Page 43 of The Holiday

"Thank you for sharing all of this, Banks," I said, keeping my hand firmly on top of his and patting it twice for good measure. "I appreciate you telling me the way you saw Ruby, because you got a front row seat to a part of her life that I never got."

Banks smiled at me sadly. "It was an adventure. And it was my pleasure to be there for it." He cleared his throat then and looked away, which I knew was the way a man said he needed a moment to compose himself. I took my laptop inside the house under the pretense of helping Sunday get dinner on the table.

When it was finally time for me to pack up and leave behind some of the best friends I’d ever had, Sunday came to me with a sheepish grin, standing next to me as I zipped my carry-on suitcase in her living room.

“Here,” she said, holding out an unsealed envelope. “This is for you to read, but not now—later, please.”

I took the envelope from her, resisting the urge to lift the flap and see what was inside. “Is it good or bad?” I asked, which seemed a reasonable question.

“It’s good, silly,” Sunday said, knocking me lightly on the bicep with one fist. “If you must know, it’s an email Ruby sent me the first time she met you—on Christmas Key. I saved it all these years, and I always meant to give it to you someday. And someday is now.”

We hugged—tightly, because at a certain point in life you just never know when the hug you give someone might be the last—and when I let her go, we both had tears in our eyes.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she said, reaching up and patting my unshaven cheek. “Ruby wouldn’t want that.”

I got as far as the seatbelt sign getting switched off at ten thousand feet during my flight back to Florida that afternoon, and then I slid the paper out and unfolded it.

From: Ruby Hudson

To: Sunday Bond

Subject: How many years is too many years?

Sun—

I’m on Christmas Key. First of all—gorgeous place. So much fun. The people, the decorations, the island…WE ARE COMING HERE TOGETHER!

Secondly, I met Dexter North last night. We had dinner on the water at this adorable place called The Jinglebell Bistro, and it took my breath away. (I mean Dexter, not the water view—although that was incredible, too.) Sunday, I know I’ve been married forever, but for the first time since Jack died, I actually felt…single. Single and attracted to someone. There were times when I didn’t know where to look: into his eyes? Out at the water seductively? Into my own glass of wine like I was thinking of something fascinating? Everything I did felt charged with energy, and like I was giving him some sort of direct view into what was going on inside my heart and mind. And we don’t want that!!! We do not want the man who is writing a biography about Jack to be able to read my mind!

We also do not (necessarily) want my mind to be thinking dirty thoughts about him! (You can laugh—go ahead—I would laugh if the roles were reversed and you were sending this email to me, and I certainly hope that at some point I’ll be getting an email like this from you, post-divorce, when Peter Bond is in your rearview mirror. But I digress.) Girl, I have to tell you: my mindwent placesin that sultry night air on this tiny tropical island. Last night, I felt like anything was possible. Like no one would know if I just threw caution to the wind and made a move on this gorgeous, brilliant man. And believe me, I wanted to.

But then…reality caught up with me. Dexter North is thirty-five, Sunday. I’m nearly fifty. That justdoes notmath correctly for me—or does it? I felt a tiny spark from him, I think, and while I want to—no, Ineedto—keep this professional for the sake of his book, I can’t help it if I desperately wanted him to take me down to the water’s edge and kiss me under the moonlight.

God, this all makes me sound like a randy teenage girl who just wants to make out with a cute boy, doesn’t it? But it isn’t that. I’m fine on my own. I’ve been fine on my own. I don’t need the validation of a man to make me feel complete. What I need is someone (if I actually need anyone at all) whogetsme. Someone who feels as passionately about me as I feel about them. Someone who can love me at my high points and still tolerate me at my low points. I need someone who is my equal match, and before last night, I never would have said that that man could potentially be fifteen years my junior, but Dexter is special. He’s got something, Sun. I want you to meet him. Actually, I’m pretty sure you will meet him, because I’ve decided to go ahead and work on this book with him.

But what do you think? I know I sound giddy and girlish and dumb, but do you think I’m crazy to think a man who is closer in age to my daughters than he is to me is actually a viable option? Maybe he just found me fascinating because of what I can offer him in terms of the book, or maybe he was a little hung up on the idea of having dinner with the woman who’d been married to the president. I don’t know…but I know I want more.

Stay tuned!

xo Ruby

I read this five times on the flight home to Florida. The first time I tore through it. The second time I laughed. The third time I cried. The fourth and fifth times were just to hear her voice in my head as I read her words.

I’d wanted to kiss her that night, which of course I told her over the ensuing years a number of times. I’d wanted to lean across the table and put my hand to her smooth face, to kiss her, to walk her down along the water in the warm summer night air. But most importantly, I’d wanted the same thing she’d wanted: someone who got me. Someone who felt passion and excitement and curiosity, age difference be damned.

And you know what? In the end, we got all those things. All those things, and so much more.

The Island

Shipwreck Key had become home. Naturally, a vagabond like me could set up a laptop, buy a cup of coffee, and lose himself in any city or town, writing happily and lost in thought, but when I came up for air all those years ago, I realized that home was wherever Ruby was. And for her, there was no place like Shipwreck Key.

Over twenty years, we filled the rooms of that big house on the water with friends, family, grandchildren, and guests of all stripes, but our favorite visitors (after family, of course) were always the Pullmans. Helen, Jack Hudson's former Chief of Staff, and her husband Bill, were a colorful and outspoken pair, and Ruby loved Helen like a sister. I remember on more than one occasion, Ruby's first call when she needed advice had been to Helen.

A calm and soothing presence--as well as a sarcastic, realistic, and straightforward one--Helen Pullman had run the Oval Office the same way she ran her life: with a firm hand and a thick skin. She'd managed her daughter’s and her husband's lives seamlessly, slipped from political life into retirement with ease, and continued to sit on several powerful boards and committees well into her eighties. It was a terrible shock to us, to Helen and Bill's daughter, and to the rest of the world, when they'd died suddenly and tragically on a two-lane highway in North Carolina on a road trip the year before Ruby's diagnosis. In fact, I'm not sure that Ruby ever totally recovered from losing Helen, and I can't say I blamed her. We all lost a mother figure when we lost Helen Pullman; and Bill, her beloved sidekick for decades, had always been up for a good time.

These things were hard, and were getting harder. Loss. Mourning. Tragedy. Sadness. There were days when I wondered if that's all there was. If turning fifty was the start of some sort of existential downhill slide into eternity--or into a pit of darkness.

I think, for many of us, it's precisely that.

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