Page 15 of The Family Plot
“Grandpa,” Ruby says. “Something terrible happened. Andy Lighthouse—”
“That boy should’ve never come around here,” he cuts her off. And the way he saysthat boystraightens my spine.
Ruby squares her shoulders. “Yes, I know you— Yes. But Grandpa, he… he died.” She glances at me, and my throat stings as she continues. “He was murdered.”
Lyle leans forward, stretching the plastic tube linking him to oxygen, to life.
“Then he got what he deserved,” he says.
I gasp in chorus with Ruby—but she recovers quicker than me.
“Grandpa, you don’t—” She puts her hand on my shoulder, and even through the fog of my shock, I feel the instinct to shrug it off. “This is Dahlia Lighthouse. Andy’ssister.”
“I know who you are,” Lyle says, eyes like arrows aimed at my face. “And I know what I said. Your brother Andy got what he deserved.”
The air is sucked from the room. Lyle rasps, even with oxygen tubes.
“What—” I start, but Ruby clamps her hand on my arm and pulls me toward the door.
“That’s enough, Grandpa,” she says, and before I can stop her, she’s guiding me outside, depositing me on the crunchy, yellow lawn, shutting the door behind her with a decisive thud.
“What did he mean by that?” I demand. “Why would he… how could he say that?”
Ruby puts a finger to her lips, quick and sharp. Then she walks away, waving for me to follow, until we reach her backyard.
“Look,” she says, glancing at the house, “Grandpa is very protectiveof me. Always has been. His wife—my grandmother—left him when my mom was just a kid, and then—”
“What does that have to do with anything? He said Andydeservedto be murdered.”
“I’m getting to that,” she insists. “His wife left him when my mom was a kid, and then mymomleft when I was a baby. She was only eighteen when she had me, and… well, she calls sometimes, but Grandpa doesn’t like me to answer the phone, and he never lets me speak to her. He tells her if she really wants to see me, she knows where to find me.” Ruby looks down, playing with the zipper on her puffy vest. “She’s never come back.”
“But why—”
“He raised me,” she cuts me off. “And homeschooled me, just like you and Andy were. Well”—she stops herself, a smirk seeping onto her face—“notjustlike you and Andy were.”
I shift beneath her gaze. Did Andy tell her about Mom’s curriculum? Or does she know about it the way everyone on Blackburn does: through things Chief Kraft spied when he dropped in at our house, warnings he handed out to islanders like flyers?
“Grandpa made sure I never wanted for anything,” Ruby says. “And I didn’t, really… except some company.”
She pokes some dried-up grass with her foot. This patchy, narrow backyard is nothing like our lawn, where each green blade has been lovingly tended to, Fritz using scissors in the summer to shape what the mower chopped.
“But Grandpa’s always been nervous about me interacting with other people. He’s fine with, like, Mrs. Baker at the market, or Mr. Ford at the bike shop, but he doesn’t like me hanging around people my own age. Especially boys. Or—men now, I guess.”
“That’s… controlling,” I say. Which might be unfair of me. I barelyeven know who Mrs. Baker or Mr. Ford are, seeing as Mom rarely allowed us to go into town.
“Maybe,” Ruby says. “But I get it. My grandmother left him for another man. Then my mom left with whoever my dad was. So I can’t really blame him. For seeing boys—men—as the things that take the people he loves. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to convince him I won’t leave him, too.” She shrugs. “You saw the embroidery.”
“Ruby loves Grandpa,” I recite dully. “Home is a place you’ll never leave.”
“Exactly. I made those when I was twelve, and they’ve been hanging there ever since. He’s taken them as a promise. Which is fine. Back then, I intended them to be one.”
“But you did want to leave him,” I say. “With Andy.”
I’m queasy at the thought: Andy and Ruby slipping off into the night while I lay in bed, believing my brother would be there, would always be there, when I woke in the morning.
“I did,” Ruby says, “yeah.”
She rubs her arms, her sleeves unprotected by her vest. “I was fifteen,” she says. “And selfish. And I wanted a bigger, safer life than I thought this island could give me. But soon after Andy left—” Her sentence skids to a stop. “Soon after Andydied, Grandpa got sick. Turns out he had COPD. And that’s led to heart problems. Bad ones.”
