Ruby looked up at him without smiling. Behind her, Grace set down the plates she had been carrying, and Daniel moved to stand beside her. Celeste rose from the table, hand against her throat, but did not step forward. Nobody asked Richard to come inside.
"I know what you said," Richard began, addressing Daniel. "Not tonight. I know. I drove past the house three times, and each time I kept going because I wasn't sure I had the right even to knock."
"Then why did you?" Daniel asked.
Richard looked down at the velvet box. "Because I've spent twelve years telling myself there would be another day. Then my mother died. And today I learned there were two little girls whose lives I've missed because I kept waiting for a day that suited me. I didn't want to come here pretending this was a social call."
He took a breath and opened the box. Inside lay a thin pearl bracelet with a delicate gold flower clasp, matching the tiny flowers at Pearl's ears and the clasp on Celeste's necklace. A folded piece of paper rested beneath the bracelet, its edges yellowed with age.
"My mother left this," Richard said. "She wrote that I was to give it away when I was finally ready. I've had it in a drawer for seven years. Every so often I would open the box, think about calling Daniel, and close it again."
Celeste made a small sound. She had never seen the bracelet or the note, and the knowledge of another hidden message from Pearl Ashford passed through her like a breath of cold air. Richard looked down at Ruby, whose gold birthday badge was bent at one corner from all the hugs she had received.
"I said your somebody should have been there on time," he told her. "Your father was trying to get to you."
"I'm the one who's late. Twelve years late. I was wrong to take your seat and wrong to speak to you the way I did. I'm sorry, Ruby. I'm sorry, Pearl."
Pearl stood behind Ruby, touching one of her earrings. Ruby looked at the bracelet but did not reach for it. Her face remained serious as she considered the man who had been able to apologize only after discovering that the children he hurt belonged to him.
"Would you have been sorry if we weren't your grandkids?" she asked.
Richard flinched. It was a more difficult question than anything Daniel had put to him on the plane, because it removed the accident of family from the issue entirely. He looked at Ruby and understood that an answer intended to make himself feel better would be worse than silence.
"I should have been," he said slowly. "I don't know if I would have understood it so quickly. That's part of what was wrong with me. I treated strangers as if their comfort mattered less than mine. Being your grandfather doesn't make that acceptable."
Ruby thought about the answer. She could hear Grace speaking behind her, quietly asking everyone to give her room to decide what she wanted to say. Then she looked up again.