Page 22 of The Holiday

Christmas comes around every year, but a woman’s wedding day—well, okay, Heather has had a few of those, to be fair, but everyone is hoping that Dave will be the last.

“What’s up?” Ruby says to Dexter. She glances up from her iPad, where she’s been skimmingThe New York Times.

Dexter has a huge grin on his face and a brown paper-wrapped package in his hands. “It’s the galley proof of our book,” he says, laying it gently on the table. “I wanted you to have the chance to read it and offer feedback, but we’re pretty close to publication, so don’t go making changes to the whole thing.”

A silence falls over the kitchen; Athena and Harlow are out on a morning walk, and the only sound in the downstairs is the clock ticking in the front room.

“Wow,” Ruby says, placing a flat palm on top of the package. This book represents the culmination of over a year of collaboration between her and Dexter, and within its pages are the stories of her life with Jack. Of Jack’s life. Of their children. Of his betrayal. Of…everything. The feelings and the emotions of knowing how much effort went into this book are big ones. Sometimes it felt like rehashing and reliving some of the worst and hardest parts of her marriage as they wrote the book were going to drive her crazy, and Ruby had spent most of the summer reading Jack’s personal journals, digging through the past like an archaeologist on a mission.

“Do you feel up to reading it?” Dexter asks, placing one hand on Ruby’s shoulder as he stands behind her chair.

She nods. “I do. I’m ready to read more than the first chapters that you already gave me, and to see how the whole book turned out. I know it’s going to be amazing.”

“I hope so.” Dexter sits down next to her so that their shoulders are nearly touching. “My publisher is already talking about a book tour, and I’d like you to be with me for the entire thing. Do you think you’d be up for it?”

Ruby smiles. Would she be up for traveling the world with Dexter North? Most definitely.

“I’d love to. I’m just as proud of this book as I am of you, and I haven’t even read the whole thing yet.” Ruby nudges his shoulder with hers, and they both train their eyes on the table. “I’m really glad you’re here, Dex,” she adds quietly. “With me. It’s been a hard year, waiting to see how things would shake out between us. But it was worth the wait.”

“I’m glad you think so. I needed time to contemplate, and I know you did, too.” Dexter pauses and they sit there in the peaceful silence, with the eternal roll of the waves just outside the kitchen window, and the endless ticking of the clock in the other room. “I never doubted that you were the one, Ruby, but you gave me a lot to think about with all that talk of children. I didn’t know if you wanted me to leave to make your own life easier, or if you just needed me to be sure of what I wanted?—“

“It was the second one,” she says definitively, her hand still resting atop the book on the table. “Ineededyou to be sure that this was enough. That I’m going to be enough.”

Dexter waits a beat. “I don’t want to propose to you on someone else’s wedding day,” he says. “But I do want to propose that we just do this for real—you and me. Forever. And that we see where life takes us. I never want you to doubt for one second that I’m here for the long haul.”

Ruby leans her body towards his, letting her head rest on his broad, firm shoulder. The way Dexter looked after her over Christmas while she was sick gave her a glimpse into how he would be if she ever needed him to take care of her, and she knows that, no matter what, Dexter North is someone she can count on.

“I’m here for the long haul, too,” she says, turning her head so that she can rub her face against the fabric of his shirt. She inhales deeply, taking in the scent of him. “I don’t want to be without you, Dex. If you go on this book tour, I want to go on the book tour. If you want to leave Shipwreck Key, I want to leave Shipwreck Key. I just want you.”

“Well, lucky for you,” he says, leaning his head toward hers and putting his lips on top of her hair, “I love this place, and I can work from pretty much anywhere. So I say we stay on Shipwreck. Let’s live here and I’ll write books, you sell books, and we’ll wait for your daughters to come visit. But we can also see the world, and experience everything, and just be together.”

Ruby nods, but doesn’t move to take her head off his shoulder. “I’d like that.”

“I would, too,” Dexter says. “I never thought at thirty-five that my whole future would be laid out before me and that I’d like that feeling, but it turns out that I do.” He sounds wistful. “I don’t feel the need to search anymore. To run around the globe chasing stories.”

Finally, Ruby lifts her head and looks right at him. “But you love writing articles and going after stories, Dex,” she protests.

“Yeah,” he says with a smile that spreads slowly across his face. “But the best story of my life is happening right here.”

As she hears his words, a matching smile begins to glow on Ruby’s face and she leans forward to kiss him.

Just then, Harlow and Athena burst in through the kitchen door, bringing with them the cold air of the beach. “Oops,” Harlow says, catching them mid-kiss. “Sorry, lovebirds.”

“You’re just in time,” Ruby says to her girls. “We’ve got a wedding to get ready for. Heather needs us to help set things up.”

“Okay!” Athena claps her hands with purpose. “We need to shower and get ready—all of us. Let’s do this!”

* * *

There is a windswept church on the east side of the island that Ruby has to admit she never really attends. She’s been once or twice—a baptism, a Christmas Eve service—but she’s not been a regular churchgoer in some years; not since Jack died and she no longer had to attend on his arm wearing navy pantsuits or pastel skirts and little hats for Easter. There’s a peace and a comfort that being in a church brings to Ruby, but she’s not here today to fill her own spiritual cup, so after a moment of quiet contemplation in the empty church, she heads back to the little set of rooms behind the altar, searching for Heather, and ready to roll up her sleeves and pitch in.

But what she finds there is not a blushing bride who is waiting for her friends to come and fasten her borrowed pearls around her neck, but instead a woman in tears, her face puffy and her eyes red from crying.

“Heather!” Ruby says, stepping into the room with its tiny mirror and counter. “What’s going on? Is it Dave?” Her immediate thoughts are that perhaps Dave has changed his mind, or that Heather has found out he was cheating on her. But she pushes those thoughts away, trying to keep her own experiences and prejudices out of the room. Dave Hutchens seems like a perfectly nice man, and she’s never seen Heather happier than she’s been with him in her life.

Heather wipes two manicured hands over her eyes as she shakes her head, crying silently. She doesn’t speak, and as Ruby looks around the room, she has no clue what might be wrong.

Pastor Evan, a young transplant from Tallahassee who lives behind the church with his pregnant wife in what appears to be little more than a shack, might know; Ruby turns to go and find him.

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