“What’s an usher do?” asked Miles.
“You get to be in charge of where everyone sits. You help people find their seats, and you ask if they’re with the bride or the groom. It’s a very important job,” Gabe said, with one of his easy smiles. Ruby beamed at him, and Gabe reached over to give her ponytail an affectionate tweak. Ruby’s cheeks were pink; her usually sharp expression was almost dreamy. Her eyes sparkled behind her glasses as she leaned her head on Gabe’s shoulder.
“Have you told your mother?” Sarah asked quietly.
Ruby’s expression darkened. “We’ve talked,” she said.
Which meant what, exactly? Sarah shot her husband a frantic look, which Eli, still chewing, either didn’t see or chose to ignore. What had Annette said when Ruby called her with the news? Why hadn’t Sarah’s own mom called to warn her? And what was she supposed to do now? Congratulate those two children? Propose a toast?
Before she could decide, Dexter asked Gabe, “Did you give her a ring?”
Ruby flipped her hand over, curling her fingers into her palm. “We’re going to pick one out together.” Ruby leaned over and kissed Gabe’s cheek. Sarah swallowed hard. She knew Ruby so well. She knew how Ruby dreamed of being a Broadway director, how Ruby would tell everyone her favorite show was Angels in America, but how she secretly loved Phantom of the Opera, how she hated celery and loved capers, and was so ticklish that she had to cut the tags off any item of clothing that touched her skin. She knew that Ruby hated being short and was secretly vain about her curls and that she’d been delighted when an eye exam revealed that she was nearsighted, because she thought heavy, Clark Kent–style glasses would make people take her seriously.
Unlike Ruby, with her singular focus—Ruby, who’d known, since she’d seen her first Broadway show, that she wanted to grow up and work in theater—Gabe hadn’t settled on a career. While Ruby had earned a BFA in production and design at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Gabe had drifted through the general studies program, graduating with a degree in liberal arts and, as far as Sarah could discern, no idea of what he might use it for. He’d fallen into proofreading, and seemed to like it well enough, but when Eli had asked about his future, Gabe had just shrugged.
This concerned Sarah enormously. “Are we worried about this?” she’d asked Eli, right after the pandemic had started, before Gabe and Ruby had arrived. They hadn’t met Gabe yet, and had managed to gather only a sparse handful of facts about him—that he’d grown up in California, that he’d graduate with Ruby, with a degree in liberal arts, and that he was still trying to figure out what to do with his life.
“Why would we worry?” Eli said.
Sarah pointed at her husband. “You knew what you wanted to be when you grew up by the time you’d finished college.”
“Probably by the time I finished high school,” Eli agreed.
Sarah thought the idea of an eighteen-year-old dreaming of dental implants and root canals was a little weird. She let it go. “I knew what I wanted to be pretty early on.” And then decided not to be it, she thought. But even though she hadn’t become a concert pianist, she’d found a way to make music her life. She hadn’t floundered around for years, trying this, sampling that. Her own mother, as far as Sarah knew, had always loved books and writing, and had always known her career would involve those things, somehow, and her stepdaughter was the same way. “Ruby’s always known that she wanted to be in theater.”
“Since she saw Phantom,” Eli said, smiling fondly. Sarah had heard the story, early on, of Ruby’s first Broadway show, how enraptured she’d been, how she’d stood at the stage door and waited until every single actor had come out. “We were lucky with Ruby. Just like your parents were lucky with you.”
Sarah pressed her lips together, not wanting to dwell on how often she found herself doubting her choices and thinking about the life she hadn’t pursued.
“I don’t understand what Ruby sees in him. Doesn’t it worry you at all?”
“Not really.” Eli was in the bathroom with the door open. Sarah could see him studying his hairline in the mirror. “It’s probably the sex.”
Sarah chucked a decorative pillow toward the bathroom door. “Thank you for that. Now I’ll just sit here imagining…” She waved her hands. “… that.”
“Ruby’s twenty-one. Of course she’s having sex,” said Eli. He tilted left, then right, frowning, and handed Sarah his phone. “Will you take a picture of the top of my head?”