“So are you a VSCO girl?” asked Mitch.
Ruby tossed back her head with a laugh.
“I will be,” she clarified, a determined look coming to her face. “I’m starting a YouTube channel. Got Insta of course, just need more followers is all.”
“Instagram?”
“Yeah, if you think I’m gonna work a desk job, you’re plumb mad. I’m going to be free of all that. All I need are good pictures, build me a following, and then I’ll get the ad dollars. VSCO girls are no dummies. Don’t care what the memes say about them. They know what they’re doing and I’m going to do it, too. I told Mum all that, so she knows my plan. She’s not happy, mind you, but it’s my life, right?”
Unlike Chloe, who’d regressed in age, Mitch put Ruby at the same age as Penny, though perhaps a bit more refined than a typical American teen.
“Your mom is?”
“Grace … Grace Francone,” Ruby said proudly. “She adopted me when I was little, so Ruby wasn’t my original name.”
“Oh, what was your original name?”
“Isabella Boyd, I’m told. But Mum and Dad wanted me to feel like I had a new name for my new family.”
Mitch wished he could delve deeper into Ruby’s mix of fact and fantasy, but didn’t want to risk upsetting her in a way that might summon back Eve.
“And who’s your dad?” he asked.
A misty look swept into her eyes.
“My dad’s name was Arthur, but he’s dead,” she said softly.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I was there when he died,” she added. “He dropped to the floor at the pizza shop he owned. I called nine-one-one, but there was nothing anyone could do to help him. He’d had a heart attack, you see, so it wasn’t my fault.”
Mitch heard: I still blame myself. As he remembered it from Grace’s retelling, no 911 calls were made until she arrived on the scene. It was more fact and fantasy colliding in Penny’s mind, mixing up truths, and Mitch could not help but be reminded of the manipulative prowess of a sociopath.
“What about your birth mom, do you know anything about her?” he asked.
Ruby shook her head. “No. Nothing. But don’t go feeling sorry for me there, Dr. Mitch. I mean, whatever. People will say stupid things like, ‘Those aren’t your real parents,’ Arthur and Grace and all. I’ve heard that before, and it’s a bit stunning at first, but then you realize it’s just ignorance. They don’t get it. So whatever. My mum chose me. She found me, right, and could have left it at that, but she fought to get me, she wanted me so much—”
Unable to finish the thought, Ruby bit her bottom lip, swallowed hard.
“Because … because she loved me.”
Her voice broke, but after one deep breath it seemed her composure returned.
“It’s not like I don’t think about it, you know—my past, my birth mom, all that. But there’s a difference between being curious, wanting to know where I got my eyes, or my hair, or whatever, and being devastated about it. Want to know what’s devastating? My dad dying, that’s what. He’s gone. I can’t talk to him … can’t ask him for help with my homework, or just … I dunno, watch a show together, or eat his silly mouse cakes again.”
Ruby’s gaze softened as if she were back in that memory.
“He’d make pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse, even though I was like, whatever, Dad, I don’t need my food shaped funny to eat it anymore, but he kept doing it because that was him. He just had a silly way about him, and now he’s gone. That’s hard. Being adopted.” She shrugged. “What’s wrong with having more than one set of real parents? Who says it has to be one way over another? I don’t have to fit someone else’s mold. I can choose whichever mold works best for me, for my life, like Mum chose me, right? Same as I can choose to be a VSCO girl. You read me?”
“Loud and clear,” Mitch said.
He was about to take the conversation on a darker turn, engage Ruby on matters of the law, see what she thought of the crime of murder, if there were circumstances in which it might be justified. Before he could get going though, an alarm rang out. The strobe lights went flashing, and that meant guards were on the move. None of this was jarring to Mitch, who’d grown accustomed to the noise, but Ruby looked quite surprised and unsettled.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “Probably a little incident in the hospital is all.”