Free Mothers and Other Liars by Amy Bourret

She bristles as much from the comment as his stubble.
    The problem is Chaz really believes everything is going to be all right. Yes, Lark is going away, but she’s going to her real parents after all, so everything will be all right. Ruby won’t go to jail; his family has been lighting candles and making novenas to make sure about that. Law-and-order Chaz, emphasis on the order. He wants the order back in his life; he wants this part to be over. And Chaz and Ruby will just tootle along as if none of this ever happened.
    “I know it’s hard.” He wraps an arm around her, pulls her to his chest.
    His impatience is thick between them as she slips out of his embrace. Chaz isn’t one of those guys who thinks that buying a girl a meal is a green light to play in her pants, but he does like his alone-time with Ruby.
    “I’m sorry,” she says.
    Even Chaz’s skin tightens as irritation replaces impatience. “I’m trying here.” He stands, strides to the refrigerator, returns with another beer. “It’s hard for me, to get past it.”
    “Get past what?” Ruby looks in the direction of Lark’s bedroom. She struggles to keep her voice low. “The disruption to your life? The fact that I saved, loved, who I thought was an abandoned child?” She tugs at her hair in frustration. “How is that so different from what you do, saving kids from the streets?” She pauses, points to her belly. “Or can’t you get past the idea that your pregnant girlfriend may go to jail?”
    “No.” He collapses onto the sofa as if the burden of Ruby’s deed is too much for even his sturdy legs. “I don’t know how I can get past you not telling me. Before now.”
    The sour mood stinks up the room as much as the reek of days’ old Chinese food that followed Chaz back from the kitchen. “I never told anyone.”
    “I’m not just anyone. Or at least I didn’t think so.”
    “I thought about it, going to the authorities.” Every now and then she would read about some child being abused and worry that the monster who tossed away Lark might be mistreating another child. With DNA testing, they might find that mother, protect her other babies. They might take Lark away, too, though, put her in “the system.”
    And then that other memory, from Ruby’s own childhood, would burble to the surface like oil from summer asphalt, and the risk of coming forward would become untenable. If she had known that someone loved Lark, was out there looking…
    Chaz points his beer at her. “I’m not talking about authorities. I’m talking about me. You never told me .”
    Ruby’s anger dissipates like mist in a breeze, replaced by weary sorrow. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.” She takes a breath, tries to swallow the emotion. “I can’t even forgive myself.”
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know how hard this is.” Chaz places a hand on her belly. “But don’t shut me out.”
    The next words cut Ruby to her core. “So that’s it? You get rid of me because you’re having your own baby?” Lark stands in the doorway, glistening eyes visible even in the dim light.
    Ruby looks down at Chaz’s hand, back at Lark. Like a game of freeze tag, no one moves. Even Clyde is a statue beside Lark, one paw in midair.
    Lark breaks the spell, spins, storms back to her room, door slamming in her wake.

TWENTY-EIGHT
    Her grandmother called Monday “holy day.” Laundry day, cleaning day, holy day. At the time, when Ruby was doing her own assigned chores, she didn’t get it, especially during summer break. Nana said that the whole cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness thing means exactly what it says, that a person can find God, find the sacred, in the mundane tasks of chore day. She said she felt like she was scouring her own soul clean as she scrubbed the linoleum floors. Ruby tried to tell her grandmother that she herself felt much closer to God sitting down by the river. But Nana would have none of that.
    Even in the dark of night, this house is