Floyd baby, that little baby boy. He was older in the dream but still in his bulging dirty diaper. In his hand was that little blue car, and in the distance a figure beckoned him toward a ravine. I couldn’t stop him from going to the stranger. And the worst part—the part that woke me with a jolt in the darkness—was that the figure in the distance was Ruth.