Page 33 of The Fadeaway

Ruby smiles up at him. “Say hi to Banks,” she says to Harlow, turning the phone so that he can see her on the screen. Banks waves at Harlow.

“Hi, Banksy,” Harlow says. “I hope my mom isn’t giving you too much grief.”

“Just the right amount,” Banks shoots back. He puts one leg over the picnic bench and sits down across from Ruby. “She wanted to spend today wandering and eating, so that’s what we’re doing.”

Ruby turns the phone back around so that she and her daughter can see one another again. “I needed a day,” she says. “I feel like, since Grandma died, I’ve just been on the go, and I’m going to be honest with you, sweetheart: it’s overwhelming.” Harlow gives her mom a sympathetic smile on the screen as she nods. “I hope that when my time comes, I have things pretty neatly sewn up so that you and Athena don’t have to do anything crazy. That’s my goal, anyway.”

“Mom,” Harlow says, lowering her chin and staring at Ruby head-on. “You just turned fifty. You have another forty to fifty years to accumulate crap and make weird choices and keep secrets from us. We’ll definitely end up doing exactly what you’re doing now.”

This makes Ruby laugh, but it also makes her wonder:willshe leave a closetful of secrets for her daughters to unpack when it’s her time to go? She doesn’t think so—her life has been pretty straightforward thus far. But she would have said the same thing about her own mother’s life, so maybe there are things that her girls will find out about her once she’s gone.

Instead of addressing this, she waves a hand at the phone. “I don’t want to think about being old right now,” Ruby says instead. The frozen margarita has gone right to her head, and she’s feeling a little pensive, a little melancholy, and a little giddy all at the same time. Her journey to get closure on Patty’s life has almost come to an end, and she knows that the next thing that awaits her is the memorial. She’s sad about officially closing the book on her mother’s life, but she knows that what Dexter said in New York is absolutely true and will remain true for the rest of her own life: her relationship with her mother has changed, not ended, and that brings her a measure of peace.

“I love you, Harlow,” Ruby says to the phone, looking her daughter in the eye. “Let me know if you and Athena need anything at all, and if something comes up at the bookstore, I’m here for you. Just text or call.”

“We got it, Mom. Stock books, sell books, turn out the lights and lock the doors at night.” Harlow rolls her eyes as she says this.

“Wow, you boil my days down to such nothingness,” Ruby says with another laugh. “Okay, sell some books, and be good.”

They exchange goodbyes and then Ruby sets down her phone and picks up a taco. “Thanks for today, Banks. I needed this. I really, really needed to just eat and be a tourist and not do anything too crazy.”

Banks isn’t drinking, but he is eating a giant shrimp and rice burrito, which he holds in both hands. “No worries, boss,” he says, tilting his head as he prepares to take a giant bite. “I’m here to do whatever you want to do.”

“Tomorrow,” Ruby says, munching on a corn chip dipped in pico. “Tomorrow I want to find out what tied my mother to an old guy in a retirement home in Texas. But today I want to drink my margarita and listen to that guy play his banjo.” She nods ata long-haired, bearded young man setting himself up on a stool with a banjo and a microphone.

Banks watches Ruby with a wry smile, then stands up from the picnic table without being asked and walks over to order her a second margarita. He may be a man of few words, but as their friendship has grown and their relationship has blossomed from their official positions with one another, Ruby has truly come to love and appreciate Banks’s silent, stoic nature. He is one of the most self-contained men she’s ever met.

“You know what?” she says, looking up at Banks as he sets another frozen margarita in front of her. “I love that you and Sunday are together.”

Banks chuffs and sits back down to his shrimp burrito again. “Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

“No, really,” Ruby pushes on, leaning her elbows on the table earnestly as she looks into his eyes. “You two are perfect together. You really complement one another, and I think you’re both just what the other personneeds, you know?”

“Sure,” Banks says agreeably, nodding as he continues to eat his burrito. “Sunday makes me very happy.”

Ruby listens as the banjo player tunes up and starts to strum a song. She might be tipsy, but she isn’t drunk, and she knows that a little of this banjo music can go a long way.

“I want to be as good for Dexter as he is for me,” she says softly. She didn’t realize that she was about to get serious right there amongst the food carts. “I want to be the person who makes his life easier to live, to be the one whose love feels like a gift, and not a burden. I worry, Banks.” She looks right at him again, ignoring the banjo player as she twirls her straw around in the plastic cup. “I worry I’m takingfromhim rather than givingtohim.”

“Love is both give and take, Ruby,” he says, his face remaining placid.

“That’s true, and I know it, but I never want him to look back and think I took too much from him.”

“With all due respect, I don’t think that’s your call to make.” Banks sets his burrito down. It’s been a couple of months since they’d walked the perimeter of Shipwreck Key together and Ruby had shared with Banks her concerns about not being able to give Dexter children, and now she’s feeling that same way again: as if she might be short-changing him somehow.

“You’re right,” Ruby says. “As always.”

“Well, I’m not always right,” Banks says, watching her. “But when it comes to men and how they feel or behave, I can at least offer some insight.”

Ruby nods. “So you think he’s fine with just me?”

“Can’t say that for sure,” Banks says. “But he didn’t vanish. He’s still here, isn’t he?”

“He is,” she says. And he’d said some things before they parted that made her believe he was in it for the long haul. “I’ve just been thinking about this guy I’m going to meet tomorrow—Lyle Westover.” Ruby pauses and digs the photo out of her purse of her mom and Lyle in a vineyard in Napa and lays it on the table in front of Banks. “I mean, he’s clearly older than her, right?”

Banks makes a face like he’s considering this. “I’d say so. Maybe twenty years?”

“Exactly. And look what happened to them—he ended up here in Texas, living in some retirement home and my mom just sent guilt money every month.”

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