Ruby Among Us Read online

  Praise for

  Ruby Among Us

  “Ms. Forkner has given us a gift that like fine music rises at an ever-spiraling pace. Neither rushed nor delayed, Ruby Among Us offers a satisfying journey I will long remember.”

  —JANE KIRKPATRICK, award-winning author of A Mending at the Edge

  “Highly recommended. If you’re a mother or daughter, you’re going to love Ruby Among Us. Forkner does an extraordinary job.… I look forward to more from this author.”

  —ANE MULLIGAN, Novel Journey

  “A multigenerational saga of hope, regret, and the grace that brings us home, Ruby Among Us evokes an invitational sense of place, a cache of characters you enjoy knowing, and a story that rips and mends your heart all at once.”

  —MARY E. DEMUTH, author of the Maranatha Series

  “So engaging from the first sentence. I found myself holding my breath as I read. Tina has painted the pictures so real. I love the honesty and innocence. Mothers and daughters alike will feel very connected with this book.”

  —CINDY MORGAN BROUWER, singer/songwriter

  “Don’t miss this one! Tina Ann Forkner is a strong new voice in fiction and Ruby Among Us is an amazing story of trials, regrets, and, ultimately, redemption. Lucy and her family history in the historic wine country of Sonoma bring to life the Scriptures about the Vine and his branches.”

  —KRISTIN BILLERBECK, author of The Trophy Wives Club

  “Ruby Among Us is a haunting, beautifully told novel of past secrets and present pain. Lovely, lovely voice and story. A remarkable debut by Tina Ann Forkner, an author to watch.”

  —COLLEEN COBLE, author of Anathema

  “A subtle, intimate story of grace and redemption that touches the heart!”

  —PAMELA NOWAK, author of Chances

  “Forkner writes from a place of intimate transparency, allowing the reader to discover priceless treasures found in the pursuit of truth. Ruby’s story unfolds in fascinating layers, revealing at its core the universal power of a mother-daughter relationship.”

  —BONNIE KEEN, speaker, vocalist, and author

  “Reading is a passion of mine, and when I find myself identifying with the characters, anxious to get to the next page to find answers to my questions, I know I’m into a good book! The daughter-mother-grandmother theme in Ruby Among Us pulled me in. Wonderful storytelling.”

  —JORDIN SPARKS, 2007 winner of American Idol

  “If you’re a fan of fiction that inflames your heart and your spirit, Tina Ann Forkner has a debut novel you should read. Ruby Among Us is filled with powerful emotions of secrets, joy, grief, the freedom that is found in the truth, and, ultimately, in redeeming love.”

  —KIM HILL, worship leader and recording artist

  “What an incredible story. As both mothers and daughters, Ruby Among Us struck a special chord in each of the four of us. Tina writes in a way that makes us feel like we’re there; from the first line, we were captivated and drawn into an intricate weaving of the precious and fragile relationships that define us.”

  —POINT OF GRACE

  “A skillfully written, moving tale of women (and their men) who find that love covers a multitude of sins. Tina Ann Forkner weaves this story together with great detail and, like the quilts that are such an integral part of the novel, pieces it together with beautiful results.”

  —DEBBIE SMITH, songwriter with and wife of Michael W. Smith, and mother of their five children

  “From the first page of this emotionally gripping novel, I was absorbed in Lucy’s story. The author weaves a beautiful tapestry of meaning and grace, with an underlying truth: every heart needs a place to call ‘home.’ Lucy’s journey toward her place of belonging is poignantly told.”

  —KIM VOGEL Sawyer, author of Blessings and My Heart Remembers

  For my light, Hannah, who made

  my time as a single mom brighter.

  Having you makes everything happier,

  sweeter, and lovelier. May your talent

  and determined spirit brighten the lives

  of others when you grow up.

  I love you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my buddies, Jake and Dawson, who brought SpongeBob and Star Wars into my life. I could not have found a better pair of brothers for Hannah anywhere. I love you both.

  Albert, thank you for encouraging me to get out of bed every morning and finish this novel. Your belief in my writing is a gift that I will always feel undeserving of, but my love and gratitude will always be yours. Your commitment to me, the boys, Hannah, and this family has changed my life for the better. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to soar.

  Thank you to my parents, Dennis and Barbara Ann Gray, for never doubting that I would someday get published. I am forever grateful for your encouragement and belief in my dreams. I would never have been a writer if not for the both of you. And to my brother, Troy, and my sister by marriage, Laura, for supporting me through the tough times of single motherhood, when much of this book was truly conceived.

  A heartfelt thanks goes to my manager, Cheri Kaufman, who put herself on the line by placing this manuscript on my agent’s desk. Sister, this book might never have seen the light of day without you. Many thanks to my agent, Chaz Corzine, for his unwavering belief in my abilities and to the folks at BHCC Management. I hope I live up to the wonderful expectations you have for my writing.

  Thank you to my late grandma Carrie Mae Gray; Clara Mae Brewer, the grandmother I learned about through stories; and Wyvonne Guthrie, who was taken entirely too young. Their stories still inspire.

  Thanks to the WaterBrook team for believing in a first-time novelist and for working so hard to get Ruby Among Us to readers and to Kelly Santee for my first amazing cover. Special thanks to my editor, Jeanette Thomason, for believing in this book from day one.

  To the CSU Sacramento English Department for introducing me to great writing and particularly to poet Dennis Schmitz, who helped me find my voice, and to author Mary Mackey for her course about writing maternal biographies. Thanks for letting a fledgling undergraduate into your grad courses. My writing is better because of it. And to my poet friend Lisl Swinehart for telling me to keep writing after graduation.

  There are many who did things big and small during the writing and publication of Ruby: the Laramie County Library Foundation in Cheyenne, Wyoming; the Laramie County Library; Dardi Roy; Kim Giffin; Marjorie Smith; Victor Simental, for helping me name Lucy; Nancy Forkner; Art Brewer; Marcia Linde; Jami Kirkbride; Veronica Linde; Phyllis Guthrie and Rosalie Forkner for being grandmothers through love if not blood; my RMFW (Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers) coffee group (Mary, Amanda, Liz, Marjie, and Pam); and friends from ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers).

  And to my friends: I can’t name you all because I might leave one out. Thank you for being there. If I canceled on you, thanks for being patient every time I said, “I have a deadline…”

  And to the One who brought me through my darkest times. Thank you, Jesus.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  How to Measure Grief / Lucy

  When La Rosaleda Still Bloomed / Kitty

  Searching / Lucy

  Building a House in the Vines / Kitty

  He Must Be a Fine Boy / Lucy

  Lost in San Francisco / Kitty

  The Grieved Are Many / Lucy

  Bitter Grapes / Kitty

  A Secret Told / Lucy

  Crossing Over / Kitty

  Ruby Knew This Breathlessness / Lucy

  Love Can’t Bring Back the Dead / Matt

  Some Renew Their Smile / Lucy

  Into the Vineyard / Lucy and Kitty

  PROLOGUE

  I’ve seen it in winter, a mangled-look
ing structure even when cut back, the house itself faded and worn beneath the blossomless, dormant branches. Always in spring it rejuvenates itself, its stunning softness covering bare thorns, redeeming itself after only a few weeks of redressing its vines. We call it the Rose House, and I can only describe it as it stands before me, abundant roses in various shades of scarlet and burgundy climbing up its sides and rambling across the rooftop.

  It has become a symbol of our homecoming, and the grapevines themselves cannot counter the beauty of that cottage in full bloom, but they come close as their leaves flesh out along the branches of the vine. Around me, the mission-style main house sits among the working buildings and gardens, parading more heirloom roses, herbs, and cascades of flowering vines that I know Ruby has touched. The vineyards of Frances-DiCamillo roll away and swell out over the hills and across a good part of the Sonoma Valley, where the town of La Rosaleda sits almost in the center.

  Tourists come here too, and most can’t resist snapping photographs of the Rose House. I think for them the Rose House symbolizes the possibility of a great romance that once surpassed time and place. They need to be reminded, in the midst of their personal sorrows and failings, that love does still exist somewhere in this place between us and heaven.

  I like to think all those photographs of the Rose House are hanging on the refrigerators of housewives, pushed into the visors of taxicabs, framed and hanging on the walls of busy offices, or maybe even tucked into the wallets or purses of those who dare to dream that something as astonishingly beautiful might await them somewhere over the next hill.

  For me the Rose House, like Frances-DiCamillo, means a lot of things, but remarkably it signifies one important event in my life that I only dreamed could happen and that I will never let myself forget—this is where I found Ruby again, even though I know now she was never really gone, only in flesh.

  Ruby’s life left an imprint among these vines and roses, and these days I find myself spending more time at Frances-DiCamillo than anywhere else, always seeking that embrace from the one who loves me unconditionally. I go home to be encircled by the vines, the Rose House, to be reminded of who I really am, and to revel in the inheritance Ruby sought out for me before it was lost again, for a time, with her death.

  HOW TO MEASURE GRIEF

  Lucy

  1

  The first person to hold Ruby was the last person to let her go. That was her mother, Kitty. I watched her kiss Ruby gently on the forehead while she was still connected to that big, noisy machine, though I already felt that Ruby wasn’t really there. She’d been asleep so long that day. They said it was a coma. I was on the other side of the window but could tell the moment her heart stopped. I saw a doctor turn off the machines I knew had kept her body breathing. I knew; Ruby was gone.

  I watched through the glass as Kitty fixed her gaze on the monitor, a frightened look in her eyes, as if she hadn’t been aware her only daughter was dying. Her face contorted with pain, and she crumpled over Ruby’s body. Her shuddering seemed to shake the walls around me.

  I wrenched away from the white-collared preacher and his wife and ran and ran toward that gleaming silver room. People called to me.

  “Lucy. Stop. You can’t go in there. Children aren’t allowed.”

  Big hands tried to grab me.

  But no one could stop me. Ruby was gone, her breath taken away when the respirator had been removed, and Kitty was alive and alone. She needed me.

  I burst through the heavy door and threw myself toward Kitty’s slumped body. She turned to me in time to spread her arms wide. I fell into them, and she caught me and held me so tightly I thought I might stop breathing. I kind of hoped I would; I could have died at that moment, snug in Kitty’s arms. But after a little while she loosened her embrace, and I reflexively inhaled, an involuntary instinct of survival my eight-year-old body performed against my will. My lungs, now filled to near bursting, could no longer contain the sob that had been crawling from the well in my chest since earlier that day when I’d found Ruby lying on the back porch.

  Ruby had been watering our flowers—a wild mix of cosmos, daisies, and tall wild varieties of blooms that attracted butterflies and hummingbirds to taste their sweetness. That afternoon she’d called for me to look at a hummingbird drinking from the hanging feeder beside the back door.

  “Lucy! Come see! The hummingbirds are like little bees!”

  She always told me when they came so we could watch and count them. The weekend before we’d seen ten at the feeder.

  “And mija? Please grab my inhaler too.”

  She said the part about the inhaler casually, almost like an afterthought.

  “Coming, Ruby! I’m pouring the lemonade!”

  I’d always called my mother and grandmother by their given names. I don’t know why Ruby or Kitty allowed it, but they did.

  I knew other children who had mothers and grandmothers with boring names, but not mine. Even my own name was picked by Ruby because she thought it was special: Maria Lucero.

  “Oh, my Lucy,” she explained. “Lucero means light.” And where a ruby is loud, red, and hard, she said, Lucero meant all that was bright and the very air I was to her. “You are my breath, my very life,” she would whisper in my ear, kissing the top of my head. I never imagined Ruby as hard and loud—the things she said her name meant—but instead as smooth and vibrant. Though I didn’t know how to tell her at the time, she was my light, and I wanted to be just like her.

  Ruby. Kitty. The names rolled off my tongue like crayons on paper; I liked that. The day before, my red crayon had rolled off the table as I drew a picture of Ruby, my hand in hers, each of us with a blue flower tucked behind our ear. We dove to catch the crayon as it dropped to the floor and giggled at how it seemed late for some appointment under the couch where we couldn’t reach it.

  “We will need helping getting out that one, Lucy.” Ruby smiled, and I knew someone would be over to help, a friend whose name I could never remember…

  “Lucy!” Ruby called again from outside. “The hummingbirds are going away!” I heard a cough. “Do I need to come help you, mija?”

  “No, Mommy! I’ll hurry!”

  During special times, like before bed, I’d call her Mommy. Sometimes I called her Mommy Ruby, even if it sounded silly, because it was our secret name. She was Mommy and Ruby to me, and I could call her both.

  I’d carried the glass pitcher toward the fridge, sloshing lemonade all over the floor, when I heard Ruby call me a third time.

  “Lucy, hurry!” she coughed, hard. “There are two now!” Ruby coughed again, more violently.

  Hurry, I told myself. I grabbed our glasses and scrambled to the coffee table in search of Ruby’s inhaler. She usually left it there, but not this day. I thrust the glasses on the coffee table and rushed to look in the bathroom. Kitty was always nagging Ruby to keep her inhaler in the same place all the time, but Ruby was too busy.

  Running from room to room, I searched until I finally found the inhaler on the nightstand beside Ruby’s bed. My breath came out in deep, short gasps as I rushed back to the coffee table for the lemonade glasses, this time careful not to spill the drinks.

  When I reached the door, the hummingbirds were gone and the heavy glasses of lemonade crashed to the deck, covering the porch with sticky glass shards. Slivers of glass surrounded Ruby, glistening like jewels as she lay on the porch where she’d fallen.

  My hands flew to my mouth to stop my scream. I needed to help Mommy Ruby. I knelt to wipe away the glass, but it cut both of us, spotting my hands and her arms with little dots of blood. I shook Ruby and she moaned.

  “Wake up!”

  I remembered the inhaler and frantically pawed to the edge of the porch where it had been flung, cutting my hands more on the glass shards.

  “Breathe, Mommy Ruby! Breathe!”

  But she couldn’t. I saw the panic in her widening eyes and tried to spray the inhalant in her mouth and nose. Her flailing began to stop a
s I tried to breathe into her with my mouth like I’d seen on TV, my own breath a weak whisper.

  “Ruby…” I cried as loud as my cracking voice would allow. “Help! Please, help!”

  Nobody came.

  So I screamed, loud and piercing.

  Neighbors appeared. Someone pulled me off Ruby and handed me to someone else with a hard chest—someone who held me while my small fist bounced off him. I tried frantically to force myself down. Neighbors had circled round Ruby, and I was pulled away to the scream of an arriving ambulance.

  In the emergency room the flat red line on the machine blared in my ears, and Kitty pressed her wet face against me as her tears mixed with mine. The nurses wheeled Ruby out, leaving Kitty and me standing in the hallway, very still. It was that quiet moment of death, when things move in slow motion, when strangers turn sadly away as they pass your family in the halls and the medical staff stares with hopeless expression at the floor.

  I felt poised, panicky, and completely frozen in time all at once. I searched the hall. Cold floors, shiny metal, too-bright light hurting my eyes. Then it rose like an earthquake and rumbled out of me: a quiet broken noise followed by a clear, piercing cry.

  “Ruby! Mommy Ruby!”

  I tore down the hall.

  The nurses who were rolling away her bed froze on the spot, staring as if I’d turned into a monster. One nurse tried to keep me from tearing the sheet from Ruby’s face until a doctor stopped and silenced her with a look.

  “Let her say good-bye to her mommy,” he said quietly.

  The other nurse turned to me with tears and helped me fold back the sheet.

  I put my hands on each side of her face. “Mommy Ruby, I love you.” I leaned over to kiss her lifeless lips and gave her a gentle hug, like I would have done when she was napping or when I was the first to wake up in the morning. Then I smoothed her hair and put my hands on her face like I’d done a million times when I tried to sweet-talk her.