Chapter 14

Lon’s car was still rolling to a stop when Ruby opened the door. He slammed on the brakes just as she jumped out and disappeared inside the ER.

“Good lord,” he muttered as he parked and followed her inside.

He heard her voice before he saw her. She was arguing, telling the nurses around her that she wasn’t hurt, and it wasn’t her blood.

“Where’s Peanut?” she cried, trying to push past them.

“They’re already working on him. He’s alive, and you need to let them do their job,” a nurse said.

Lon put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “Come with me, Ruby. You can’t be with him right now.”

She looked at him then, and the stark terror in her eyes nearly broke him.

“But what if he doesn’t make it? I need him to hear my voice. I need him to follow it back to me.”

Lon sighed. “Wait here a second,” he replied, and walked away.

Ruby ignored what he’d said and followed, and when he found the right exam room, she pushed past him.

Peanut was motionless, oblivious to the meds they were shooting into his IV. He was already hooked to a heart monitor, and another machine was taking his blood pressure. He looked even taller than usual because his ankles and feet were hanging off the end of the exam table, and Ruby shuddered as she watched a tech positioning a portable X-ray machine over Peanut’s head wound.

Oh God, please, God, don’t let him die.

Lon pulled her back out of the way, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence. Every ounce of her energy was focused on the man she loved. When the doctor left to view the X-rays, Ruby wanted to go to Peanut’s bedside, but there were nurses all around his bed.

And then the doctor came back with the news.

“The bullet didn’t fully penetrate the skull, but he has a small brain bleed and swelling. We’ll monitor him to make sure it doesn’t get worse. For now, he’s going to critical care,” the doctor said, and when they began wheeling him out of the bay, Ruby panicked and began running beside the bed, her hand on his arm.

“I’m here, Peanut. I’m here. I love you.”

“No, ma’am, you can’t go any further,” someone said, and then they went through double doors and out of her line of sight.

Ruby didn’t move. Couldn’t move. And she couldn’t stop shaking.

“Wake me up. Wake me up,” she kept muttering. “This isn’t real. Wake me up.”

Then she heard Lovey’s voice behind her. “It’s me, honey. You need to come with me now.”

Ruby turned, unaware tears were rolling down her face.

“Oh, Lovey, why doesn’t God want me to be happy?”

Lovey grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into her arms. “It’s not God doing this, baby. It’s the devil in those men. God’s got this. Peanut is going to wake up, and you two will live happy ever after.”

Ruby let the words wash over her, willing them to be true.

* * *

The parking lot was packed with people standing silently, praying and waiting for word of one of their beloved residents. Peanut Butterman had done so much for so many, and now the people who cared for him were helpless to do anything for him but pray. They slowly learned the same thing Ruby had been told. Brain bleed and swelling, concussion…in critical care. They stayed praying, waiting for word that he had awakened, and were there when night fell.

Ruby was upstairs in the waiting room outside critical care, waiting for news as well.

The twins and Mabel Jean left to get Ruby clean clothes, but when they saw all the food that had been left out at her house, they put it up and cleaned the kitchen before they got her clothes.

Back at the hospital, Lovey took what the girls had brought and stripped Ruby of the bloody clothes and helped her into clean ones.

Ruby knew it was happening, but she couldn’t focus enough to talk. She kept reliving the shooting, as if thinking of it enough would change the ending. Now she sat motionless in the waiting room, watching the door for someone to come jump-start her life.

* * *

It was midnight—the witching hour—when a nurse came into the waiting room.

Ruby wasn’t alone, but she was the only one awake. She stood abruptly, her hands fisted and motionless, as if she was going to have to fight her way to him.

“He’s waking up,” the nurse said. “You have five minutes.”

Lovey woke and grabbed Ruby’s arm. “I’m going with you. I won’t say a word, but you’re not going in there alone.”

Ruby nodded, then followed the nurse. They moved past the other patients, ever mindful that Peanut was not the only resident of Blessings in critical condition, and then they walked into his room.

The nurse moved toward his IV to check the drip.

Ruby was trembling.

He was so pale and so still, that for a moment she thought they’d made a mistake. He wasn’t waking up. If it hadn’t been for all the machines beeping his life signs, she wouldn’t have thought he was even breathing.

So she took a breath for him and moved forward. It wasn’t until she put a hand on his arm and felt a muscle twitch beneath her palm that she knew he was still in there.

His eyelids twitched.

She stifled a quick sob. “Peanut, sweetheart…I’m here.”

He took a deeper breath.

“Can you hear me? I love you, Peanut…so much.”

His fingers twitched.

She waited, watching his eyelashes fluttering, fluttering, and then his eyes opening. She saw confusion in his eyes, then his gaze was going from ceiling to floor to the nurse and then to her.

“Hey, you,” she said, and made herself smile.

His eyebrows knitted across his forehead. She thought it was from pain. She was wrong.

“Where?” he mumbled.

“You’re in the hospital, but you’re going to be okay.”

The confusion on his face was turning to panic as he stared at the fading bruises on her face. “Who are you?”

She froze.

“How do I know you? Do you know my name?”

Ruby moaned.

The room was beginning to spin when she fainted in Lovey’s arms.

* * *

Lovey sent a text to the chief, telling him Peanut had awakened without knowing who or where he was—and didn’t recognize Ruby—and then she sent the same text to the girls in Ruby’s shop. Within half an hour, the news had spread to the prayer vigil in the hospital parking lot. It was bittersweet, knowing Peanut was alive and going to recover, and yet unaware of who he was. The heartbreak for all of them was Ruby. In less than a week, she’d gone from terror to true joy to heartbreak.

One by one, they gathered up their things and started home—some walking, some driving, but all of them with the same guilty thought.

Thank God it wasn’t me.

* * *

Ruby came to in the waiting room, curled up on a sofa with a pillow beneath her head and a blanket covering her body. Lovey was gone, but Vesta was there with a cup of coffee in her hand, standing at the window overlooking the parking lot below.

For a moment, Ruby couldn’t think where she was, and then the dark, sick feeling returned as she remembered.

She pushed the blanket aside and sat up. “Why are you here?” she asked.

Vesta turned. “Because you are.”

Ruby’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t know how to live with this,” she said.

Vesta sat down beside her and took her hand.

“You don’t live with it, honey. You set it aside and let it live on its own. Given enough time, everything finds its own level. He’ll get better, and he’ll remember. You’ll see.”

Ruby’s eyes burned from crying. Her chest hurt—so much—like someone was standing on her heart. Earlier, Rhonda Bailey, one of the critical care nurses, had come out to tell her the doctor didn’t want her to visit Peanut for a while. They couldn’t tell her he would get better, and they couldn’t tell her he wouldn’t. Amnesia and head injuries were tricky. Right now, they didn’t want him agitated.

She’d been banished.

She took a deep shuddering breath. “I want to go home now.”

“I’ll take you,” Vesta said. “Do you want me to stay with you? I can.”

“No. I need to be alone for a while. I need to figure this out. There’s something I’m missing here…something God needs me to learn.”

“But I don’t—”

“I’ll be fine,” Ruby said. “Twice I should have died and didn’t. I have a purpose here, and I’ll find it. My heart is broken, but it healed before and it will again. All that matters is that Peanut is alive. I won’t be selfish enough to ask for more.”

Vesta was crying now. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Ruby closed her eyes, willing herself not to shed another tear. “Oh God, Vesta, so am I.”

Vesta wiped away tears and got up.

“Well then, come on, honey. I’m taking you home.”

* * *

Vesta drove without trying to strike up a conversation.

Ruby rode with her eyes closed, too wounded to look at Blessings because today had forever changed the way it made her feel. She’d been invaded here in the place where she had felt the safest. Not once, but twice. She needed to see the town in the light of day and hope it was still enough.

“We’re here,” Vesta said, as she slowed down and pulled up in Ruby’s drive. “Here’s your house key.”

“Thank you for the ride. I’ll see you in church Sunday. I need to pick up the donations from the clothing drive and get them to the Conroy family so Charlie and his little sister can enroll in school.”

Vesta was speechless. Ruby was already thinking of others. Maybe that would be her salvation. She couldn’t fix her world, but she could help others fix their own.

She waited until Ruby was inside the house and the door shut behind her. She continued to wait until she saw Ruby turn on the lights. After that, she drove away, too numb to cry.

* * *

Once again, Ruby’s home had become a place of great betrayal, and now she had to come to terms with it before she could feel safe again.

The last happy place she’d been with Peanut was in the kitchen, and so she went there, expecting ruined food to still be on the table and dirty dishes in the sink. Instead, it was as if the lunch she’d been making had never happened. She suspected friends again, coming to mop up the continuing mess of her life.

Ruby glanced at the clock. It was nearing four a.m. It would be daylight all too soon. Twenty-four hours since food had touched her lips, almost that long since Peanut last kissed her, never imagining that it might be their last kiss. And so being alone was her reality again.

She began going through the house like she did every night, locking up, pulling shades, tidying up what had not been put away. She would never have a baby to put to sleep, but as the years had passed and the pain of that had lessened, she realized she’d been putting the soul of her little house to sleep instead.

Satisfied that all was well, and secure in the knowledge that there was no one left in the Dye family to come after her, she got to her bedroom and stripped, took the hottest shower she could bear, and then pulled back the covers and crawled into bed, too exhausted to dry off.

The bed that used to be her sanctuary felt too big—even empty. She grabbed the extra pillow and hugged it to herself, then buried her face within the softness.

“Thank You for his life,” she said, and closed her eyes.

When she woke again, it was daylight and someone was knocking at her door. She lay there, listening until they stopped. She heard a car start and felt no guilt as they drove away. She glanced at the clock. It was after ten a.m., time to begin the day. The ache inside her was still there. Might as well get used to it because she didn’t know how to turn off the pain of being banned from seeing Peanut.

A few minutes later, she was dressed and in her kitchen making coffee. She’d been all over the house and had yet to look out the kitchen window again. She didn’t want to see the backyard. She didn’t want to remember, but the horror of what had happened wasn’t going to go away until she faced it.

Angry at Gary and Jarrod for bringing their ugliness and evil into her world, she yanked the door open and stepped out. The burned area was like a big, black spill of ink, and the scent of burned grass was still prevalent. She glanced toward the back fence, and for a moment, it was as if the energy of what had happened was still there…like looking at a shadow of the past. In her mind, she still saw Gary pointing a gun from the other side of the fence.

She pointed back.

“You’re dead,” she said, and went back inside.