Page 12 of The Fadeaway

Alan's eyebrows shoot sky high. "And maybe your mom assumed--perhaps rightly--that you were too busy being First Lady to the entire nation to be interested in the daily goings-on of her life. Maybe she set out to support herself, to entertainherself, and to leave her own legacy that was separate from yours. Maybe she wanted to be something other than a young widow, a fierce lawyer, and Ruby Hudson's mom."

Ruby tips her head to one side and looks out at the sky and the trees. The palm fronds are now dipped in gold, and the two frisbee-tossing men have vanished. "Like what?" she asks, though her words are really more for herself than for Alan. If anyone can answer what else Patty Dallarosa might have wanted from life, it's going to be her daughter, not a fellow attorney who mostly knew her from the courtroom.

Alan shrugs; he's clearly a smart enough man to know that Ruby will have to find that answer for herself. He uses one hand on his own knee to push himself up to standing again, and as he does, he gives a nearly inaudible groan. "Bad knee," he says, patting his right thigh with one hand.

Ruby gives a half-hearted smile as she leans forward, tapping her fingers on his desk. “Okay." She’s ready to refocus the conversation. "What do I need to know about the will? Is this a good time to go over it?"

Rather than sitting back in his own chair, Alan walks across his office and stands before the window, looking out at the early evening sky.

"Actually," he says, turning his head so that he's looking at Ruby, but keeping his body facing the window, "there are a few other people we'll need to have handy before I can read the will. How does tomorrow at ten o'clock sound?"

Ruby frowns; she’s an only child, and her aunt Olivia has been dead for decades. Patty has no other family besides Harlow and Athena.Ah!she thinks,Harlow and Athena!

"My daughters? I can FaceTime them and loop them in--"

But Alan cuts her off by turning around fully. "They will be acknowledged in the will, but you can represent your entirefamily unless theywantto join us by Zoom. We have a few other people joining us via Zoom as well."

"Who?" Ruby asks, standing. She is completely lost--who else might her mother have included in the will? Right then, Helen taps lightly and opens the door. She pokes her head in, reads the room, and backs out again. "Who else needs to be there?”

Alan holds up a hand. "Tomorrow, Ruby. That's all I can tell you for now, and I'm sorry."

Ruby is flabbergasted and also wildly curious; she isn't even sure she'll sleep at all for wondering what might be coming her way.

"Okay," Ruby says, though she sounds far more annoyed than defeated as she picks up her purse from the chair and slings the strap over one shoulder. "I guess tomorrow it is. I'll see you at ten o'clock, Mr. Berkshire."

Ruby

Ruby was listening to "Walk Like An Egyptian" on the radio in her bedroom while doing her Algebra homework. The sun was out and it was a perfect California afternoon, but Patty had grounded her from leaving the house with her best friend Kit, and so instead of sitting in front of the television and watching MTV all afternoon, Ruby had given in and taken out her homework.

"Ruby?" Patty shouted from downstairs when she arrived home at seven o’clock that evening. "I brought tacos."

Ruby had finished her homework by then and was stretched out on her bed, listening to the top forty hits of the week while she thought about Eric Sanderson, the cutest boy in the entire eighth grade, and--in her humble opinion--maybe a better skateboarder than Tony Hawk.

"Ruby!" Patty yelled again, louder this time. "Come down for dinner!"

Ruby was mad at her mother for grounding her, but if she thought about it rationally, she understood why Patty had done it: Ruby got caught skipping English class to leave campus with Kit because they'd heard that Eric and his friends were going to be at a skatepark by the beach. Getting grounded sucked,but having Patty tell Ruby that her dad would have been disappointed in her was the worst part.

Ruby turned off the radio and the bedroom light before wandering down the stairs in a house that had gone completely dark at some point during the evening.

"Hi, sweetie," Patty said, turning to smile at her daughter. She'd already kicked off her heels and taken off her suit jacket, and she was standing in the kitchen with a bag of tacos from their favorite restaurant, eating one straight out of the wrapper. "I'm starving. Court today," she explained, bending her head to one side and taking a bite from one end of the taco.

Ruby frowned; this was not the mom she was used to seeing. Patty was and had always been proper. In fact, Ruby's dad used to tease his wife about being the original Miss Manners, and since his death, Ruby had noticed that her mom worked even harder than usual at making sure she did everything by the book--something that generally drove thirteen-year-old Ruby insane.

"Mom," she said, staring at her mother. "Why are you eating standing up? Without shoes?"

Patty closed her eyes, chewing with a look of bliss on her face. "Because I'm starving," she said, reaching for a glass of wine that she'd just poured. "How was school?"

Still frowning, Ruby walked over to the cupboard and got out two plates. She made a big show of putting the tacos on the plates, of pulling folded, ironed napkins from a drawer, and then leading her mother to the kitchen table.

"Fine, fine, fine," Patty said, sounding as if she were the teenager in this situation, and like she was used to Ruby harping on her about things like keeping her elbows off the table and using proper grammar while on the phone with her friends. "I'll sit." Patty unfolded a napkin and put it over the silk skirt shewas still wearing, then unwrapped another taco. "How was your day?"

Ruby shrugged. She wasn't sure that she wanted to forgive her mother for grounding her and for keeping her away from the skatepark for a week. In that amount of time, Eric could end up dating Lisa, and then Ruby would be stuck watching them walk through the halls of the middle school with their hands in the back pockets of each other's 501s. The very thought filled her with bile and disgust.

"It was fine," Ruby finally conceded, taking a small bite of her first taco. She was starving, but didn't want her mother to think they were having amomentor anything gross like that. "I ate lunch outside the counselor's office because I got called down for lunch detention for skipping school."

Patty didn't react to this, but kept eating ravenously.

"You know, I bet you skipped school before," Ruby said. She watched her mother angrily.

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