Page 1 of The Fadeaway

Patty

Patty Dallarosa has to hand it to her daughter for choosing a perfect little enclave for her post-White House life--Shipwreck Key is a magical place. When Jack Hudson had intentionally flown his single-engine plane into the water off the coast of France, he’d derailed the lives of Patty’s daughter, Ruby, and of her granddaughters, Athena and Harlow. Selfish Jack Hudson, Patty thinks to herself as she walks on the beach now, admiring the water. President of the damn United States, with a gorgeous wife and two wonderful daughters, and he needed to have a mistress and a son in another country. Shameful.

Patty can cluck about it now—and she does, frequently—but there’s not much to be done about it. In fact, there’s nothing at all to do. At fifty, Ruby is as grown as a woman can be, and she seems to have absorbed the betrayal, the drama, the grief, and the heartache in a way that leaves Patty, quite frankly, speechless. Shortly after Jack’s untimely death, Ruby had packed up the family’s belongings, left the White House, and started the process of, well, processing. She’d taken a year to do that, then moved down to Shipwreck Key to open a bookstore and start a new life for herself. And Patty understood that. She’d walked that particular path herself, had buried a husband beforeshe’d ever dreamed she might, pulled herself together for the sake of the daughter who was watching her, and had started her own Act Two.

A seagull swoops overhead, making a lazy pattern in the air as Patty stops walking to simply watch the bird in flight. That’s something she’s done more often lately: stop and watch. Observe. Slow down. Appreciate. At seventy-six, she likes to think that she hasn’t slowed down markedly in any way that other people might notice (yet she’s a smart enough woman to know that she’s only fooling herself on that one), but she can feel her hips creak when she climbs out of bed in the morning, and can feel her own energy wane in the evening after a particularly long and busy day.

As Patty watches the bird dancing against the evening sky she breathes in deeply—pulling in a long, full breath through her nose and letting it fill her chest. She lifts her arms slowly, tipping her head back and closing her eyes with her arms outstretched like she's on a rollercoaster. For one brief moment, she lets herself feel like a bird, like the soft breeze might catch beneath her wings and lift her, carrying her away. It’s a light, heady feeling that fills her as she tries to feel as one with the earth and sky, and Patty smiles to herself because this sort of behavior was something she never would have engaged in as a younger woman. In her forties, fifties, even in her sixties, Patty felt like a sensible, headstrong woman with a mission, and now she suddenly feels…untethered from responsibility. Unaware—or maybe she just doesn't care—about the way that other people see her. She no longer needs to behave like an attorney; she does not desire to have men look at her with lust or passion in their eyes. Patty wants to be seen as a good mother, a loving grandmother, but beyond that, she doesn’t give much credence to what strangers see or think when they look at her.

But that’s been a fairly recent development; for years, no matter where she went, Patty longed to be wanted. She flourished under the approving eyes of people who saw her as a high-powered lawyer, and she felt whole when a man eyed her from head to toe, summoning up the courage to flirt, to make small talk, and to ask her out. Relationships and personal interactions were her fuel.Not so much anymore, she thinks, letting her arms fall back to her sides as she opens her eyes and refocuses on the water that’s lapping at her feet on the beach of Shipwreck Key.There’s no time for fluff. For nonsense. For that which is impermanent.

“Mom!” Ruby calls from the porch of her house. Her voice carries on the breeze, reaching Patty’s ears. Patty turns, smiling as she waves back at her beautiful daughter. “Dinner!”

Patty’s arm falls and she turns and crosses the sand towards the five-bedroom beach house that Ruby lives in right there on the water. The house is well-lit against the evening, and light spills from the kitchen and out onto the porch.

It is September. It is time for earlier sunsets, chillier nights, for changing foliage. In other parts of the country, leaves are turning, pumpkins are swelling on vines, the smell of crackling bonfires fill the evening air. Patty feels the cool sand sift between her toes as she reaches the deck, placing one hand on the railing and the bare sole of her foot on the bottom step.

It is time for her to walk inside her daughter’s kitchen, to pour a glass of wine, to smile as Ruby recounts the last book club meeting, or tells a funny story about Harlow and Athena.

It is time for the truth.

It is time.

“So, Dexter hasn’t said anything about it yet?” Patty asks. She sets the serving spoon back on the trivet as she waits for Ruby to finally sit down.

“He responded to my email and said he just needed some time to work and think,” Ruby says. Her back is to her mother as she moves around the kitchen, picking up the salad bowl and moving it to the table, then going back for the salt and pepper shakers. “He was starting to feel like he was too close to the flame, I think.”

Ruby’s voice carries through the open kitchen and into the dining room, to which it flows. The whole space is large, well-appointed, lovely. Patty has always admired her daughter’s taste, but in buying and decorating this home, Ruby has truly outdone herself. The white marble counters look soft under the overhead lights, and the gray veins of the stone are picked up by the soft dove gray cabinetry. The wooden floors are rustic, as is the long dining room table, with its farm-chic aesthetic. The rest of the house looks like a spread fromCoastal Livingmagazine, with whites, creams, sands, and pops of yellow and blue and coral. It’s tasteful and understated. It is very Ruby.

“I say just give the man a little space,” Patty advises her daughter casually. She lifts her wine glass and sips, though she waits for Ruby to settle before lifting even a single piece of flatware. Patty is from a time and place where manners and presentation are everything; being impeccable and unimpeachable are traits that Patty values and prizes, and she has instilled both in her only child.

“I’m trying to,” Ruby says, blowing out a loud breath as she sits down at the table. “But waiting is killing me. I still don’tknow what he’ll ultimately decide—that I’m too old for him, or that he’s willing to forgo children…” One of Ruby’s shoulders lifts and falls as she tries (and fails) to appear nonchalant.

Patty watches her lovingly. Her baby girl is all grown up, and she’s lived more life than most women ever do. Still, there is an element of Ruby that is and will always be a little girl to Patty. Her nonchalance reads as uncertainty; her casual patience as reticence.

“Listen,” Patty says, unfolding her napkin and letting it rest across her lap. “If you give a man space and he comes back to you, then he was always yours. If he doesn’t, then he never was, and it’s better you learn that sooner rather than later.”

Ruby pours a splash of wine in each of their glasses, topping them up. “True,” she says, tilting her head to one side and then setting down the bottle of wine. “Oh, Mom, I know you’re right, I just miss him.”

“Sure you do,” Patty agrees. “That’s natural. A girl can get used to having someone to share the minutiae of her life with. Having someone to say good morning and goodnight to, and someone to do other things with.” Here, Patty wiggles her eyebrows suggestively and shimmies her shoulders. This makes Ruby laugh.

“Mom,” she says, shaking her head. Ruby sets her glass on the table and reaches for the casserole she’s just pulled from the oven. It’s a chicken, rice, green bean, and wild mushroom casserole, and against the autumnal placemats and napkins, it is yet another thing that feels to Patty like fall.

Patty steels herself for a moment as she watches her beloved daughter, caught in the soft light of the chandelier above them as she dishes casserole onto both of their plates and then gathers bunches of salad with wooden utensils and distributes it as well. Ruby has endured so much, seen so much. She is a survivor, her Ruby. When Patty’s husband, Reuben, had died ofa heart attack, eleven-year-old Ruby had been Patty’s rock. Of course the girl had mourned the loss of her father—mourned him terribly—crying herself to sleep, turning inwards for the better part of a year, and finally talking to a therapist who had somehow convinced the young girl that it was unlikely she’d lose her mother as well as her father. It had been hard to watch, but Patty had had her own life to get back on track, and she knew that Ruby needed her to pull it together. So she had.

“Bread and butter, Mom?” Ruby asks, holding out a basket full of sliced baguette. Patty smiles and takes a piece. “Hey,” she says, reaching for the butter. “I was thinking that tomorrow we could spend the day at the bookshop, and then you would be there for book club in the evening—the women are dying to see you.”

Patty smiles at this; the ladies who take part in Ruby’s book club are gems, and she enjoys their company. “Mmhmm,” Patty says, nodding as she butters her own bread.

“And then the next day, I was planning on getting a boat from here to Christmas Key—don’t worry, Dexter is in New York, so this isn’t some ploy to bump into him—and I thought we could lie on the beach there, have dinner at the bistro, and stay at the B&B. I was thinking one night, for sure, but we could stay for two if you wanted.” Ruby holds a bite of casserole on her fork as she watches Patty for a response.

“You have big, adventurous plans for us,” Patty says, smiling wanly. “You’ve always been that way.”

“Oh?” Ruby laughs, forking the bit into her mouth and chewing.

“Yes, darling girl, you have. Remember the time we went to see my parents in Seattle? And you woke up early every day, ready to conquer the city. You had plans for the Space Needle, the aquarium, and the fish market all in one day. At one point,your grandmother pulled me aside and asked if I had ever thought of giving you a tranquilizer.”

Ruby guffaws at this. “She did not!”

---