Vodka and dead girls have a way of loosening that grip, I want to tell her.
Ash. I was really wasted last night. I don’t remember what I said to you.
Ruby sends this message after composing and deleting a dozen others; the text immediately shows as delivered. An hour of conspicuous silence follows, where Ruby checks her phone compulsively, as if a reply might slip through unnoticed while she blinks. It is late evening in Melbourne. But definitely not late enough for her text to go unread—Ash would still be expecting work-related messages at this hour, he would have his phone within reach. Panic grows as time ticks on. What did she say in her texts last night? How bad did it get? Bad enough for her to delete the evidence after? The photos and words they’ve sent back and forth since she got to New York have all been deleted from her phone, too; later, she will mourn this loss, but for now she feels sick. Has she said something she knew she wouldn’t want to see the next day?
Ruby holds a pillow tight against her chest, tries to quiet her mind. And for the first time considers whether telling the truth might really be so bad.
It must be. How else to explain her nausea, her hollow limbs and heavy chest. This does not feel like liberation.
She sends another message.
I’m feeling really awful about … everything.
Delivered within milliseconds. No response. Ruby lifts the pillow up to her face now, screams into the smooth fabric. A strange, muffled sound, more like the memory of screaming than the real thing. It is too early, she knows, or perhaps too late, for the half-empty vodka bottle next to the bed. But there is no denying her fingers are already twisting toward the smooth, clear glass.
Is this really who she has become? It would be easy enough to say yes. To reach for the bottle, shut down the daylight, too. Those people on Officer Jennings’ brochures wouldn’t blame her for that, surely. Despite their camera-ready smiles, they of all people would understand you can’t survive every situation on your own. That sometimes you need help to get up off the floor.
But she isn’t the one that needs help, is she?
Something she realises now. She went to the precinct because she wanted to be around people for whom Jane is the only thing that matters. To stay focused on that body, and to be closer to her, too, the way she was just a few days ago. It doesn’t feel right to have been there first and to just go about her life from then on, as if nothing had happened. She wants to be with Detective O’Byrne, sorting through evidence, looking for clues, finding the missing links.
This really is the only thing that matters.
I could help, she thinks, and then stops herself, feeling foolish. Maybe she has gone a little crazy, after all. Imagining a place for herself at the table like that. Imagining she could make a difference to the investigation.
Ruby hears Jennings now, the way he said it might be good to talk about what she experienced down at the river. Messaging Ash is sure as hell not going to make things better, she knows. Cassie with her gentle scolding, and entreaties to come home, won’t do either. But who does that leave, then? Like a whisper in another room, Ruby gets the feeling there is an important conversation going on without her that contains the answers she is looking for. She senses an invitation, waiting. If she can only figure out where those whispers are coming from.
Unsure what to do with this new concept, floating just out of reach, Ruby turns off her phone, puts it in a drawer, before lying back down on the bed. Eventually, she falls into a fitful, early morning sleep, dreaming of a young woman with a spade as tall as she is, digging at the earth, singing as she works, and when she wakes from this dream it is near on midday. Ruby can hear workmen talking and laughing outside her window, hanging off their planks, swinging on their ropes. They are going about their business. The city keeps moving.
You need to keep moving, too.
These words come through more like a shout than a whisper, catapulting Ruby up and out of bed. She showers and dresses carelessly, ties her wet hair in a knot, and is out the door fast. It is chilly outside, but the April sun is a bright glare in a clear blue sky, and Ruby scolds herself for losing half the day already. Something shifted while she was sleeping. A click and unlock. She does not want to wake on the bathroom floor, or sleep while the sun is out on a Sunday. She does not want to cry on the street, and she does not want to send drunken, unanswered messages across the ocean.
What Ruby wants is to be useful. It might be foolish to think that Detective O’Byrne would have any use for her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t help in other ways. Even if it simply means remembering that every Jane Doe—her Jane Doe—is a real person, with a real name they deserve to get back.