The Loves of Ruby Dee Read Free Page B

said, “Aw, Lon, the old man—”
    Suddenly he saw the girl. She stepped out from the entry to the office and stood gazing at him with her big brown eyes.
    Embarrassment washed over him. He and Lonnie hadn’t been yelling, but Will wondered how much she had heard. Her dark eyes went from him to Lonnie and came back to rest on him. They were totally unreadable.
    “Could I use y’all’s bathroom?”
    It was Lonnie who jumped to show her, with the dog at her heels, the way. And as she followed his brother through the archway to the dining room, Will gazed at the girl and thought how there had not been a pretty young woman in this house since the day his mother had left, twenty-five years ago.
    There never had been a dog.
     

Chapter 2
     
    Ruby Dee regrettedhaving to interrupt the brothers’ conversation, it being neither polite nor prudent to interrupt an argument. But she had been about to ask for the bathroom before Will Starr had raced off and left her in his office, and now she was about to pee her pants.
    Lonnie Starr was just as sweet as he could be, showing her through the dining room and into the hallway to the bathroom. He was a man at ease with women. The other one, Will Starr, was not.
    She had not needed to hear what Will Starr said in the kitchen to know that he did not want her here—and with her ear pressed to the door, she had heard almost every word. She had known it, though, from the first sight of him walking across to greet her. Disapproval had been all over him like a wash of paint.
    Oh, he was attracted to her. She had seen that, too. Felt it in a vibration, as well as caught it in a glimmer of his blue eyes, before he’d hidden it. Ruby Dee was good at reading people. And men always seemed attracted to her. A lot of them seemed to disapprove ofher, too. Miss Edna had always said Ruby Dee frightened men, said that they were put off by the way she met their gazes with her own and didn’t pretend to not know what was going on. Ruby Dee just didn’t know how else she was supposed to be. She was who she was, and didn’t see any need to hide it.
    “Well,” she said in a shaky whisper, and then she began to cry.
    Sally nudged her knee with a cold nose, offering consolation—and seeking it, too. Border collies were possessed of a nervous disposition, and when Ruby Dee got shook up, Sally did, too, no doubt recalling when she had been lost at the 7-Eleven and the dog catcher was trying to get her.
    Ruby Dee flushed the toilet and turned on the water in the sink, then sank down onto the side of the tub—and boy, that tub needed scrubbing—and cried into the dingy hand towel, the only one that had been hanging on the towel rod. Judging from the towel and the tub, the water was hard, and they needed to add baking soda to their wash water.
    That was what tears were to Ruby Dee—wash water, as good at cleansing hurts from the spirit as a bath was for dirt from the body. It was Ruby Dee’s opinion that crying was a necessity for good health too much neglected by people. Most people were ashamed of crying, as if it were a weakness, but to Ruby Dee there was no more shame to be found in crying than there was in taking a shower or a teaspoonful of cod liver oil. All three things were healing to a body.
    Healing was Ruby Dee’s calling. She was by license a practical nurse, but she considered herself a healer, which in her estimation stood a lot higher than a nurse or a doctor. Nurses and doctors could be trained, as far as it went, but a healer was one who had received a special talent directly from God. Indeed, Miss Edna had said that Ruby Dee was next to God in bringing living things back from the brink of death and comforting those who were slipping over. Her exceptional abilities in this direction kept her almost constantly employed in private home care.
    “Oh, Miss Edna,” Ruby Dee whispered into the dingy towel. “What am I gonna do now? I’ve driven all this way, and he disapproves of me, and