Dear Ruth Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  About the Author

  By Kim Fielding

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Dear Ruth

  By Kim Fielding

  Dear Ruth,

  I’m not in the mood for Christmas. After a romantic relationship went up in flames, I returned to my hometown in rural Kansas. Then my mother passed away. I’m really busy with my job as fire marshal—and now with my mother’s advice column, which I reluctantly took over. There’s a sexy newcomer down the street, a guy with a young daughter and an unfortunate disregard for fire safety. He seems to want to be friends, but that creates problems that may be too hot for me to handle. The last things I need right now are flammable holiday decorations and too much holiday food. How am I supposed to give good advice to others when I can’t seem to get my own life straight?

  —Bah Humbug in Bailey Springs

  ONE

  Dear Readers,

  It is with much sorrow that I announce the passing of my close friend, Becky Reynolds. Most of you knew Becky and are aware of the outstanding contributions she made to our community. She made Bailey Springs a better place for us all.

  What most of you didn’t know, however, was that Becky was also a beloved columnist for this newspaper. As Dear Ruth, she provided valuable advice for over thirty years. I am sorry to announce that Dear Ruth is now on indefinite hiatus.

  Becky is survived by her son, Bailey Springs Fire Marshal Bryce Reynolds, and by a large group of friends, students, and admirers. She enriched us all.

  —Alma Bernard, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

  “HOW ARE you holding up?”

  Bryce didn’t answer right away. Instead he firmed his jaw, gazed out the window of Louella’s Café, and watched a few intrepid pedestrians brave the slippery sidewalk. He’d been placing bets with himself on the likelihood he’d end up rushing out to administer first aid, but so far he’d remained indoors, enduring Alma Bernard’s sharp scrutiny. Since Alma wasn’t going to grant him mercy, he sighed and turned to face her.

  “I’m fine. I’m thirty-eight, which is plenty old enough to survive without my mommy.”

  “I turn sixty-five next month, and I still miss mine every day.”

  Bryce patted Alma’s hand. “I’m sorry. I’m being… I’m being an ass. You knew Mom longer than I did. Her death hit you hard too.”

  “It did. And the stories I could tell you about our teenage years!” She smiled as she sipped her tea. Then she set her cup on the table and peered at Bryce through her purple-rimmed glasses. “I really do want to know how you’re doing, Bryce. Your mother would never forgive me if I let you pine away.”

  “She’d probably come back and haunt us both.”

  “Probably.”

  He rubbed the back of his head while he thought. It was an old habit that his ex, Owen, used to tease him about, asking Bryce whether he was trying to get the circuits firing faster. “I’m all right,” Bryce finally said. “A little… lost maybe. You know? I keep expecting her to call or text me.”

  Alma nodded slowly. “Me too. You know how she used to wake up in the middle of the night and send links to random news stories she thought were interesting? I still look for those messages when I wake up.”

  “Yeah.” Bryce had saved a bunch of those old texts and sometimes scrolled through them. But since that was morbid and pathetic, he didn’t tell Alma.

  Outside, a man in a navy parka, plaid scarf, and gray stocking cap slid five feet and almost went down on the ice but managed to catch himself in time—a good trick, considering he was carrying two bulky bags from Toys and Joys. A bit of early Christmas shopping, no doubt. Bryce couldn’t be sure due to all the winter wear, but he thought it might be his handsome new neighbor. He hoped the guy made it home safely.

  Returning his attention to the café, he gazed at the Christmas trees. Bryce thought three was excessive, but at least—after some scolding from him—the owners had replaced the strings of vintage bubble lights. Sure, the lights were pretty, but they were also a big attraction for small children. If one of the lights broke, a child could be cut on the glass or burned by the hot liquid.

  “Can I ask about your plans?” Alma’s tone was uncharacteristically hesitant. This was the woman who’d cracked the scandal regarding the mayor’s embezzlements back in ’93, leading to the crook’s tearful admissions and subsequent stint in the El Dorado Correctional Facility. Alma was usually more blunt than gentle. But apparently she thought Bryce required careful handling.

  “My plans?” he asked.

  “Are you going to continue on here in Bailey Springs? Or pack up and head back to the Wichita Fire Department?”

  Bryce shrugged. “Stay here, I guess.”

  “You’re not bored?”

  “Nah. There are fires to put out here too. And other excitement. Like that wreck out on the highway the other day.”

  Alma tsked. “Stupid people driving too fast for the weather.”

  “There’s always some of those.”

  Bryce had returned to his hometown two years ago, fleeing a failed relationship and wanting to spend more time with his sole blood relative. He’d assumed he’d remain only a short time before moving on to a new city. But he’d discovered that he liked his low-key new job as fire marshal and deputy chief. And Bailey Springs fit him like a favorite pair of boots. Not flashy, not stylish, but comfy and reliable. If he had to drive a hundred miles to get laid and his local romantic thrills involved stealing glances at the sexy stranger who lived at the end of the block? He could live with that.

  Alma tapped the table. “You’re coming over for dinner on Friday, right?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Good. Gene has a new toy to show you.”

  That made Bryce smile. Gene Bernard collected antique nautical navigation equipment, an odd hobby for a man who’d spent his entire life in Kansas. When Bryce was very young, Gene had allowed him to open the carved wooden cases and handle the heavy brass instruments, and even now, Bryce enjoyed admiring Gene’s latest finds. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “And there’s something I want you to think about.”

  “I’ve told you, Alma. I have to work on Christmas.” He’d volunteered for the holiday shift so one of the other guys could stay home with his family.

  “Not that.” She briefly scrunched up her face. “Okay, that too. We’ll miss you if you’re not there—and we can work around your schedule. But I have a request for you to consider.”

  Bryce straightened in his chair. “Request?”

  There was the briefest hesitation before she spoke again, and he knew it was going to be something major. He barely had time to brace himself before Alma said the words.

  “I want you to take up your mother’s column.”

  “I…. What?” He blinked in confusion.

  “Dear Ruth. I want you to be the new Dear Ruth.”

  “But Mom was Dear Ruth.”

  “Yes, sweetie,” Alma replied with false patience, as if Bryce were a particularly dim kindergartner. “Your mom was Dear Ruth. And she was an excellent Dear Ruth. But she can’t give anybody advice anymore.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Bryce mumbled. Had a Ouija board been at hand, he’d half expect his mother to start dictating advice to the lovelorn.

  Alma chuckled. “You have a point. But since it’s kind of difficult for her now, I’m asking you to follow in her footsteps. We can change the name of the column if you like, but I don’t think Dear Chief Reynolds has quite the same ring
to it.”

  “I’m not an advice columnist.”

  “Neither was she, at first. Your mother, as you may recall, had a degree in biology.”

  Bryce scowled. His mom had been premed at the University of Kansas, but she’d met and married another student and agreed to support him while he was in med school. He was supposed to return the favor once his practice was established. Instead she got pregnant, he dumped her for his receptionist, and Ruth had come back to Bailey Springs to raise her son. She’d eventually earned her credentials and taught high school, and she’d been damn good at it. But she never became a doctor.

  “How did Mom end up writing that column?” he asked. “She never told me.”

  Alma laughed, then finished the last of her tea. “Desperation. Patty Elverson used to write a weekly piece for the paper, back when my father ran it. Even before, maybe. Hell, I’m fairly certain that Patty Elverson was writing that column back when mammoths roamed the plains. She gave household cleaning tips.” Alma rolled her eyes dramatically.

  “And?”

  “And completely out of the blue, one day she announced that she’d had enough of that. Never wrote another word. She took up canasta instead and lived to be eight hundred years old. So I needed to fill that space pronto. Your mother was always telling people what to do anyway, so I figured she might as well do some good with it.”

  Bryce wrapped his hands around his coffee mug and grinned. Some of his earliest memories involved his mother sitting at the kitchen table with a pad of paper in front of her and a pencil in hand, gleefully solving problems for the good citizens of Bailey Springs.

  “It was a good column,” Bryce said.

  “It was. She was a smart lady, compassionate but logical.”

  “But that was her. I’m… a fireman.”

  Alma’s eyebrows rose. “Firemen can’t give advice?”

  “Of course they can. I do it all the time. But mostly it’s stuff like check your smoke detector batteries and remember to stop, drop, and roll. I don’t think anyone wants to read that in the paper.”

  For a brief moment, Alma’s youthful face looked old and tired. Then she straightened her shoulders and leaned forward. “Here’s the thing, kiddo. Nobody buys newspapers anymore. What’s the need when Russian websites spew crap through your Facebook feed all day? The Bailey Springs Gazette has been operating since 1884, but we’re in real danger of going under.”

  Bryce winced. “Jesus, Alma, I’m sorry.”

  “Times change, and sometimes the old ways are lost. But I’m still fighting. We still bring in decent revenue from website ads, and do you know which feature gathers the most clicks? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”

  “Dear Ruth,” Bryce said with a sigh.

  “You betcha.” She shook her head slowly. “I thought about taking it over myself, but you know how I am. Pretty soon half the town would be gathering on Main Street to hang me in effigy. Tact and delicacy are not my strong points.”

  That made Bryce snort in agreement. “Not what you’re known for.”

  “But you, my dear, are your mother’s son. You would make an excellent Dear Ruth.”

  “But I’ve never—”

  “My kids turned to you whenever they were troubled, even though you’re a little younger. True?”

  He twitched his shoulders. “Yeah, but—”

  “Student body president, as I recall. And Chief Thomas snapped you right up the minute you stepped foot back in town. You make sense, Bryce, and people listen to you. You’ll be good at this.”

  “But most of the letters ask about relationships. How am I supposed to give advice on that? My own track record sucks.” His love life consisted of awkward first dates that never became seconds, occasional hookups, and one long-term thing that had spectacularly crashed and burned.

  Alma pointed at him. “Your mother’s romantic life was a disaster too. Just because we’re foolish in our personal decisions now and then doesn’t mean we can’t help others be wise in theirs.”

  He wanted to argue. The entire proposition was ridiculous. But the Bernards were the closest thing he had to family. They’d stood by his mother when she’d been a struggling single parent, and they continued to stand by Bryce as her grieving son. He at least owed Alma the effort.

  “Let’s not tell people who the new Dear Ruth is, okay?”

  She took his hand in both of hers and squeezed firmly. “Deal.”

  TWO

  Dear Ruth,

  I recently became engaged to a really great guy. He works hard, he treats me like royalty, and we have a lot of fun together. There’s just one problem. Almost every night after work, he smokes pot. He says it’s no big deal and it’s just the same as if he had a couple of beers or something. But I’m worried because it’s illegal and might lead to harder drugs. What should I do?

  —Stoner’s fiancée

  BRYCE SQUINTED at the computer screen and considered telling her to make sure her guy stubbed out his joints carefully and discarded them in a fireproof container. But that probably wasn’t the advice she was looking for. With a noisy sigh, he stood up from the table and plodded across the kitchen to peer out the window. A warm spell had passed through, melting the ice and some of the accumulated snow, but even though the afternoon sun was bright, the temperatures had dipped again. It was cold enough to freeze one’s nose hairs. Still, he’d been sitting around all day. He needed to get out of the house before the few remaining hours of sunlight ended.

  Changing into his running clothes took several minutes, and as soon as he stepped through the front door, the cold hit his few bits of exposed skin like a slap. Good incentive to run. He took off at a faster pace than usual, his feet hitting the ground with satisfying thuds.

  As he navigated his familiar neighborhood, he acknowledged that this was another thing his mother had been right about. When he moved back to Bailey Springs, he’d intended to rent one of the town’s few apartments, a loftlike space over a couple of shops on Main Street. His mother had persuaded him to buy a house instead. “Less noise during the day, when you might be trying to sleep after a night shift,” she’d pointed out. “And you’ll have people to talk to. Main Street’s dead outside of business hours. Plus a house is a good investment and you get a tax break.”

  So he’d bought a little bungalow. It wasn’t in Bailey Springs’ fanciest neighborhood, where Queen Annes loomed like firetraps waiting to happen, but it was within walking distance of downtown and the fire station. He’d spent a good deal of time fixing up the house, making it comfortable and even charming. The neighbors were friendly; he’d known many of them since he was a kid. After his mother died, they’d brought him casseroles and pies and shared kind memories of her.

  Speaking of neighbors, when Bryce was nearly done with his run—just rounding the corner onto his part of the block—he caught sight of the new guy. He’d moved in the previous month, but since then Bryce had caught only a few glimpses of him. Enough to see that the man was gorgeous. A few years older than Bryce, perhaps, with silver threading his dark brown hair and neat beard, and with a compact build and a pleasant bit of softness around his middle. Now the new guy teetered atop a ladder propped against the front of his one-story house, while a young girl in a green parka stood on the lawn and looked up at him.

  Bryce jogged in place for a moment before sighing and hurrying over. “You should have someone stabilize that ladder!” he called as he came nearer. The man twisted around, which very nearly caused the ladder to topple, but Bryce steadied it just in time. “You’re gonna end up hurting yourself,” he said breathlessly.

  Peering down at Bryce, the man made an annoyed grunt. “I was doing fine until you distracted me.”

  “No, you weren’t. The ground’s too frozen for the ladder to sink in and give you a little stability. You were one move away from disaster.”

  The girl came up close. A red-and-gold scarf obscured most of her face and made it hard to jud
ge her age. Five? Six? Something in that range.

  “My dad’s gonna hang Christmas lights,” she announced. “Purple ones that blink. And then we’re gonna put reindeers on the lawn. They have white lights, except one’s got a red nose, like Rudolph.”

  “Sounds nice. Santa’s going to be impressed.”

  “Santa’s not real. He’s just some guy in a costume.”

  Before Bryce could respond, the guy descended the ladder, and Bryce stepped away so he could reach the ground. The man’s cheeks and nose were red from the cold. “I was doing fine,” he insisted. “But thank you.” Then he stuck out a gloved hand. “Noah Costa.”

  Bryce shook his hand. “Bryce Reynolds. I live—”

  “Down the street. I know. And this is Harper.”

  When Bryce shook her hand, she giggled. “Are you a real fireman?” she asked. “’Cause you don’t have a red truck. Firemen are supposed to have big red trucks.”

  “We keep the trucks at the station,” he replied, then lifted his eyebrows at Noah.

  “Mrs. Foster gave us the rundown on everyone on the block. Does she keep a spreadsheet or something?”

  That made Bryce laugh. “Probably. The NSA could learn things from that woman.” He wondered what else their mutual neighbor had told Noah. Not that Bryce had any ugly secrets, but it slightly discomfited him to know that this stranger might be aware of the details of his life.

  “Well, ever since then, Harper’s been really excited about the prospect of living near a real-life fireman.”

  Harper nodded solemnly. “I’m gonna be a firefighter when I grow up.”

  “I bet you’ll be awesome at it,” Bryce said. Then on impulse he added, “If you want, you can stop by the station one of these days and I’ll give you a tour. Maybe you can try out the hook-and-ladder truck, see how you like it.”

  Her eyes grew huge, she squealed at such a high pitch that Bryce was surprised anyone other than dogs could hear it, and she took off running across the lawn, pausing now and then to leap into the air. “Wow,” Bryce said.