Page 3 of The Takeaway

"What? How?"

Helen sighs. "Ruby. My love. Dear girl. There are eyes everywhere--even in the Gulf of Mexico. He stays with you when he comes to the island. You take a boat to his island," she says, referring to Christmas Key, where Dexter spends part of his time. "It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out."

Ruby feels ridiculous for a moment, thinking that she's been keeping her business private, and that there was some way the whole wide world did not know what she was doing there on Shipwreck Key. She laughs nervously. "Right. Okay."

"So, how is it? Can you keep up with a younger man?"

This makes Ruby blush, and for a moment she's grateful they aren't FaceTiming. "So far so good," she says. "There's plenty to be said for a man in his thirties and a woman in her fifties being together, libidos matching up and all that."

"They do say that," Helen agrees. "I've never experienced it personally, but I hear that the younger man-older woman dynamic catches fire like a match to dry brush."

"I can confirm that," Ruby says. She's never been big on the kind of graphic girl talk that she's seen people engage in recently on social media and on shows likeSex and the City, but she's not ashamed to admit to one of her dearest friends that the sexual chemistry between her and Dexter is electric. "I'm having a great time, Helen."

Helen laughs knowingly. "I bet you are, sweets. And you deserve to." She pauses. "What else is on your mind?"

Ruby takes a long breath in, holds it, and releases it as she walks back to the living room, scanning the sea of boxes. She holds the phone to her ear and the Diet Coke in her other hand. "I've finally emptied out Jack's storage, and I have all of his personal papers here. I'm going to spend a few weeks going through them."

"Oh," Helen says. The word lands like a hunk of steel falling into the ocean and sinking to the bottom as they both wait. "Are you ready for that?"

Ruby takes another drink from her cold can of soda. "I think so. I opened up the first book I gravitated towards and it started with the beginning of Jack and Etienne's relationship. As in, the journal entries in that bookstartedwith the morning after."

"Yikes."

"Mmm," Ruby agrees, tipping her head to one side. "Yikes indeed. I read it. I got mad. I tossed the book and went to the bookstore to distract myself. But then I decided that before I let the fury overtake me, I need to really ask myself what part I played in this whole thing."

"You really think you played a part?" Helen asks mildly.

"I do." Ruby is being totally honest when she says this. "I think it always takes two. I think the failure or the breakdown of a marriage can generally be the result of so many factors, but that both parties have some hand in it."

"Death by a thousand cuts?"

"Exactly." Ruby walks back to the open box, which is the one from 2007 from which she pulled the first diary. "But I think I need more information. I need to start at the beginning, or at least follow the trails where they lead me and not get hung up on the fact that he wrote about this woman like she was the most beautiful creature who ever walked the face of the earth. Knowing more about teenage Jack might help me to better understand President Hudson. And refusing to let myself feel like a victim will finally allow me to own whatever I may have done or said during the course of our marriage to send him into the arms of another woman."

"Ornotdone ornotsaid," Helen adds wisely.

"Right." Ruby is not offended by this in the least; she knows that Helen is a practical, experienced, mature woman, and thatshe understands there are three sides to every story about a marriage: his, hers, and the truth. And Helen is hearing what Ruby is saying here, which is that she wants to truly understand Jack's side, as well as acknowledging her own.

"So you're going to dig in and find out who Jack Hudson really was," Helen says, though this is a statement and not really a question.

"I'm determined to." In saying this, Ruby knows that she's committing. No more staring at the boxes and considering the possibility of shipping them to an off-island storage facility, and no more walking straight through the room in order to avoid the millions of words contained within these books. She's going to take the time and do the work. She owes it to herself, she owes it to Jack, and she owes it to the years they spent as husband and wife.

"Do you need any help?" Helen offers.

"I think I'm okay." Ruby swipes at a tear that has unexpectedly fallen from her eye. "But thank you. I'll let you know if it gets to be too much."

"Call anytime, sweetheart. I miss you, and I'd love to come for a visit. So you say when, and I'll be there. Got it?"

"Got it," Ruby says, smiling. "Thank you, Helen. Love you heaps."

"Love you more," Helen says. She ends the call and Ruby stands there as late afternoon sunlight pours in through the high windows of the great room with its thirty-foot ceiling. The house is quiet. Ruby is alone, and for the first time since her husband killed himself by flying his single-engine plane into the Bay of Biscay in France, she trulyfeelsalone. And it's not a bad feeling; she does not feel abandoned, afraid, or weary, she just feels as though the project she's about to embark upon is hers alone to conquer. This journey is not for anyone else, and when it's allsaid and done, she might just burn the whole pile of boxes in a giant bonfire on the beach.

But either way, this needs to happen. Ruby sets her Diet Coke on a coaster on the coffee table and looks down at the box nearest her feet. She stands there and stares at it for a long moment, then moves it to the spot she's designated as the start of the line. For the next twenty minutes she organizes everything in chronological order, then stands back and looks at her new system. When the quiet gets to be too much, she turns on the living room speakers and plays a Spotify playlist from her phone, wiping her hand across her sweaty brow as a Billy Joel song plays.

"Okay," Ruby says out loud before draining the rest of her Diet Coke. "Now I'm ready."

June 12, 1975

Coach Fowler benched me for no reason. I honestly hate the man. Is that too strong a word? Maybe. Probably. But he's an old grandpa with a face like a shoe and breath that smells like an ashtray in a bar. He got right in my face and yelled, "Hudson! Sit your ass down!" And so I did. But the worst part is that my parents agreed with him. Which they shouldn't, because I'm their kid and he's just some guy who will probably die soon from coughing up a bloody lung.

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