Mothers and Other Liars Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ruby to Lark to Ruby. “Let’s just run away.”
    The clatter of Ruby’s fork against her plate echoes across the restaurant. Her mind-reading boyfriend has just voiced the thought that has been screaming in her head all day. “You would…could you really?”
    “Sure.” Chaz grasps Ruby’s hand. “You, me, one imp, and an imp-to-be. Las Vegas, baby.”
    “The real Las Vegas,” Lark says.
    Chaz nods. “The real one. And after, we can do it all over again proper, with Father Paul and my folks.”
    “Two weddings!” Lark squeals.
    Ruby’s rib cage collapses against her gut. Chaz is joking about eloping, not talking about forever running away. A couple of thin gold bands won’t solve her mess.
    Chaz looks down at Ruby’s belly. “They’re going to figure it out eventually.”
    “I can just stay away,” Ruby says.
    “Right.” Chaz chuckles. “As if that won’t raise questions when you don’t show up tomorrow. Or the next, say, twenty Sunday dinners?”
    Chaz’s family is tight-knit, Catholic, Hispanic. Four generations of mamas have ruled that roost from the same casita on a narrow lane off Canyon Road. They are everything Ruby isn’t, yet they have embraced her, and Lark, in their elbow-to-elbow, something’s-always-cooking family. But they don’t know about the baby.
    Ruby wonders how embracing the Monteros will be when they find out she’s pregnant. Not to mention her other little bombshell.

ELEVEN
    Early Sunday morning, Ruby steals into Lark’s room, whispers to Clyde to keep her daughter safe. Then she slips out of the house. The sun hasn’t yet burned away the haze of dawn as she walks down the hill, and the air still holds on to the coolness of night.
    The doors are open at the little Episcopal church. Ruby pads down the red-carpeted center aisle and slides into a pew. The few times she and Lark have attended this church, Ruby felt an unfamiliar comfort in the repeated ritual, as if, like the mountains, the ritual gave her something to which she could cling. And she desperately wants to find some of that comfort today.
    Growing up, Ruby and her grandparents attended the Congregational church in their Iowa town. Ruby remembers Nana running off with boiled chickens to prepare funeral casseroles in the church basement, or disappearing Tuesday mornings to the ladies’ auxiliary. Her grandfather and Nana each had their own Bibles. On summer evenings, they sat on the wicker porch chairs reading them side by side.
    Then after her grandfather died, Nana sort of lost interest in the church. She didn’t seem mad at God; she still prayed and quoted to Ruby from her Bible all the time. Ruby figured she just couldn’t bother to put on her Sunday best anymore.
    Ruby didn’t mind. She believes in God all right, but she’s not sure she believes in organized religion. Over the years, she and Lark have visited many of the churches in town. They have gone with the Ms each December to the Our Lady of Guadalupe church for its namesake saint’s festival, arriving before dawn to a chain of farolitos and a candlelit sanctuary. They have never missed attending a Christmas or Easter service somewhere . They have even attended a Jewish Seder. She wanted to expose Lark to as much as possible, then let her decide her own beliefs, rather than cram any one denomination down her throat. Especially when Ruby herself has felt closer to God on the mountaintops than she ever has in a pew.
    But here, today, she finds herself craving all the organization she can get. As she bows her head, she’s not even sure what to pray for. Yet she can’t help feel, or hope anyway, that maybe God will hear what ever prayer that surfaces a little better in this quiet, sacred place.
    She is still trying to formulate the words of a prayer when a black-robed pastor stops beside the pew. “Can I help?” His tone is soothing.
    “I don’t know,” Ruby whispers.
    The pastor sits down beside Ruby, folds his hands in his lap. The heavy