Ruby had gone to Tahoe with the children as soon as she got home. She was there when her grandmother returned from Europe and she told her what had happened in Saint Tropez.
“What are you going to do about it?” Eleanor asked her.
“I don’t know,” Ruby said honestly. “The children are too young. I can’t deprive them of their father.”
“What about you? You can’t stay in a loveless marriage with a man who cheats on you. You deserve better than that.”
“Maybe in a few years…” Ruby said, thinking about it.
She spent the rest of the summer in Tahoe, as they always did, and Zack didn’t come up, or call her. He was afraid that anything he did would push Ruby over the edge, and he didn’t want to lose her. He wanted to stay married to her. He didn’t want to lose his kids. And neither did she. And if she divorced him, she’d take them with her. Or he’d have to leave.
Ruby spent the month of August gardening with her grandmother, and playing with her children. The gardening they did together made her feel peaceful again. Her grandmother showed her how to do it, and explained that a garden was a living, breathing thing, and it taught you patience and gave you strength.
“My mother taught me that. She learned how to garden after they lost all their money. It helped me when your grandfather was away in the war. It will help you while you make your decision.” Ruby found that she was right and it did. She went back to the city at the end of August ready to face the future. She decided to wait a few years before leaving Zack. He was a good father. For her, the marriage had ended in Saint Tropez. She was staying with him for the children, not for him or herself.
Zack didn’t ask her what she was going to do after she got home, and she didn’t tell him. They continued to live under one roof, as their lives became more divergent year by year. The children were the only thing that kept them together. They hardly spoke anymore. They became strangers to each other. She was sure he had other women, and she didn’t want to know. He no longer had her.
Kendall was seven when she saw her mother crying one day. Ruby was thirty and wondering why she stayed with him. She couldn’t see any future, except a lonely life with a man who didn’t love her anymore, and whom she hadn’t loved in four years. The spirit of the marriage was dead.
She visited her grandmother whenever she could and they gardened together. Ruby had gotten good with the orchids and loved working with them. They were so beautiful, and she loved the rare species. She had just come back from Tahoe and the emptiness of her life had hit her again, when Kendall found her crying.
“Why are you sad, Mama?” Kendall asked her, and she couldn’t answer her. She was too young and the answer was too big. She was lonely. She and Zack were no longer even friends. Yet, as the children got older, Ruby knew she had done the right thing staying with Zack. Kendall worshipped her father and said she wanted to be like him one day. She loved computers as much as he did. He wanted Nick to come and work with him too. What they saw was an incredibly successful man, a legend in his industry and in the world, a man everyone admired. There was no denying that he was a genius. But he had broken Ruby’s heart irreparably, and staying with him was killing her spirit. Part of her was dead inside and she knew it, but she tried not to care.
Her grandmother knew it too and hated to see it. But the decision to leave him had to come from her.
When Kendall was fourteen, she turned on her mother and criticized her constantly. Her father was her hero, and she was more and more like him in obvious ways. Hard, demanding, smart. Despite his success, Kendall was actually tougher than he was in some ways. There was a cold side to her that worried her mother.
Nick was more sensitive, gentler, kinder, warmer, and more like Ruby. He said he was going to work for his father one day. He was thirteen, and he wanted to work in finance or computers.