When her mom didn’t do anything more than twist the top on a bottle of cheap white wine, Ruby forced herself to keep going.

“There’s an eensy-weensy chance he thinks I’m a doctor, not a nursing assistant. And an even eensier-weensier one he thinks that because I let him.”

Her mother cracked a laugh and began pouring with a generous hand. She plunked several ice cubes in the glass before pushing it across the table at Ruby. “I think you’re going to need this. So that’s your plan? Go to medical school and become a doctor before he finds out the truth?”

Ruby wasn’t going to lie… It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Except for the part where she didn’t want to be a doctor.

“I don’t plan to take it that far,” she admitted. “I’m having a personal crisis, that’s all. I thought I was doing fine before Spencer and Wheezy and all this dog-training nonsense, but…”

“But?” her mom prompted.

Ruby shook her head, unsure how to answer. The answer—that she wasn’t fine and hadn’t been for years—would only hurt her mom’s feelings, mostly because the things she wanted out of life weren’t even close to the things her mother had settled for.

And there it was in plain truth. Ruby wanted more out of her life than to grow old in a job that didn’t satisfy her. She didn’t want to live in a rented house that left much to the imagination. She didn’t want the best parts of her life to exist in a storage pod in the backyard.

“I miss having something to work toward,” she admitted, since it was close to the same thing. “Goals and dreams and visions of bright lights. Someone to beat. Something to win.”

Her mom nodded as though this made perfect sense. She also ate a pita triangle, which was a thing Ruby had never seen her do before. “When you set your heart on a thing, you’re unstoppable. You always have been.”

“Unstoppable?” she echoed. “Me?”

The look her mom leveled on her was the most maternal one she’d ever seen that woman wear. “Ruby, you won more pageants than most of the other girls your age combined. Oh, you whined and moaned and acted as though I was single-handedly ruining your life the whole time, but the moment you set foot on that stage, the entire world fell away. It was like watching a magician pull a dove out of thin air. One moment, there was nothing there and then—BAM!—Ruby Taylor appeared, and nothing else seemed to matter. The other moms hated me. The second they saw us drive up, they knew their own little darlings didn’t stand a chance.”