uby walked into her mother's penthouse condominium and closed the door behind her. The place was eerily silent and smelled faintly of flowers.

She dropped her jacket onto the gleaming marble floor; beside an ornate wrought-iron and stone that held a huge urn full of roses.

She turned the corner and literally had to catch her breath. It was the most incredible room she'd ever seen.

A wall of floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the whole apartment, showcasing a panoramic view of Elliot Bay.

The floors were polished marble, a color somewhere between white and gold, with twisting black and green threads running through each square.

Brocade-covered furniture, perched on gilded legs, sat in a cluster in the living room around a beautiful gold and glass coffee table. In one corner stood an ebony Steinway, its lacquered top cluttered with photographs in gilt-edged frames.

A dimly lit hallway led past several more rooms-formal dining room, gourmet kitchen, home office--and ended at the master bedroom. Here, the windows were dressed in steel-gray silk curtains that matched the woven cashmere bedspread. There were two huge walk-in closets. She opened the first one, and a light came on automatically, revealing two rows of clothes, organized by color.

Ruby's fingers drifted through the clothing. Silks, cashmeres, expensive woolens. She saw the labels: St. John, Armani, Donna Karan, Escada.

She released her breath in an envious sigh. The thought This is what she left us for winged through her mind, hurting more than she would have expected. She pulled the list out of her pocket.

Hairdryer

Curling iron

Shorts

Sundresses

Socks

They were ordinary items, but nothing in this closet cost less than three hundred dollars.

She backed out, closing the door behind her. At the rosewood, gilt-trimmed bombe' chest, she opened the top drawer. Little piles of perfectly folded lingerie lay there. She picked out a few pieces, then gathered up some shorts and cap-sleeved tops from the second drawer. She set the pile on the bed and moved to the second closet.

Again, the light came on automatically, but the clothing in this closet looked as if it belonged to another woman. Worn gray sweatpants; baggy, stained sweatshirts; jeans so old they were out of date. A few brightly colored sundresses.

Her mother had expensive designer clothes, and lie-around-the-house clothes, but nothing in between. No clothes for going out to lunch with a friend or stopping by to catch a matinee.

No clothes for a real life.

Weird...

She reached for a sundress. As she pulled it toward her; the lacy hem caught on something. Ruby gently pushed the other clothes out of the way and saw what had snagged the dress.

It was the upraised flap of a cardboard box. On the beige side, written in red ink, was the word Ruby.

Her heart skipped a beat. She had a quick, almost desperate urge to back out of the closet and slam it shut. Whatever was in that box, whatever her mother had saved and marked with Ruby's name, couldn't matter...

But she couldn't seem to make herself move. She dropped the dress, let it clatter to the floor; hanger and all, and fell to her knees. Scooting forward, she dragged the box toward her. Her fingers were trembling as she opened it.

Inside, there were dozens of tiny wrapped packages, some in the reds and greens of Christmas, some in bright silvery paper with balloons and candles.

Birthdays and Christmases.

She counted the packages. Twenty-one. Two each year for the eleven Nora had been gone from them, less the black cashmere sweater that Caroline had sneaked past Ruby's guard.

These were the gifts that Nora had bought every year and sent to Ruby, the same ones Ruby had ruthlessly returned, unopened.

"Oh, man." She let out her breath in a sigh and reached for one of the boxes. It was small, like many of the others, the size of a credit card and about a half inch deep. The one she'd chosen was wrapped in birthday paper.

The paper felt slick in her hands and as she lifted it toward her; she heard a tiny clinking from inside, and the sound filled her with a terrible longing. It made her angry, this welling up of useless emotion, but she couldn't make it go away.

Carefully, she peeled the paper away and was left with a small white box imprinted with a jewelry store logo. She lifted the lid.

Inside, on a bed of opalescent tissue, lay a silver charm. It was a birthday cake, complete with candles.

Ruby knew she shouldn't pick up the charm, but she couldn't help herself. She reached down and picked it up, feeling the steady weight of it in her palm, then turned it over. On the back, it was inscribed.

HAPPY 21ST. LOVE, MOM.

The silver charm blurred.

She refused to open any more; she didn't need to. She knew that somewhere in these boxes were a bracelet and more carefully chosen charms-many representing the years they'd been apart.

She could imagine her mother; dressed perfectly, makeup flawless, going from store to store for the ideal gift. She would be chatting pleasantly with the salespeople, saying things like, My daughter is twenty-one today. I need something extra special.

Pretending that everything was normal... that she hadn't abandoned her children when they needed her most.

At that, Ruby felt a rush of cold auger; and control returned. A few trinkets didn't mean anything.

What mattered was not what Nora had tried to give Ruby, but rather what she'd taken away.

There had been no seventeenth birthday party for Ruby. On that day, there had only been more silence. No family had gathered around a big kitchen strewn with gifts. Those times... those precious moments had died when their family died.

A few nicely wrapped gifts found stuffed in a cardboard box in a closet couldn't change that.

Ruby wouldn't let it.

As Ruby neared her mother's hospital room, she slowed. A man was standing by the door. He was tall and effete, a man who dressed for women--gray slacks, pink shirt, and vibrant navy blue suspenders. His hair was snowy white and thinning. She noticed that he kept running his hand through it, as if to assure himself that it was still there.

At her approach, he looked up. Narrowed, penetrating black eyes fixed on her. "Are you Ruby Bridge?"

She came to a stop. She'd misjudged the distance, and taken one step too close to him. He exuded a sweet, musky scent. Expensive cologne, used too liberally. She could see that he was disturbed by her invasion of his personal space.

He took a step backward and cleared his throat—a gentle reminder that he'd asked if she was Ruby Bridge.

"Who wants to know?"

Smiling-as if that was precisely what he would have expected Ruby Bridge to say--he extended his hand. "I'm Dr. Leonard Allbright, your mother's doctor."

"Where's your white coat?"

"I'm her psychiatrist."

That surprised Ruby. She couldn't imagine her mother spilling her guts to anyone. "Really?"

"I've just spoken to her; and she told me all about your... arrangement." He said the final word as if it tasted bitter. "I'm aware of your past history, so I thought I'd caution you to keep in mind that your mother is fragile."

"Uh-huh. Are you married, Dr. Allbright?"

A pained expression slipped into the grooves of his face. "No. Why do you ask?"

"My mother collects men who believe she's fragile. She's a real Tennessee Williams kind of gal."

Dr. Allbright did not look pleased by that observation. "Why have you offered to care for her?"

"Look, Doc, when it's all over; you can ask Nora all the questions you want. She'll pay you a huge fee to listen to her moan about the bitch daughter who betrayed her. But I"m not going to talk to you."

"Betrayed" is an interesting word choice."

Ruby flinched. "If that's all..."

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a slim silver case with the initials LOA etched in gold. Inside lay a neat stack of expensive business cards. He handed her one. "I don't know if it is a good idea for you to take care of Nora. Especially not in her current state of mind."

Ruby took the card, tucked it into the elastic waistband of her leggings. "Yeah? Why not?"

He studied her; and she could see by the deepening frown that he wasn't pleased. "You haven't seen or spoken to your mother in years, and you're obviously very angry at her. Considering... what happened to her; it could be a bad mix. Maybe even dangerous."

"Dangerous how?"

"You don't know her. And as I said, she's fragile now-"

"I lived with her for sixteen years, Doc. You've talked to her once a week for... what, a year or two?"

"Fifteen years."

Ruby's chin snapped up. "Fifteen years? But everything was fine back then."

"Was it?"

His question threw her into confusion. Fifteen years ago, Ruby had been barely out of braces, singing along to Madonna and wearing a dozen crucifixes and imagining that her future would follow the course of her childhood, that her family would always be together.

"Your mother keeps a lot to herself," Dr. Allbright went on, "and as I said, she's fragile. I believe she always has been. You obviously disagree." He took a step toward her. This time it was Ruby who felt encroached upon. She steeled herself to stand her ground. "Your mother was doing almost seventy miles per hour when she hit that tree. And on the same day she lost her career. Pretty coincidental."

Ruby couldn't believe she hadn't made that connection. A chill moved through her. "Are you telling me she tried to kill herself?"

"I'm saying it's coincidental. Dangerously so.

Ruby released a heavy breath. Suddenly, it didn't seem like a good idea to be responsible for her mother; not even for a few days. No one emotionally unstable should be entrusted to Ruby-hell, goldfish couldn't survive her care.

"You don't know your mother. Remember that."

That observation put Ruby back on solid ground. "And who's fault is that? I'm not the one who walked out."

He stared down at her; gave her the kind of look she'd seen time and time again in her life.

Oh, good, she thought, now I'm disappointing total strangers.

"No, you're not," he said evenly, "and you're not sixteen anymore, either."

Ruby should have rented a bigger car. Like maybe a Hummer or a Winnebago.

This minivan was too small for her and Nora. They were trapped in side-by-side front seats. With the windows rolled up, there seemed to be no air left to breathe, and nothing to do but talk.

Ruby cranked up the radio.

Celine Dion's pure, vibrant voice filled the car; something about love coming to those who believed.

"Do you think you could turn that down?" Nora said. "I'm getting a headache."

Ruby's gaze flicked sideways. Nora looked tired; her skin, normally pale, now appeared to have the translucence of bone china. Tiny blue veins webbed the sunken flesh at her temples. She turned to Ruby and attempted a smile, but in truth, her mouth barely trembled before she closed her eyes and leaned against the window.

Fragile.

Ruby couldn't wrap her arms around that thought. It was too alien from her own experience. Her mother had always been made of steel. Even as a young girl, Ruby had known her mother's strength. The other kids in her class were afraid of their fathers when report cards came out. Not the Bridge girls. They lived in fear of disappointing their mother.

Not that she ever punished them particularly, or yelled or screamed. No, it was worse than that.

I'm disappointed in you, Ruby Elizabeth... life isn't kind to women who take the easy road.

Ruby had never known what the easy road was, exactly, or where it led, but she knew it was a bad thing. Almost as bad as "fooling yourself"-another thing Nora wouldn't abide.

The truth doesn't go away just because you shut your eyes had been another of her mother's favorite sayings.

Of course, those had been the "before" days. Afterward, no one in the family cared much about disappointing Nora Bridge. In fact, Ruby had gone out of her way to do just that.

"Ruby? The music?"

Ruby snapped the radio oft. The metronomic whoosh-thump, whoosh-thump of the windshield wipers filled the sudden silence.

Only a few miles from downtown Seattle, the gray city gave way to a sprawling collection of squat, flat-topped strip malls. A few miles more and they were in farming land. Rolling, tree-shrouded hills and lush green pastures fanned out on either side of the freeway. The white ice-cream dome of Mount Baker sat on a layer of fog above the flat farmland.

Ruby actually sped up as they drove through the sleepy town of Mount Vernon; she was afraid her mother would say something intimate, like Remember how we used to bicycle through the tulip fields at festival time?

But when she glanced sideways, she saw that Nora was asleep.

Ruby breathed a sigh of relief and eased off the accelerator. It felt good to drive the rest of the way without wondering if she was being watched.

At Anacortes, the tiny seaside town perched at the water's edge, she bought a one-way ferry ticket and pulled into line. It was still early in the tourist season; two weeks from now the wait for this ferry could well be five hours.

Less than a half hour later, a ferry docked, sounded its mournful horn, and unloaded its cargo of cars and bikes and walk-on passengers. Then, an orange-vested attendant directed Ruby's car to the bow, where she parked and set the emergency brake. First car in lane, a primo spot. The gaping, oval mouth of the ferry was a giant, glassless window that framed the view.

The Sound was rainy-day flat, studded by the ceaseless rain into a sheet of hammered tin. Watery gray skies melted into the sea, the line between them a smudge of charcoal, thin as eyeliner. Puppy-faced gray seals crawled over one another to find a comfortable perch on the swaying red harbor buoy.

Ruby got out of the car and went upstairs. After buying a latte at the lunch counter; she walked out onto the deck.

No one was out here now. The rain had diminished to little more than a heavy mist. Moisture beaded the handrails and slickened the decks.

A long, single blast of the boat's horn announced their departure.

Ruby slid her fingers along the wet handrail, holding on, shivering at a sudden burst of cold. A few brave seagulls hung in the air in front of her, wings stretched, motionless, riding a current of air. They cawed loudly, begging for scraps.

Lush green islands dotted the tinfoil sea, their carved granite coastlines a stark contrast to the flat silver water. Polished red madrona trees slanted out from the shore, their roots clinging tenaciously to a thin layer of topsoil. Houses were scattered here and there but, for the most part, the islands looked empty.

She closed her eyes, breathing in the salty, familiar sea air. In eighth grade, she'd started taking the ferry to school at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island; memories of high school were inextricably linked with this boat...

She and Dean had always stood together at just this spot, right at the bow, even when it was raining.

Dean.

It was strange that she hadn't thought of him right away.

Well, perhaps not so strange. It had been more than a decade since she'd seen him, and still it hurt to remember him.

After her mother had left, Ruby hadn't thought it was possible to hurt more. Dean had taught her that the human heart always made room for pain.

She still thought of him now and then. Sometimes, when she woke in the middle of a hot, lonely night and found that her cheeks were slicked and wet, she knew she'd been dreaming of him. She knew from Caroline (who knew from Nora) that he'd followed in his mother's footsteps after all, that he was running the empire now. Ruby had always known that he would.

At last, the ferry turned toward Summer Island. The horn sounded, and the captain came on the loudspeaker; urging passengers to return to their vehicles.

Ruby raced downstairs and jumped into the minivan.

The captain cut the engine and the boat drifted toward the rickety black dock. A weather beaten sign--it had been old when Ruby was a child-hung at a cockeyed angle from the nearest piling. It read SUMMER ISLAND WELCOMES You.

A woman walked out of the closet-size terminal building and stood watching the ferry float toward her. She was wearing a floor-length brown dress with neither collar nor cuffs. An ornate silver crucifix hung from a thick chain around her neck. Waving at the few walk-on passengers clustered at the bow's railing, she dragged a tattered, wrist-thick length of rope across the dock and tied the boat down.

"Oh, Lord," Nora said, blinking awake, "is that Sister Helen?"

Ruby couldn't believe it herself. The nuns had always run the ferry traffic on Summer Island, but it was still a shock to see that nothing had changed. "Amazing, isn't it?"

Nora sighed. It was a tired sound, as if maybe she wondered if changelessness were a good thing. Or maybe, like Ruby, she had just realized how it would feel to be here again, at the site of so much heartache.

Ruby drove off the ferry, past the post office and general store. What struck her first was the total lack of meaningful change. She felt as if she'd just taken a boat ride back in time. Here, on Summer Island, it was still 1985. If she turned on the radio, it would probably be Cyndi Lauper or Rick Springfield...

This was why she'd stayed away.

The road turned, climbed up a short hill, then flowed down into a rolling green valley.

To her left, the land was a Monet painting, all golden grass and green trees and washed-out silvery skies. To her right lay Bottleneck Bay, and beyond that was the forested green hump of Shaw Island. Weathered gray fishing boats sat keeled on the pebbly beach, forgotten by their owners more than a generation ago. A few sleek sailboats--mostly owned by the few Californians brave enough to purchase a summer home on this too-quiet island where drinking water was never guaranteed and power came and went with the wind--bobbed idly in the gently swelling sea.

There were only a few farmhouses visible from the road. The island boasted five thousand acres, but only one hundred year-round residents. Even in the Summer; when mainlanders swarmed to their island vacation homes, Summer Island had fewer than three hundred residents.

It was as different from California as a place could be. Here, hip-hop was the way a rabbit moved, and a drive-by meant stopping to say hello to your neighbor on your way to town.

Nora looked out the rain-dappled window. Her head made a thumping sound as she rested it against the glass. The lines around her mouth were deeply etched, heavy enough to weigh her lips into a frown. When I first came here... no, that doesn't matter now...”

Ruby approached the beach road. Instead of turning, she eased her foot off the gas and coasted to a Stop. Her mother's half sentence had implied...secrets... things unspoken, and Ruby didn't like it.

Fifteen years, Dr. Allbright had said. He'd been treating Nora for fifteen years... yet none of them had known it.

"What were you going to say?"

Nora's laughter was a fluttery thing, a bit of spun stigar "Nothing."

Ruby rolled her eyes. Why had she even bothered? Whatever."

She eased her foot back onto the accelerator; flicked the signal on, and turned toward the beach. The narrow, one-lane road wound snakelike through the towering trees. Though it was afternoon, you wouldn't have known it. The tree limbs were heavy with rain; their drooping branches darkened the road. Here and there, small turnouts, overgrown with weeds, made space for parking when another car was coming from the opposite direction.

At last, they came to the driveway. A pair of dogwood trees stood guard on either side of the needle-strewn lane. Any gravel that had once been dumped here had long ago burrowed into the dirt.

Ruby turned down the driveway. The knee-high grass that grew in a wild strip down the center of the road thumped and scraped the undercarriage.

At the end of the tree-lined road, Ruby hit the brakes.

And stared through the rain-beaded windshield at her childhood.

The farmhouse was layered in thick white clapboards with red trim around the casement windows. One side jutted out like an old woman's bad hip—that was the addition her grandparents had built for their grandchildren. A porch wrapped around three sides of the house. It sat in the midst of a pie-shaped clearing that jutted toward the sea. In this, the middle of June, the lawn was lush and lime green; in the dog days of summer; Ruby knew it would grow tall and take on the rich hue of burnished gold. Madrona marked the perimeter.

"Oh, God," she whispered, soaking it all in.

A white picket fence created a nicely squared yard around the farmhouse. Inside it, the garden was in full, riotous bloom.

Obviously Caroline had paid a gardener to keep the place up. It looked as if the Bridge family had been gone a season instead of more than a decade.

With a tired sigh, Ruby got out of the car.

The tide made a low, snoring sound. Birds overhead, surprised and dismayed by their unexpected guests. But no city sounds lived this far north, no horns or squealing tires or jets flying overhead.

There was now, as there had always been, a quiet otherworldliness to Summer Island, and as much as she hated to admit it, Ruby felt the island's familiar welcome. Time here was measured in eons, not lifetimes. In how long it took the sea to smooth the rough edges off a bit of broken glass, in how long it took the tide to shape and reshape the shoreline.

She went around to the back of the van and pulled out the wheelchair; then wheeled it around to the passenger side and helped Nora into the seat.

Taking hold of the rubber-coated grips, she cautiously pushed her mother down the path. At the gate, Ruby stopped and walked ahead, unlatching it. The metal piece clanked, the gate swung creakily open.

When Ruby turned back around, she noticed how pale her mother was. Nora touched the fence's sagging slat. A heart-shaped patch of paint fell away at he contact, lay in the grass like a bit of confetti.

Nora looked up, her eyes shiny and moist. "Remember the summer you and Caro painted every slat a different color? You guys looked like a pair of rainbow Popsicles when you were finished."

"I don't remember that," Ruby said, but for a split second, when she looked down, her tennis shoes were Keds, speckled with a dozen different colors of paint. It pissed her off, how easy it was to remember things in this place, to feel them. Nothing seemed to have changed here except Ruby, and the new Ruby sure as hell didn't belong in this fairy-tale house.

She walked back up the slope and took her place behind the wheelchair. She cautiously moved down the rutted path, guiding the chair in front of her. They had just reached the edge of the porch when her mother suddenly spoke.

"Let me sit here for a minute, will you? Go on in. Nora fished the key out of her pocket and handed it to Ruby. "You can come back and tell me how it looks."

"You'd rather sit in the rain than go into the house?"

"That pretty much sums up my feelings right now.

Ruby stepped around her and walked onto the porch. The wide-planked floor wobbled beneath her feet like piano keys, releasing a melody of creaks and groans.

At the front door; she slipped the key into the lock.

Click.

"Wait!" her mother cried out.

Ruby turned. Nora was smiling, but it was grim, that smile. More like gritted teeth.

"I... think we should go in together."

"Jesus, let's not make an opera out of it. We're going into an old house. That's all." Ruby shoved the door open, caught a fleeting glimpse of shadows stacked on top of each other; then she went back for Nora.

She maneuvered the wheelchair up onto the porch, bumped it over the wooden threshold, and wheeled her mother inside.

The furniture huddled ghostlike in the middle of the room, draped in old sheets. Ruby could remember spreading those sheets every autumn, snapping them in the air above furniture. It had been a family ritual, closing up this house for winter.

The house may not have been lived in in a while, but it had been well cared for. There couldn't have been more than a few weeks' worth of dust on those white sheets.

"Caroline has taken good care of the place... I'm surprised she left everything exactly as it was." There was a note of wonder in Nora's voice, and maybe a touch of regret. As if, like Ruby, she'd hoped that Caroline had painted over the past.

"You know Caro," Ruby said, "she likes to keep everything pretty on the surface."

"That's not fair. Caro-"

Ruby spun around. "Tell me you aren't going to explain my sister to me."

Nora's mouth snapped shut. Then she sneezed. Arid again. Her eyes were watering as she said, "I'm allergic to dust. I know there's not much, but I'm really sensitive. You'll need to dust right away."

Ruby looked at her. "Your leg's broken; not your hand."

"I can't handle it. Allergies."

It was the best reason for not cleaning Ruby had ever heard. "Fine. I'll dust."

"And vacuum-remember; there's dust in the carpets."

"Oh, really? That comes as a complete surprise to me."

Nora had the grace to blush. "I'm sorry. I forgot for a minute that you're not... never mind."

Ruby gazed down at her. "I'm not a kid anymore, and dusting was one of the many things Caroline and I had to learn to do after you left us." She saw the pain move into Nora's green eyes; it made her look old suddenly, and fragile.

That word again. It was not something Ruby particularly wanted to see. She grabbed the wheelchair and pushed her mother into the center of the room, where the ancient Oriental carpet sucked up the metallic thump of the chair's wheels and plunged them into silence again.

"I guess I'll have to sleep in your old room. There's no way we can get me upstairs."

Ruby dutifully wheeled Nora into the downstairs bedroom, where two twin beds lay beneath a layer of sheeting. Between them was a gingham-curtained window. A painted wooden toy box held most of Ruby's childhood.

The wallpaper was still the pale pink cabbage roses that she and Caroline had picked out when they were children.

Ruby refused to feel anything. She yanked the sheets away. A fine layer of dust billowed into the air. She heard her mother coughing behind her; so Ruby leaned forward and wrenched the window open, letting in the sound of the waves slapping on the shore.

"I think I'll lie down for a minute," Nora said when the dust had settled. "I'm still fighting a headache."

Ruby nodded. "Can you get out of the chair by yourself?"

"I guess I'd better learn."

"I guess so." Ruby turned for the door.

She was almost free when her mother's voice hooked her back again. "Thanks. I really appreciate this."

Ruby knew she should say something nice, but she couldn't think of anything. She was too damned tired, and the memories in this room were like gnats, buzzing around her head. She nodded and kept walking, slamming the door shut behind her.