Page 128 of The Book of Summer

She peeked out through the ruffled curtains of what was once the boys’ bunk room but would be a nursery before too long. It faced the road, not the sea, because what did a baby need with a view? Ruby touched her stomach. Her monthly was almost a month overdue. She prayed that the two weeks Sam spent at Cliff House did the trick.

Damn it all to hell, though. Hattie was still down there, stomping about in her calfskin heels, looking swell as forever in a green Sunday dress with a basque top. She had a mile of pearls around her neck, bunched together and caught with a mother-of-pearl bee. Ruby wanted to ask her all about it but of course could not. Hattie didn’t have a stick of luggage with her, which meant she came all that way just to talk. Well, no thank you and good luck. Ruby had her fill of Hattie’s two cents, if her words were even worth so much. She wondered how many cents that blasted magazine paid.

Though Ruby was intent on evading her former friend, she opened the window a crack, just to suss out what was what.

“I know you’re up there!” Hattie called, quick on the draw. “Let me in, for the love of God! I’m on your side, Ruby!”

Because she wasn’t a complete clod, Ruby did feel a crumb of guilt. To travel from New York to Boston, with a ferry at the end, was a helluva slog. Especially when only two ferries ran per day, boats so loaded with extra freight they were always an hour or more delayed.

But before Ruby got completely slushy over the girl, she reminded herself about Hattie’s “investigative piece,” out there for all to read. A touch of fame on the backs of people she once claimed to love. What a witch.

“You can’t lock me out here!” her old friend cried. “Rubes, this is bonkers! You’re the one who…”

Hattie paused. She shook her head, red curls bouncing to and fro.

Rubywas“the one who,” wasn’t she? She’d sent those photographs to Hattie, seeking an explanation but apparently not wanting the truth. Or Hattie’s version of it anyhow.

“Topper was the best kind of fella,” Hattie had said when she’d rung. “He’ll be forever in my heart. But what you see is what he got, if you catch my drift. The pictures don’t lie.”

Hattie had spent a long time looking at them, stewing on a decent thing to say. In the end she’d decided that she owed it to Ruby to call it like she’d seen it, even if it caused some bruises along the way.

“Your brother was a remarkable person,” Hattie had said. “But he was a sad, confused young man. He didn’t know himself at all.”

Sad? Confused? What about Topper’s pranks, his wide-as-the-world grin? No one smiled or goofed around like him.

“He didn’t want to be who he was,” Hattie said on the phone. “He wanted to be like everyone else and so he fought it. Your brother hated being a fairy.”

“A fairy? Honestly, Hattie. The two of you had… relations.”

“‘Relations’?”

“I saw it! In the butler’s pantry!”

“Oh my,” Hattie had said with a chortle. “Not a spot you’d like to spy one’s brother in. Yes, we had a bit of fun together. But he never enjoyed it as much as he wanted to. He was always somewhere else. Poor guy. I tried to talk to him about it. There are communities where…”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear any more.”

And then Hattie had posed the question that’d render Ruby weak-kneed and stammering.

“Were there other photos?” she’d asked. “Anything with Sam?”

“With Sam?!” Ruby had choked, for she’d not told Hattie why he’d been hospitalized.

She’d mentioned only trauma, a brief mental… faltering. But Ruby revealed nothing about the senator’s son, or that he and Sam were busted in the munitions room. She never used the word “pervert,” as the doctor had.

“Gosh, Ruby, I thought that’s why you sent the package,” was Hattie’s response. “Given the business with Sam in that hospital.”

“No! I sent it because of Topper, obviously!”

“Huh. I wouldn’t have figured you’d bring up old dirt on someone who was dead.”

“Don’t get all high horse on me,” Ruby had snipped. “Hattie Rutter, a woman who takes it in the rear.”

“Whoa, Nellie. That’s a low cut, sport. You do know their history, yes?”

“Their history?” Ruby had said, addled, confused, and quite cross. “What history?”

“When the two were boys there was some…experimenting.”