Page 112 of Wildflowers & Whiskey

“I'm not playing your spiteful routine.” His voice turns to ice. “We go through the lawyers. I'd get yourself a good one.”

“Low blow.” Her pacing slows. “You used to love me once…”

“Yeah! Long damn time ago. You’ll get what you get, Ruby. This ain’t up for discussion.”

Mom’s hand disappears into her purse, desperately looking around for something. When her hand reappears, there’s a phone in it. She angles the screen toward Wade, and only Wade, keeping it out of my eyeline entirely.

The change in him is immediate. What is on the phone?

Ruby’s smile becomes poisonous. “I wasn’t gonna use these,” she says quietly. The erratic energy has gone again, replaced by something steady, which worries me more. “Figured maybe we could settle this nicely.”

“Ruby,” Wade warns, though it barely comes out as a sound.

“Oh, come on now.” She tilts the phone slightly, still keeping it out of my sight. “You really think I don’t still got eyes and ears around this town?”

“What do you want?” Wade asks, but under his words is something I never have heard from him before—he’s afraid. I’ve heard him angry, irritated, fed up, furious. But never, in all my life, have I heard him sound scared.

“Sixty percent,” Ruby says pleasantly. “Of everything you own. Whatever that's worth nowadays. You don't fight me in court. I keep my mouth shut.” She cocks her head. “Simple.”

“What are you talking about?” I close the distance between us, stepping into the space between them. “What's on the phone?”

Neither of them answers.

Wade’s widened eyes drift between me and Mom in rapid speed, panic behind them as though he is working out the best course of action. Then suddenly, he looks tired; every ounce of fight has been wrung out of him. His broad shoulders drop. His chest deflates. The exhale that leaves him is long and ragged, and it takes something with it, carves something out of him, and when it's done, he looks the smallest I’ve ever seen him.

“Dad.”

He still doesn’t move. Not even a blink. He’s just standing there, looking like a man waiting for someone to take him out. Ruby’s grin is still plastered across her face, giving her a predatory look. Whatever she’s got, she knows it's working.

“Fine.”

“No.” The word is out of my mouth before I've decided to say it. All I know is that I can’t let him do this. This woman, as much as it is killing me, is not the one I have loved all my life. She is a shadow of her. An evil shadow, and she cannot come here and ruin things now that life is starting to feel good again. “You don’t owe her another damn thing. She doesn’t get to disappear for eighteen years, walk back in here, and start making demands.”

“Colt—”

“No.” I cut him off. “Whatever she has, I don’t care.”

For a moment, a stupidly hopeful moment, I think Ruby might back down. That she would see the pain she is causing me and decide to do the motherly thing and leave whatever this is alone.

Instead, she laughs.

It starts under her breath, small and barely audible, but it keeps going. Her shoulders start to shake as she bends over, one hand braced against her stomach like this is the funniest thing she has ever heard. When she straightens again, there is something wrong in her eyes. The pupils are blown so large there is barely any colour left.

The laughter begins to fade, but her breathing is still erratic, very short and uneven. She switched from the calm control to this bizarre energy so quickly that it’s unsettling. There’s a slight disconnect between what her face is doing and the rest of her body.

She’s high. She came back here, after all this time, and she’s high.

“That's sweet,” she says, when the laughing finally runs dry. She wipes the corner of one eye. “Real sweet, Son. But you don't know what your father's been up to.”

Every word she says is laced with spite.

“Ruby—” Wade’s voice cuts through sharp as knives. “I just told you I’d give you what you want. Now leave and let us be.”

“Let you be.” She starts to move again, hands jerky in the air. “What, so you can all play happy families while I've been scraping by, fighting for whatever life throws at me? Do you know… Do you have any idea what it's been like?” Her hands go to her hair, fingers raking through it, gripping hard like the pull of it is the only thing keeping her tethered. “You threw me out. You made me choose. You kept my son from me, and now you get to just… move on? Smile and be the good guy? No.” She shakes her head hard, still gripping her own hair. “No, you don't get that.”

The laugh comes again. This time it is thin and brittle.

“You know what?” Her thumb slides across the screen. “Fine. Fuck the money. Let’s stop pretending then, shall we?”