Page 42 of Bluebell Tides

One moment, Sloane had been hurrying to the Mexican restaurant, the one with the really good queso and Ruth’s favorite burrito in the city. She’d been hurrying so that she could get home to Ruth and her baby Kellen. The next moment, two blocks away from the Mexican restaurant and five blocks from home, she’d been struck and killed by a car.

The officers who’d come to the scene first were eager to tell Ruth that Sloane hadn’t been at fault in the accident, that someone had run a red light and skidded around the corner, that Sloane couldn’t have gotten out of the way if she tried. Ruth didn’t like hearing that. She liked to imagine a world in which Sloane hadn’t gone to the Mexican restaurant, in which Sloane had decided to come home first and order pizza instead. Ruth liked to imagine that she and Sloane could have made a different decision, one that would ensure Sloane was safe.

As it was, Sloane was dead.

Just as they’d done back in the early 2000s, Dina, Kelly, and Reese pulled out all the stops for Ruth. They took turns watching Kellen so that she could shower and go for walks. They made her meals and stayed around to make sure she ate them. They took her on a little vacation to Florida, telling her to get into the ocean and feel the sun on her cheeks. But the truth was, Ruth was sleepwalking. She had nightmares almost all the time.

Sloane was dead, and Ruth couldn’t help but feel that it was her fault.

“How?” Dina demanded. “Tell me how it could be your fault.”

Ruth stuttered, unable to explain herself. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken her away from them,” she said, thinking of the Caldwecks, of how much money they had, of all the safety nets they had beneath them. Maybe, if Sloane had stayed in their midst, or if she’d married that heinous Jimmy boyfriend of hers, maybe she’d be safe.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Dina said. “Sloane wanted to be with you. She wanted Kellen to be with you. Not them. Never them.”

Ruth had always read about women having nervous breakdowns. In some of her favorite twentieth-century novels, women broke down. They couldn’t handle their marriages, their desires, or their children. Ruth had never imagined herself to be someone who could lose it the way they had.

But suddenly, she found herself waking up after a multi-hour fugue state. She was in Central Park in the mid-afternoon, and she had no idea how she’d gotten there. She began to sob uncontrollably, so much so that several people approached her. She was screaming Sloane’s name, and Kellen’s name, and even, twice, Quentin’s. After all, he was the only man she’d ever loved.

It was not clear how the Caldwecks learned about Ruth’s mental health. Ruth speculated that one of the doctors who handled her case somehow knew the Caldwecks, and that news of her breakdown had gone through the grapevine and reached Quentin, Henrietta, and his father, George.

But Ruth was otherwise occupied. Dina helped her check into an institution, telling her that she’d watch Kellen until she got back. Of course, things didn’t work out that way.

Something Ruth hadn’t known was this. During Sloane’s time with the Caldwecks, they’d demanded a DNA test to prove that Sloane was really one of their own. It wasn’t so difficult to point out that Ruth wasn’t a fit guardian for Kellen. It wasn’t so difficult to take Kellen from his home, to whisk him off to Bluebell Cove and away from the grandmother who loved him more than she could explain.

The Caldwecks had moved quickly. While Ruth was in the institution, they'd petitioned for emergency temporary guardianship, arguing that Kellen had no other fit caretaker. A sympathetic judge had signed off within days. By the time Ruth was released, Kellen had been living in Bluebell Cove for weeks, and the Caldwecks were already filing to make the arrangement permanent.

As soon as Ruth was better, as soon as she was mentally sharp and clear again, she hired a lawyer and fought tooth and nail to get Kellen back. But the Caldwecks had excellent lawyers. They were able to point to Ruth’s mental breakdown as reason enough to keep Kellen with them. Over and over again, Ruth dragged them to court until she had to give up her apartment in New York City and move to a smaller, cheaper place. The Caldwecks used that against her as well, asking the court why Ruth was “so good” for Kellen if she couldn’t even maintain her home.

For months, and then years, Ruth fought tooth and nail. And then, one day, while reading about the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge in Bluebell Cove, Maine, she had an idea. She broke her lease, pitched her article idea to her editor, and went to Bluebell Cove. Somehow, some way, she’d get her grandson out of the powerful claws of the Caldweck family. Somehow, she’d prove that they were unfit to be his guardians. But she had to be tactful. She had to wait for the perfect moment to strike.

23

Present Day

It shouldn’t have been this difficult to crack a family like the Caldwecks. As Sophie dug through the countless files about their business practices and their factories and their dealings with the government, she was reminded of her tireless crusade three years ago—how she’d helped her mother write an article that had ended the negative environmental impact along the coastline and shut down the building of an enormous luxury hotel. Why was getting to the Caldwecks so much more difficult? Privately, Sophie worried that she’d lost her touch, that her court case out West and her exhaustion from months of fearing it had destroyed her mental stamina.

Toward the end of July, Sophie sat on the back porch of her mother and Landon’s place, shifting through the numerous notes she’d made about the Caldwecks and listening for Ruth’s footsteps on the stairs. Emotional exhaustion had left Ruth in bed for most of the afternoon, but she’d promised to join Sophie on the porch that evening for a glass of wine and a debrief. Sophie hated that she had so little to share with Ruth. She hated that a part of her feared they’d have to give up.

Not long before seven thirty, Ruth cracked open the back door and offered a shy smile. Sophie beckoned for her to join her, reaching for an empty glass. Ruth sat, zipping her sweatshirt to her chin. She’d been living at Celia and Landon’s for weeks, at this point, unable to return to New York City and unable to move forward in her life without her grandson.

Sophie’s heart ached for this woman, this woman who’d lost her daughter and her grandson in one fell swoop—all because of a past she couldn’t change.

“I want to tell you something,” Ruth said now, setting her glass down and narrowing her eyes at Sophie. Sophie felt as though Ruth could see right through her. “I want to tell you to focus on your own life. I see you down here, working tirelessly, fighting for me. But you have to remember to fight for yourself, first and foremost.” Ruth closed her eyes. “It was wrong of me to ask for your help. It was wrong of me to think that you and your mother could uncover what my lawyers couldn’t. Think of me as a desperate woman, willing to pull out all the stops.”

Sophie’s heart dropped into her stomach. “You aren’t desperate. You were terribly wronged. You…”

Ruth shook her head sadly. “I think I need to build a new narrative about myself. I need to find a way to move forward. Maybe, down the line, I can reach out to Quentin. Maybe I can explain myself and ask for a bit of time in Kellen’s life.”

“You can’t let those people raise him,” Sophie breathed, her voice catching.

Ruth was wordless. Wind ruffled through their hair, bringing with it the smell of approaching autumn. “I’m tired of talking about it. I’m tired of thinking about it,” she said finally. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself? Have you talked to your professors yet?”

Sophie admitted that she hadn’t gotten around to calling them yet. “I’m too scared,” she said.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Ruth said, not unkindly. “Don’t punish yourself for the past. You heard the judge. He asked you to go back to school, to commit your beautiful heart to what you began.” Ruth finished her glass of wine, then stood and said she was going for a walk. “I can’t let the Caldwecks keep me locked inside, in hiding, for the rest of my life.”

Sophie remembered how volatile Quentin and his lawyer had been, storming through the Eco-Lodge in search of Ruth. “They must think you’re capable of something terrible,” she said now.