Chapter 5 - A HOT MEAL AND A COLD TRUTHBy evening, Ruby was temporarily placed with Tessa under an emergency kinship-style arrangement while authorities investigated Elena’s disappearance.
Damon was not officially family.
Not yet.
Ruby refused to sleep until Damon promised to stay for dinner.
Tessa’s house in South Portland felt unlike anywhere Ruby had lived recently.
There were framed family photographs.
A bowl of apples on the counter.
A coat rack by the door.
Small things.
Permanent things.
Ruby sat at the kitchen table while Tessa heated tomato soup.
Damon kept checking his phone.
Finally Ruby said, “You look at that thing every ten seconds.”
“Twelve.”
“You always correct people?”
“Unfortunately.”
Ruby stared at him.
Then her eyes dropped to the tattoos across his forearm.
“What’s that one?”
Damon looked.
A black swallow.
Ruby’s hand immediately moved to her necklace.
“You have one too.”
“Yeah.”
“Because of Mom?”
He nodded.
Damon had gotten the tattoo six months after Elena disappeared.
At the time, it had been part grief, part anger.
A bird that always returned home, permanently inked onto a man whose girlfriend never did.
Ruby asked, “Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
The answer came without hesitation.
“Do you still?”
That took longer.
“I don’t know what that means anymore.”
Ruby accepted that.
After dinner, Tessa showed Ruby the guest room.
Ruby placed her backpack on the bed but did not unpack.
Damon noticed.
Tessa noticed too.
Neither commented.
Later, Ruby appeared downstairs holding something.
A folded scrap of paper.
“I think you should see this.”
Damon took it.
The paper was worn at the edges.
On it, in Elena’s handwriting, were four words:
DAMON VOSS
217 BRACKETT STREET
Below that:
IF I CAN’T—
The rest had been torn away.
Damon sank into a chair.
“That was my address.”
Ruby sat opposite.
“Why would Mom keep it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she ever come there?”
“Not that I knew.”
Tessa looked at Damon.
“You lived there after Elena disappeared?”
“Three years.”
“Same apartment?”
“Yes.”
Ruby asked, “Did anyone ever leave something?”
Damon began to say no.
Then stopped.
One memory returned.
A small package outside his apartment door seven years earlier.
No return address.
Inside had been a baby blanket.
Blue-gray.
He assumed it was delivered to the wrong apartment and donated it.
Damon stood so abruptly his chair scraped the floor.
“What?”
Tessa asked.
“There was a package.”
Ruby stared.
“What package?”
“A baby blanket.”
“When?”
Damon calculated.
“A little after your first birthday.”
Tessa’s face tightened.
“Damon.”
“I didn’t know.”
Ruby did not accuse him.
That was worse.
She simply looked down.
Damon sat again.
“Ruby, if Elena tried to tell me about you—”
“We don’t know that.”
“No.”
“But maybe.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then Ruby said something that changed the direction of everything.
“My mom had another rule.”
“What?”
“She said if someone ever came asking for the swallow, I should never give it to them.”
Damon looked at the pendant.
“Why?”
“She said it wasn’t just jewelry.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Did she say what it was?”
“No.”
Ruby removed the necklace.
For the first time Damon held it in nearly a decade.
He examined the clasp.
The wings.
The scratch.
Then noticed something impossible.
The pendant was heavier than he remembered.
Damon pressed along the edge.
A tiny seam appeared.
The swallow opened.
Inside was a strip of paper no larger than a fingernail.
Tessa leaned closer.
Damon unfolded it.
There was no message.
Only a name.
May you like
MARTIN VALE.
And a number.
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