was.
‘Nothing,’ Ruby said. ‘I just need to ask you something. It’s just a friend of mine, well, she’s got mixed up with Cort Mason. Apparently you know him.’
‘And this friend wants to know more?’ Adam asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Nice guy,’ Adam said.
‘That’s it?’ Ruby said, and when Adam was less than forthcoming she pushed a little harder. ‘My friend knows about his wife.’
‘Really?’ Adam said. ‘I’m surprised he told her.’
‘He didn’t,’ Ruby said. ‘She found out.’
There was a long pause.
‘Adam, please.’
‘Is this for you, Ruby, or your friend?’
She paused, because Adam didn’t gossip, even to his sister. ‘Me,’ she finally said, and waited through the longest pause.
‘You and Cort?’ She heard the incredulity in his voice.
‘Please,’ Ruby said.
‘Okay, but there’s not much to tell. He took a job in Melbourne some years back. I think he worked at the Children’s Hospital and she was a paediatrician. I don’t know much, we just emailed now and then, just that there was an accident in Queensland on their honeymoon. Beth got a nasty head injury, it would be four or more years ago now. She ended up in a nursing home.’
‘And he moved to Sydney?’ She couldn’t believe he’d just leave her.
‘After a year or so—he’s always back there, visiting. Like I said, we don’t go out when I’m back, because if Cort’s on days off then he’s down in Melbourne. I offered to go once when I was down in Melbourne, but he didn’t want me to see her like that.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘What he did he say? About her, I mean?’
‘I don’t know …’ Adam wasn’t the type to replay conversations in his head, let alone to anyone else. ‘We just play golf … Look, Ruby, there’s no hope with Beth. I mean, I’m glad Cort’s trying to move on, because I do know there’s completely no hope …’
‘Beth died,’ Ruby said, and closed her eyes as Adam went quiet. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘Ruby, I’m in the middle of the jungle. Like I said, we’re not that close—I don’t think anyone is with Cort.’
She put down the phone and padded out to put it back in its charger, and there, of course, waiting, was Jess.
‘How’s Adam?’ She didn’t await Ruby’s response. ‘Did he say when he was coming home?’
‘When does Adam ever really say anything about anything? Honestly …’ She looked up at her friend, who carried a torch for her brother, and even if Ruby loved him, she felt it only fair to warn her, properly this time. ‘I can see why Caroline broke up with him.’
‘Caroline?’
‘His fiancée,’ Ruby said, and saw Jess’s jaw tighten. ‘She really thought she’d change him, that somehow Adam would open up. She just didn’t get that he’s …’ She closed her eyes, because Adam was a whole lot like Cort. ‘He’s an emotional desert. He is!’ Ruby said, when Jess refused to buy it. ‘He was in bed with the next one a week after Caroline … and the next and the next … There is no deeper Adam,’ Ruby reiterated, because there wasn’t. Nice clothes, nice car, lots of women—they were all there waiting for him whenever he returned. It really was just as simple as that with her brother, and she didn’t want him breaking her best friend’s heart. Except Jess refused to hear it.
‘Just because someone doesn’t spill out their heart, Ruby, it doesn’t mean they don’t still have feelings.’ Jess would not be swayed. ‘We all hurt, Ruby.’ Jess huffed off to bed, no doubt to stick pins in a little doll she’d name Caroline. ‘We just all have different ways of showing it.’
RUBY leapt on the phone when it rang the next evening. Dressed for her shift, her heart leapt in hope that it might be Cort, that he might want to clear the air before she commenced her shifts, but the voice on the other end brought no relief. ‘ I just wanted to check that you’re coming to church on Sunday.’ Ruby closed her eyes at the sound of her mother’s voice on the phone.
‘I’m on nights,’ Ruby said, because even if it killed her, she’d at least have died trying.
‘You just said you were working Thursday, Friday, Saturday.’
‘Which means I’ll be home in bed on Sunday,’ Ruby explained as patiently as she could.
‘Your dad does whole weekends without sleep, and he’s doing a reading this Sunday. It would be nice if his family was there,’ her mum said. ‘It’s the nine a.m. service. If you take Adam’s car to work, you’ll get there in time. I’ll do a nice lamb roast.’
And that was it.
There was just no point arguing.
‘How’s your mum?’ Tilly asked when she hung up the phone.
‘Still keeping the peace,’ Ruby said. She was in her navy shorts and white shirt and her hair was tied tight. If you didn’t know how much she was shaking inside, she could almost have passed for a nurse. ‘Still keeping the chief happy!’
‘Come on,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ll walk with you.’
They walked up the hill under the lovely moon that had once held so much promise and Ruby was so glad to have her friend beside her.
‘Cort was widowed recently,’ Ruby said. Was it breaking a confidence to confide in her best friend when her heart was breaking? Probably, but she knew it would never be repeated by Tilly, not even to the others, and she was very grateful when Tilly said nothing for a little while and just walked on.
‘How recently?’ Tilly asked.
‘A month,’ Ruby said. ‘Well, it was a month when we …’ It still made her stomach churn to think of it. ‘She was in a car accident a few years ago—she had a head injury.’
‘It sounds like he lost her a long time ago,’ Tilly said gently.
‘Still …’
‘We had a couple the other week,’ Tilly said, ‘they were just so happy, so excited to be having this baby, and I found out halfway through labour that the baby wasn’t actually his—she’d lost her partner right at the start of the pregnancy.’ And they walked up the hill and Ruby listened. ‘It’s none of my business,’
Tilly
