Page 69 of Catcher

“I just did.”

Her father makes a rough sound that might be the start of a laugh, except there isn’t enough humor in the room for it to live long.

Ruby glares at me. “I’m not helpless,” she says.

“No,” I answer. “You’ve got men watching your house and cornering you in bars, though.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to take over my life,” she scoffs.

“I’m not taking over your life.”

“What do you call this? Babysitting me and going through my mail?” Ruby’s jaw tightens.

I say nothing.

She looks at me as if she wants to hate me—part of me still needs her to—then she exhales hard and turns back to her parents. “I really am sorry about all of this.” Ruby looks like she wants the floor to open under her feet.

Her dad looks at her. “What about work?”

Ruby straightens. “Why wouldn’t I go to work?”

I give Ruby a look.

“I have bills to pay, Catcher.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re already planning how to ruin my day.”

I hold her stare. “I’m planning how to keep you alive through it.”

Before anybody can say another word, Ruby’s mother pulls in a steadying breath and says, “Well, I’ve got lunch ready, and nobody’s leaving this house hungry.” Her gaze lands on me. “You too, Catcher. Stay and eat something.”

Ruby opens her mouth like she might argue, probably on instinct more than anything else, but her mother gives her a look that shuts it down before it starts. I can’t shake the feeling I’m walking into something I’m not ready for. Give me a fight, a threat, a man dumb enough to make a move, and I know what to do with that.

Ruby, her family table with all this fear, gratitude, and suspicion piled on top of each other? That’s a different kind of trouble.

Lunch is set out with sandwiches neatly lined up, a bowl of potato salad in the middle of the table, and cold, sweet tea sweating in cloudy glasses. Ruby’s mother keeps her hands moving the entire time, as if she might stop for too long, and everything waiting underneath might catch up to her. Ruby helps where she can, quietly stealing glances my way. I take the chair offered to me, feeling too damn out of place.

The rest of the visit passes in the kind of silence that isn’t really silence at all. Ruby and her mother do most of the talking, and even then, it stays careful, circling safer ground like both know one wrong word could send the whole afternoon splintering wide open again.

They mostly talk about her mother’s rose garden. It’s ordinary soft talk. The kind built to patch over rough places for an hour or two, even if everybody at the table knows the ground underneath is still split open.

I answer when spoken to. ‘Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. The food’s good. Thank you.’ That’s about the size of it. Ruby quickly glances at me now and then. I keep my mouth shut and my shoulders loose, though every instinct in me stays wound tight, because the entire damn time, her father keeps cutting his eyes at me from the head of the table.

Not enough for his wife to call him on it. Not enough for Ruby to notice more than once or twice. Just every few minutes, I catch it—that sideways look, sharp as a blade and gone just as fast. He’s measuring, weighing, judging whether I’m exactly what his daughter needs or the next bad thing she’ll have to survive, and I can’t even blame him for it.

So, I sit there, eating a sandwich I barely taste, listening to Ruby and her mother talk while her father keeps cutting those looks at me, trying to read every ugly thing I don’t bother hiding. It makes the whole meal tight and awkward.

By the time lunch is finished, I’m more certain than ever of two things—Ruby’s mother will keep trying to make a normal afternoon out of a mess that doesn’t allow for normal, and her father hasn’t decided if he trusts me or hates that I’m necessary. Maybe both. Ruby gathers plates with her mother, and I stand when she does, already ready to get her out of here and back under my watch. The awkwardness of it all hangs in the air right up until we finally leave, heavy as summer heat and twice as hard to breathe through.

A few minutes later, we head for the door. Ruby hugs her mom one more time, then leans up to kiss her dad’s cheek. “I’ll call later,” she says softly. Her father walks us out onto the porch. He stops beside me while Ruby moves down the steps ahead of us, shoulders tight, purse strap clenched in one fist.

“You staying close to her?” he asks, looking for reassurance.