Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz [best book club books for discussion txt] 📗

he stayed close as she turned her mouth toward his. A slide into their first kiss, something soft and careful and quick but, still, she held her hand to her mouth the whole way home in the cab, a little giggle rising out of her, so that the driver laughed, too, said it was nice to see someone having such a good time of things.

It was a good night. But what happens the next day? Had they unintentionally crossed a line, buoyed by alcohol and the rain and their strange circumstances, and would there be an inevitable retreat from each other when the sun came up? This is not supposed to be so confusing, Ruby thinks, not at thirty-six years old. Josh texted to make sure she got home—a good sign. He hasn’t messaged this morning. Not such a good sign. The kiss brought back butterflies—not just a good sign, but something of a miracle, given how long those wings have remained flightless under her skin. She has no idea if Josh felt their flutter. Definitely a bad sign. She is done with not knowing how a man feels about her. She has to be.

Scar tissue is never as supple as that which it replaces. Like I’ve said before, you don’t arrive in another city and actually become a brand-new person. It comes with you, the habits, the circular thoughts, the fears; all that baggage comes along for the ride. Last night with Josh, right before they kissed, Ruby felt the pavement tilt beneath her. It lasted a second at most, but it was enough to feel the world was opening up, shifting at last. She had thrown her arms out wide and spun around, face turned up to the rain. A gesture she’d seen in a hundred movies, in a hundred moments like this, and Josh had laughed, grabbed her arm to keep her steady but, really, in that moment she wanted to stay dizzy.

(We both had revelations last night.)

There have been no grand gestures today, however. Just another innocuous message from Ash—Hey, you up?—she has thus far ignored. She doesn’t want to tell him about the name she cannot stop saying out loud (and she can’t tell him about Josh, though I wish she would).

If you could see Josh and Ruby from their separate corners as they wait.

People hold their longing in different places. For Josh, yearning lives in his fingertips, so that when it all gets too much, he rubs his thumb and forefinger together to alleviate the pulsing ache, or spans his hands wide, cracks his knuckles and moves his fingers about. Whether reaching for women or words, Josh’s hands give away his desire. For Ruby, longing resides deep within her arms, it comes as a bone-dense feeling she tries to shake off, a discomfort to squeeze out. Neither of them has ever really learned how to sit with this kind of intensity, allow it. To feel desire is to pursue it or to run from it, nothing in between.

Ruby doesn’t know Josh has been waving his fingers about, reaching for her, all day.

His message comes through while she is sitting, arms tightly crossed, on a stoop near her local laundromat, waiting for the dry cycle to finish.

The buzz of her phone makes her jump, though she has been listening for it all day.

Ruby. Thank you for last night. I had a wonderful time, although the ending was a little unexpected. I feel like there’s something I should have told you when it came up, so I wanted to clear the air. I’m still married. Separated. But technically married. If you’re free tonight, maybe we could talk about it in person?

Ruby drops her phone; it lands on the pavement with a clatter.

Not even I saw that one coming.

NINETEEN

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE. IT changes. Everything changes. They begin to dig into your life. Because ‘Dead Girl’ needs an even bigger hook to keep people interested. The fact of her loss could never be enough, so they pick through the past, sift through the bones, the reporters and news editors who don’t get this kind of treat nearly enough, the shock and tragedy of pretty, dead girls.

I have made some things easy for these storytellers. No mother (suicide!), no father (who is he?), and there is enough small-town history for people to snack on. Enough colourful people who went to school with me to keep the theories about the cause of my demise coming. But most leads are a disappointment, a dead end, no matter how deep the digging goes. Good student. No record. No serious boyfriend, as far as people could tell. Not a single scandal of my own, until—

Mr Jackson sits in his studio, waiting for the knock. Charcoal fingers twisting, a package of photographs face down in a locked box, hidden in the closet. Knowing he can’t throw the pictures away, perpetually contemplating burial or burning, but never quite able to bring himself to destroy them. He hasn’t looked at a single picture of me, not since the day I left. When he came home and found the house empty. Cooled down, mind cleared, he went from room to room, searching for me. Intending to apologise. To say that it didn’t matter now. That we could finally go out into the world together. Discovering the money and his mother’s Leica gone. His terrible words from earlier in the day, echoing. Assuming I had gone up to the lake with Tammy. And knowing we would never get back what we had.

He sat on the bed and cried when he realised what he’d lost. Just like he sobbed again on a day, some two months later, when my name lit up every television and computer screen across town. Local girl, Alice Lee. Brutally murdered in New York City. No longer able to pretend I had simply stopped calling, no longer able to hide the truth from