Page 89 of Forbidden Dark Vows

Harry,

Come to E 65thStreet, block 22, apartment 13.

I’ll explain when you get here. Don’t tell anyone else.

Ruby x

I peer all around the atrium as if I might find Ruby giggling behind a column, waiting for me to take her home. But she isn’t there.

I go back to the desk. “When did Ms. Jackson leave this here for me?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The woman shakes her head. “I only started my shift a short while ago. This was left for me in the handover book.”

I go to walk away and change my mind. “Can you please check which ward Ms. Jackson is in?”

She glances at the screen in front of her, eyelids flickering. “Ms. Jackson has been discharged.”

I thank her and walk away, turning the letter over and checking to see if I haven’t missed anything. The message might not have been left by Ruby but it’s all I have right now, and I won’t rest until I’ve checked it out.

E 65this a long street lined on one side by low apartment buildings overlooking a school playing field. I find the rightapartment, ring the buzzer, and wait for the external door to open.

When it does, Ruby appears in the doorway wearing her coat over pajama bottoms tucked inside fur-lined boots. Her face is still pale, but she throws her arms around my neck and holds me tightly. “Take me home, Harry.”

“Home?” I hold her at arm’s length and study her face.

“New York.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Not until we’re there.”

We take a taxi to Ruby’s house and I wait outside, standing sentinel, while she collects some clothes, her favorite teddy from when she was a little girl, and a photograph of her dad from his dancing competition days. Celia isn’t there. Ruby doesn’t mention her mom, doesn’t even speculate on where she might be, and I don’t press it. I suspect that she knows more than she is letting on.

When the taxi pulls away to take us to the Chicago airport, she doesn’t even peer at the house through the passenger window.

It’searly evening when we reach my apartment in New York. I order takeout noodles, and we eat them with chopsticks, sitting on the sofa overlooking the city skyline, the tartan blankets thrown across our legs. Ruby is still weak and nauseous, but the pains are gradually easing off, and she slept off the last remnants of the sedatives on the plane.

I wait for her to begin when she’s ready.

“My mom is the reason my dad had his first stroke.”

There’s no emotion in her voice, and I wonder how long she has been protecting this information. Long enough to understand what she wants to do with it, I suspect.

“I overheard them in my hospital room. They thought I was asleep. Your dad gave her an ultimatum: leave my dad, or they’re over.” She faces me then, dry-eyed, and it breaks my heart that she had to deal with this alone. I’m doing a shit job of protecting her so far. “She made him promise never to let me find out.”

Her eyes lock onto mine as if searching for something that only she knows about.

Finally, she says, “You already knew.”

I feel her pulling away from me, and I move the noodle cartons onto the coffee table so that I can snuggle under her blanket, sharing my body heat with her. “I saw them together last night. I followed them to the hospital. I was going to confront them, but I fell asleep, and my dad woke me up. He was alone.”

“He told you?”

I shake my head. “My dad doesn’t know how to express his feelings. He asked me how long I would wait for you if I couldn’t marry you now, and I said as long as it takes.”

She sucks on her smile as a lone tear trickles from the corner of her eye.

“He told me to try thirteen years.”

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