A Year Less a Day (43 page)

“And you never doubted me, did you?”

Something in her tone bothers Phillips. He wants to say, “Never,” but he holds back, querying, “Should I have doubted you?”

If the band is playing, “Listen. Do you want to know a secret,” Phillips doesn't hear, as he focuses worriedly on his wife.

“What would you do if I said I've kept something from you?”

“Nothing could change the way I feel about you, Ruth,” he answers, then tries to kiss her.

“Wait a minute,” she says. “Can I make a speech?”

“I think Dave's supposed to go first but ... Hey, it's your day.”

With the audience stilled, Ruth stands at the microphone holding the bead bag that her mother had stolen for her as she says, “I've always thought that this was the only thing that my mother ever gave me, but now I know that she gave me the most important thing in life, the only thing she had to give—love.” Then tears trickle down her cheeks as she weeps, “I'm
sorry that I was never able to thank her. I just hope she can hear me.”

“She can hear you,” says Raven, her faith in Serethusa vindicated. “And she wishes you luck.”

“Thank her for me,” says Ruth through the tears as a dapper sixty-year-old man with a large hooked nose and dark glasses slips unnoticed into the back of the tent.

“I owe so much to so many of you,” Ruth carries on, once she's straightened her voice, and she has Jordan Jackson, his abusive mother, and Tom Burton on her mind when she adds, “All my life I only ever met people who wanted something in return; who always took more than they gave. But in the last year I've realized that not everyone is like that.”

Behind her, Ringo's double turns on a keyboard and quietly plays “With a Little Help from My Friends,” and the newcomer at the back sings along softly, as Ruth goes on to say, “I know some of you are wondering why I chose today to marry Mike. Well, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day that my first husband decided to leave me, and it's also the day that Raven told me that it was my special day.” She stops to wipe her eyes, and her hands shake as she opens her bead bag for a tissue, but then she takes out an envelope and hands it to Mike, saying. “I've been holding on to this for nearly a year. At first I was terrified that it made me look guilty, then I was terrified that Trina would stop being my friend if she thought I didn't need her, then I was terrified that you would stop loving me if you found out. Now I've got a father, a husband, and lots of friends; I've got everything I want, so it doesn't matter anymore. You can throw it away if you want.”

“What is it?” he questions as he opens the envelope, joking, “That's married life for you. She gets a gold ring and all I get ... is an old lottery ticket.”

A yell of delight comes from the floor as Raven screeches, “She was right! Serethusa was right! It
was
your day.”

“How much?” asks Phillips, slowly catching on.

“Five million dollars,” says Ruth sheepishly and the tent erupts in noise as the Bootles start back up with “Baby, You're a Rich Man.”

“There is something else,” says Ruth, holding on tightly to her husband while she looks tenderly into her father's eyes. “You're finally going to be a grandpa, Dad.”

“I don't know if I can take all this,” Phillips is saying, as Trina joyously waves her tape recorder in his face.

“Well, Mike. What's it like being married to a millionaire?”

“Wait a minute,” says Phillips, taking hold of the machine, “There's no cassette in here.”

“What cassette?” asks Trina in puzzlement. “Nobody said anything about a cassette. I just thought it recorded.”

The band has switched to “All You Need Is Love,” and Daphne Lovelace is bopping her way around the dance floor with David Bliss.

“I'm not really surprised that Jeremy went bad after what happened to his parents,” says Daphne, her face showing the hurt of knowing that, in a way, she bore some responsibility. And she has a tear in her eye as she goes on, “Mind you, if he'd been brought up by someone who loved him it would have made all the difference. I mean, look at Ruth. What sort of start did she have? But she's dead right, all she really needed was love.”

“Who's that over there?” queries Bliss as he spots the strange man in dark glasses having a quiet word with Mike, Ruth, and her father at the side of the stage.

“Where?” inquires Daphne as she struggles for height, but she only catches a glimpse before it's too late; with a handshake and a hug he has gone.

“It was just a very old friend,” Geoffrey Sanderson tells Bliss a few minutes later as he and Daphne congratulate him, but he has more than an ordinary twinkle in his eye when Daphne muses, “He looked a bit like Ringo to me.”

Cindy is one of the first to congratulate Ruth on her win, but Ruth points to her husband. “It's up to Mike to decide. He's got until tomorrow afternoon at five. Maybe he'll just want to keep things the way they are.”

“It's only that the Coffee Shoppe went broke,” carries on Cindy, not wanting to hear. “You could buy it back cheap.”

“I could,” says Ruth, as if she's unsure, then she laughs, “but I'd need someone reliable to run it for me.”

Raven has tears of joy as she hugs and kisses Ruth. “Serethusa was right all along,” she cries. “She told me there was nothing wrong with Jordan, and she was absolutely right about you. It really was your day.”

“Yeah, but what about my accident?” Trina butts in, still waving her tape recorder.

“Bus!” screams Raven. “I said a bus—not a crazy kid on a bike. Bus! Bus! Bus! ...”