outgrown this house and have been looking for a while. I bought it for you,” he said quietly and Ruby stared at her husband.
“You did what?”
“I bought the house from the school. It’s my wedding present to you. It’s yours, Ruby. I put it in your name. You and your grandmother can have fun now restoring it to how it used to be.” He looked innocent and ingenuous when he said it, as though it was a perfectly normal thing to do, which to him it was. He thought it had cost him very little money.
“Oh my God, Zack, you’re crazy, but what an incredibly wonderful thing for you to do. I have to tell my grandmother.” She found her in the ballroom, sitting quietly with Alex, enjoying a last glass of champagne. She sat down next to her and told her. And Eleanor looked as though she thought it was a joke, and then she realized that Ruby meant it, and so did Alex.
“He bought the house?” Eleanor stared at her. “You own it now?” The house had been out of their hands for fifty-one years, and now it was back. Alex looked thunderstruck, and then she hurried off to thank Zack. There were no words to tell him what it meant to her, but he could see it in her eyes, and his wife’s, and he was glad he had done it. It seemed like a small thing to him now, but it was huge to Ruby and her grandmother.
The bridal couple left a moment later, and Eleanor went back to where Alex was still sitting, talking to one of Zack’s friends. The young man left a few minutes later, and Alex looked at Eleanor with a peaceful expression.
“I never thought this house would be back in our family again,” Eleanor said, still shaken by Ruby’s revelation. She couldn’t believe it. The home of her childhood had been returned to them.
Alex wouldn’t have wanted to have his back. It was too far in the past now, but he liked the idea of owning and living in the Deveraux house. Somehow it seemed fitting to have it back in family hands again, thanks to Zack. The project of restoring it to what it had been would keep Ruby and her grandmother busy for a long time. He smiled at his wife then as she sat next to him.
“It was a spectacular wedding.” He beamed at her.
“Theirs or ours?” she teased him. “I don’t recall any men in shorts at ours.” They both laughed at the vision, and as they looked around the ballroom, Alex could remember perfectly the exquisite sensation and the thrill of dancing with her. He kissed her, and the memory of their wedding night was just as vivid and alive as it had been then.
* * *
—
Zack and Ruby’s honeymoon on the yacht he had chartered for them was as romantic as he had wanted it to be. They lay on the deck in the sun, being waited on by a crew of twenty. They sailed into ports, went shopping, had dinner ashore sometimes, or stayed on the boat just outside the ports, swimming at midnight, and making love all night long.
Ruby felt as though she lived in a constant haze of happiness now. And when they got back to San Francisco, she went through the house with her grandmother, making lists of everything they needed to restore. The school had promised to be out by February since they had found a temporary location for the next few years. Zack had hired an architect to help Ruby and Eleanor with the restoration.
Four weeks after their wedding, Ruby realized she was pregnant. Zack was ecstatic. The baby was due in July, and they hoped to be in the house by then. It changed Ruby’s mind about looking for a job. There didn’t seem to be much point to it, with the house to work on, and a baby coming, and Zack didn’t want her to work anyway. He felt she just didn’t need to.
It took some getting used to, for Ruby to adjust to Zack’s constant flow of generosity, and it was even harder to realize that he could afford anything he wanted now. They still ate dinner at Jack in the Box occasionally, but suddenly her best friend through most of her college years that she had shared cheap wine and pizza with, could buy anything that caught his fancy.