Still, I felt too exposed. I backed up until my shoulder blades touched the
front door, then folded my arms around my chest. Ruby was so quiet and
took so long to appear that I’d started mustering my courage to go upstairs in
search of her.
“Done! Sorry for making you wait!” She appeared at the top of the stairs,
standing where I thought I’d seen the woman. Her eyes shone in the
moonlight coming through the windows. “I’ve got that doll dressed, at least.
It was a good night of work.”
“Great.” My voice croaked. I wanted to warn her—to tell her about what
I’d seen—but the words died before they reached my lips. Truthfully, I
wasn’t sure what I’d seen. And Ruby wouldn’t get any benefit from
fearmongering.
She skipped down the stairs and stopped at my side. “Jo, you look pale.”
“Just scaring myself.” I gave her a weak smile.
She laughed and threaded her arm through mine. “And I thought I was the
scaredy cat. How about we make some hot chocolate?”
“That sounds nice.” I looked back at the stairs a final time. No figures
appeared there. The steps were lit by a golden glow flowing down the length
of the hallway. “Did you want to turn off the workroom light?”
She gave me an odd look. “I did.”
We both looked towards the hallway. Ruby’s enthusiasm ebbed as she
saw the light. She squeezed my arm and resolutely fixed her smile back into
place. “I’ll turn it off later.”
I relaxed once we were in the kitchen and had the noise of the kettle to
keep us company. We took chairs at opposite sides of the bench and cut into
the Bundt cake I’d brought. I told Ruby about the moving curtains.
She looked thoughtful then said, “Maybe you disturbed the air when you
opened the door?”
“Yeah, probably.” Had the music room door already been open when I
went in? I thought it had.
“Hey, Jo, can I ask a question?” Ruby was spooning cocoa powder into
mugs. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.“Sure. Questions never hurt anyone.”
“Earlier, you said things have gotten better since you moved here. Did
you have trouble with your family, too?”
My mind’s eye flashed to the white jar I kept in the back of my kitchen
cupboard. “Sort of.”
“Oh.” I realised where her mind was going. “No, it’s fine. I mean,
he’s a cynical jerk, but as far as family goes, Lucky’s not too bad. Lucky’s the only
one who really, genuinely cared about what happened to me when my mother
died. His mother—my aunt—always took my mother’s side.” I scrunched my
face up. “I don’t know why.”
Ruby rose to fill the cups with boiling water and milk but kept her eyes
on me.
I stared at my cake. I’d never really had a chance to talk about it with
anyone, not even Lucky. It felt like picking at an old scab: painful and
possibly unhealthy but still very satisfying. “I know now that my mother was
a narcissist. It helps me understand some of the things she did. And why she
was… like that . She needed attention to live, and it didn’t matter who or
what she hurt to get it.”
Ruby put my cup in front of me then sat down. She folded her hands over
the table.
I watched the swirling chocolatey milk as its bubbles popped one at a
time. “I was an accessory to her. When I did something well, she never
praised me but always bragged about it to her friends. Like an excuse to show
off what a great mother she was. When I did something wrong, she
complained about me instead. ‘What did I do to deserve this wild, unruly
child? Why is she doing this to me?’ ” I’d inadvertently mimicked the whine
my mother had adopted when she was unhappy. It made me want to cry, so I
smiled instead. “Then she was diagnosed with diabetes, and let me tell you,
I’d never seen her so happy before. It was like her golden ticket for never-
ending attention. She didn’t want to get better; she wanted to have a
condition to exploit for sympathy, and exploit it, she did. She’d make every
bad choice she could then gush about how difficult her life was and how
badly she was suffering.”
Ruby propped her chin up in her hands. “That sounds tough.”