Page 55 of A Real Good Bad Thing
“Yup,” she said with a resigned sigh, then she stopped and ran her finger over the pendant of the silver necklace she wore. “My mom is great though. We’re really close. I basically adore her. She’s incredibly supportive of me and my business. She made this for me. That’s what she does—makes jewelry.”
Gently, I brushed my thumb across the miniature treasure chest, grazing the soft skin of her chest. “This is lovely,” I said. I wasn’t just talking about the necklace.
She swallowed and breathed a quietthank you. “And look, it’s not like she’s destitute. But he tookeverything, and it just seems so wrong. She helped him start his business with money she earned from selling jewelry at craft fairs,” she said, a righteous anger edging her voice.
“It’s completely wrong. Completely unfair. Especially when she made his business and livelihood possible,” I said, agreeing.
“She’s very giving and very generous, and that’s one of the things I love about her. That’s why I came here early to try to figure out what happened with the money. Like I’m Robin Hood or something. And that’s why I want to help—” Then she stopped talking. Like she’d simply sliced off the end of the sentence.
“Are you okay?” I placed a hand on her elbow. I was unable to stop touching her.
“Why am I telling you this?” she asked, but the small smile forming on her lips gave her away. She wanted to trust me.
“Because I’m easy to talk to,” I said, hoping she believed that too. Then I turned more serious. “You haven’t mentioned your dad. Is he gone?”
“He died of a heart attack when I was three. Never really knew him.”
I squeezed her hand. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, then took a deep breath, as if the air were refueling her. “What about you? Why do you do this?”
“This is just a job for me,” I said, trying to keep my tone even as we started walking once more.
She gave me anI call bullshitface. “Right.”
“Just a job,” I repeated, toeing my own party line. I didn’t like to give up pieces of myself. I’d been burned before.
But Ruby was different. She was driven and kind, persistent and fierce. And she wasn’t going to let me get away with anything less, not when she’d opened up.
She stopped in her tracks and locked her gaze on mine. “Nothing is just a job,” she said, tipping her forehead to the inky black of the sea at night, starlight dancing across the water. “Take what I do. I do adventure tours because I love it. But also because the water is where I’ve always felt most at home. It makes me feel peaceful, like a part of me. The part that makes me whole.”
She shook her head, as if shaking away the memories on the gentle breeze, then shot me that sweet smile I’d grown so fond of. “So what’s your story, Jake Hawkins? It’s only fair. We partnered up, and you know my motivation. I want to know what your story is. All I really know about you is that you have two sisters and you’re some kind of a recovery specialist.”
She deserved the truth. She’d earned it too. I heaved a sigh and pointed to the sand that stretched endlessly in front of us. “Let’s keep walking.”Walk and talk.I didn’t often serve up a piece of myself like this, didn’t like to revisit the worst days of my life. But she’d been honest, and I owed it to her to do the same.
“I have a little brother too. There are four of us. And I do what I do because I’m good at it. Because it pays the bills. Because my older sister and I are responsible for our younger sister and younger brother. My parents were killed by a drunk driver several years ago.”
Her eyes brimmed with sympathy. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.” She reached for my arm again, wrapping her hand around it as we walked through the sand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Long-simmering tension curled through me, winding in my veins, twisting through my blood as memories flashed before me.
The cops at the door.
The knock.
The solemn look on their faces as they took off their blue caps, came inside, and told Kate and me the news. Died on impact. The car had skidded off the road and wrapped itself around a tree.
“Kate and I were in our early thirties, but Kylie and Brandt were still teenagers.”
“That must have been so hard. Did they find the guy?”
I breathed in sharply. “Yes, but nothing happened.”
Those words—nothing happened—contained all my anger, all my frustration, and all my reasons.
“What do you mean?”
“The fucker got away with it. He was some twenty-three-year-old trust-fund baby, smashed out of his mind, and he lawyered up and lived his life like it never happened. I think, if memory serves,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my tone, “he did have to put in fifty hours of community service. Reshelving books at the library. I’m sure that taught him a big lesson.”