The Kindest Lie(69)
“Who are they?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“The people raising my son. What are their names?”
Eli paused, maybe to consider the question, and Ruth could tell he knew her son’s adoptive parents. “Mama and Papa, they’re our blood, but they’re not our biological parents. But they were the ones who were there all those years for me and for you. That’s real family. That means something. The people raising your son? They’re good people and he’s their son. You can’t change that.”
In that moment, Ruth felt like she was paddling upstream against a strong current. The closer she got to her baby, the larger the waves got, and she didn’t know how to swim through them.
“You talk about family. I’m your family. I’m your sister. Yet you won’t help me.”
Eli swished his beer like mouthwash. She could see the muscles in his neck straining. “All I did was help you. I helped you keep your dirty little secret so you could go off to college and make something of yourself. So you could do something with your life and not end up like me.” He stretched out his arms, swinging the bottle.
Ruth tensed on her bar stool. “You’re drunk and you’re unemployed. That’s why I’m not going there with you right now.”
She watched barely contained rage pass over Eli’s face, tightening and twisting it until each swallow of beer stilled him. Ruth fought differently with her brother as an adult. Their quarrels as children could be excused by youthful innocence and were often smoothed over by some new preoccupation the next day. But now, they knew how the world worked and their barbs carried a more potent poison. They knew better, yet they kept hurting each other anyway.
Twenty-Three
Ruth
The front door to Lena’s house sat ajar, only a sliver of dark space visible. Ruth pushed it open. The text from Midnight had been urgent, and she’d rushed over from the tavern. Midnight’s message read: please come. granny is sick.
Lena suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes. Mama said that sometimes Lena came home from work too tired to stick herself at night with the insulin needle. She was still relatively young, but the stress of trying to keep the shop in business had taken its toll. A slow death was how Mama put it.
The house smelled of mildew and cigarettes now. Ruth rotated in a full circle in the living room, taking in the stacks of unopened mail, coupon clippings, and credit card solicitations covering the dining room table and the floor.
“Lena. Are you in here? Midnight! Lena!” she called.
Silence.
On the mantel above the television sat an eight-by-ten photo of Midnight as a baby in Hannah’s lap. For the first time, Ruth noticed her straight nose. Square jaw. Sandy hair. Her chromosomes passed down to Midnight.
It didn’t seem fair that this woman had been snatched from her son’s life. Standing behind them in the photo was Butch, with a fresh crew cut, his lips turned up in a smile that almost made him look handsome instead of perpetually angry as he usually did.
A clicking noise came from one of the bedrooms down the dark hallway. Midnight appeared, bumping a small red suitcase against the wall. He smelled like sweat and whatever food had crusted on his shirt. Maybe lasagna or leftover spaghetti. Ruth pulled him by his arm into the living room, the roller bag clattering after him, scraping the baseboards.
“Tell me what’s going on. You had me worried to death when you sent that text about Lena. Where is she?”
“She’s okay now.” Midnight plopped on a chair, crumpling the unopened mail beneath him. “I needed to tell you something and I didn’t think you’d come.”
Need poured from his slender body, desperation stretching out like a hand bobbing above the ocean’s crest, like a swimmer begging someone to pull him up before he drowned. Ruth leaned against the wall, her arms folded, vacillating between hugging and shaking him, and, in the end, she settled on neither.
He twisted the handle of the luggage. “Are you gonna tell Granny I lied to make you come?”
The suitcase he carried fell open, socks and underwear tangled with turtlenecks and Tshirts in a tumble on the floor.
“You must’ve wanted me to come over here to give you a ride to the bus station,” Ruth said, gesturing toward the open suitcase.
“Huh?”
“I assume you’re planning a trip.” Her gaze swept his belongings strewn across the floor. From the looks of it, he planned to run away from home.
He just shrugged.
“Where’s your grandmother?”
“She had to work late. Doing the books.” The ritualistic way he said it, she knew Lena must’ve told him that many times before.
“And your auntie?”
“Gettin’ high somewhere, I guess. Little Nicky’s at the babysitter’s.”
When Midnight rattled off all the reasons that he found himself home alone at night, she heard no sadness in his voice. And that had to be the saddest part about it. He didn’t expect more, and any indignation he might have felt had been wrung out of him.
“Have you had dinner?”
“Nope.”
Ruth made her way to the kitchen, where she found a loaf of white bread, sugar, eggs, and a carton of milk only one day past the expiration date. She sniffed and detected a slight sour smell along the rim but decided it would do.