Before You Knew My Name (79)

Lizzie has long since stopped talking about smudge sticks and heal-all desert plants, and now her emails and texts reference divorce papers, and selling the apartment on East 97th. He has been avoiding this next step, he tells Ruby, not because he wants to work on the marriage. Rather, he has been happy for things to stay just as they are. Afraid, he admits now, of what another change might bring.

‘Things changed the wrong way.’

‘I understand,’ Ruby tells him. ‘I really do.’

She thinks of something she learned when she was very young, growing up on the edge of a wild, open ocean. When you get caught in a rip, you have no choice but to give in, to go where the water wants to take you. The force of the rip will eventually dissipate, but only if you let it carry you far enough out to sea. Safety comes from moving with the current until you are free of it, and then, only then, can you turn and swim like hell for the shore.

Ruby knows how to navigate the natural phenomena that is a changeable ocean. Why should it be any different with a natural disaster like love, she asks Josh. No one ever ends up where they started from, but you do make it home, when the time is right. If you have kept your head while being tossed about.

Sometimes it is surrender, not struggle, that saves a life.



Ruby does not call Ash. He is the one to text her, says he heard a rumour at work suggesting she helped solve a major crime.

Holy shit Jonesy, what an adventure! I can’t wait to talk to you about it. In NYC, maybe :)

She knows he means no harm with this cavalier response, but she also wonders when Ash will ever take her seriously. Knowing the answer is implicit in the question. He does not want her to be serious. She is his escape from serious. And this is a part of their bargain she can no longer uphold. Now that the something she has wanted to happen has so thoroughly happened. Now that she is unsure whether she is the same woman who said yes to Ash after she knew he was engaged. That version of herself seems irreconcilable with the strong, capable Ruby who sat in front of Detective O’Byrne and detailed her encounters with the man who killed Alice Lee, offering up enough perceptive information that she will be considered, in the looking back on this crime, to be the steady hand that turned a complex murder investigation toward its conclusion.

This is not a woman Ash has ever known.

This is the woman she wants to be.

I don’t want you to come here, Ash, she eventually responds. You should commit to your fiancée. You’ve made your choice and I don’t want to keep you from it. Go get married. Time for us to let go.

Ruby stares at the ceiling for a full hour after sending this text. They say it’s the truth that sets you free. But sometimes it’s a lie that does it. There is no reply. Ash will not reply. She lets herself wallow one last time, aches over the images she has crafted of them together in New York. Tastes daydreams of dark bars and glittering rooftops, rolls them around on her tongue, feels the tang of her yearning for him in her mouth. Swallows. There was a life she did not get to live. It was so close, but she cannot continue to hold onto something already gone.

I loved you.

She does not send this final truth across the ocean. The words too small for this moment, this ending. Only silence is large enough to hold her sorrow tonight.



There was one other print in the pack. The very first snap, long before all those photographs of New York were taken. When that black and white film was loaded, when instructions were given by a teacher to his student.

‘Here’s where you look. Because this is a rangefinder, you start with two images, and this focusing lever helps you bring them closer together. It takes a little time to get the hang of it, but eventually, from those two different views, you end up with a single, clear image. See?’

He was so close, the camera so intimate, that I turned away, right as he snapped the picture. My hair is a silver glow across the frame, phosphorescence in the dark. And though you cannot see my face, I know that I am laughing.

This is not the kind of thing you forget.





TWENTY-FOUR

RUBY TAKES ALONG WALK UPTOWN. ONCE, WHEN SHE WAS running north along the river, she thought she might keep going until she reached George Washington Bridge, but the immense structure seemed to get further away the more she advanced, and it was close to dark when she turned around, began the uneven trek back to her neighbourhood in the West 90s. Today, she starts on Broadway and just keeps walking. Past blocks that look similar enough to her own, taking note of cafes she might come back to next week and consignment stores with last winter’s designer jackets in the window. When she gets to the unmistakable expanse of Columbia, Ruby pushes open a metal gate and steps into the university grounds. It is familiar in the way so much of New York is familiar, the sprawling steps and imposing buildings having appeared in so many films and TV shows she has seen. She crosses the main courtyard, heading east, smiling at the small groups of students sitting alone or in clusters, wondering what they are studying today, thinking she too might like to start classes here in the fall. If she decides to stay. Exiting the university, she turns toward home, following the western boundary of Morningside Park, marvelling at the space this city makes for its people. Knowing there is still so much for her to discover about New York.

As Ruby makes her way over to Amsterdam, the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine rises up before her, impossibly ornate amongst the low-rise buildings of modern, residential New York. She has no time for God, but the church itself is so beautiful, so compelling, that curiosity leads her up the wide stairs, through the thick double doors. Inside, the cavernous cathedral echoes with sunlight, a kaleidoscopic flower beckoning her forward, and Ruby finds herself stunned at the vista. She scrambles for a five-dollar bill to put in the donation box at the entrance to the nave, and she shifts her weight to her toes, not wanting to clomp her feet against the floor. Perhaps it would be different if the church were filled with worshippers, but here, on this mid-week afternoon, she is one of only twenty or so people moving slowly amongst the thick columns and arches. She feels a serenity she had not expected, a peacefulness, despite the obvious grandeur of the church.