June Baby

In the summer of 2013, seventeen-year-old Ruth arrives on Block Island, a small island off Rhode Island, after her father, Joel, a house painter, sends her on a ferry with little more than a scribbled name on a receipt. Ruth's mother, Maggie, died of breast cancer three months earlier, and Joel does not know how to handle Ruth's grief. She is sent to stay with Diana Beckett, a photographer and former friend of Maggie's whom Ruth has never met. Diana welcomes Ruth into her beach cottage. Ruth begins helping with Diana's photography and starts to heal.

Ten years later, in June 2023, Ruth is twenty-seven and trapped in a cycle she never intended: summers waitressing on Block Island, winters bartending in a small town in Maine, her writing ambitions abandoned. Diana, who became Ruth's closest living family and fiercest champion, has just died of lung cancer she kept secret from Ruth. Ruth races to the island after learning the news from Charlie, Diana's nephew, who left frantic voicemails from the hospital, but she arrives too late to say goodbye.

Under the beech tree at Diana's empty house, Ruth calls Charlie and is flooded with memories of their decade-long relationship. They first kissed at seventeen and came close to becoming a couple many times, but distance, timing, and fear always intervened. She decides she will tell Charlie she loves him at the funeral. In the weeks before the service, she attends a solstice party thrown by Lucy, her best friend, and reconnects with Louis, a fisherman who lives on his boat. Ruth and Louis sleep together after a late-night swim.

At the funeral, Charlie singles Ruth out in his eulogy as the person closest to Diana. Then his mother, Lynn, Diana's sister, announces that Charlie will marry his fiancée, Nadia, at the house on Labor Day weekend. Ruth is blindsided. She sees the ring on a thin, blond woman leaning against Charlie's shoulder. When Ruth confronts Lynn about clearing Diana's belongings, Lynn tells Ruth she was never going to be with Charlie and orders her to leave.

Ruth meets Nadia, a petite art teacher and jewelry maker, and is struck by how purposeful Nadia's life seems compared to her own stalled existence. Ruth recalls a painful Christmas call when Diana pushed her to do more with her life, saying Maggie would have wanted more for her. The words cut deeply, and Ruth never visited Diana again.

Charlie invites Ruth to the house while Nadia and Lynn are away and gives her a teal box Diana assembled before her death. In the bathroom, Ruth discovers a piece of broken condom from her night with Louis. It is too late for emergency contraception, and panic builds. At Black Rock Beach, she tells Charlie she thinks about the last time they were here. Their lips are inches apart when he pulls away; his phone rings, and Nadia is on the ferry home.

Diana's former colleague Ethel Bishop contacts Ruth with an offer Diana arranged: Ruth is to write a major profile of Diana for Vogue, due August 7. Despite her self-doubt, Ruth accepts and begins working mornings in Diana's studio under conditions imposed by Lynn.

In the studio, Ruth opens the teal box. Inside are Diana's first camera with an unfinished roll of film, photographs, and a letter. The photographs show Maggie and Diana together on Block Island in 1994. Diana's letter reveals she and Maggie were lovers that summer, and that Maggie was her only real love. Diana wanted Maggie to move to New York, but Maggie, constrained by her strict Catholic upbringing, was afraid. She left and never came back. The next summer, Diana saw Maggie on the island, pregnant and married to Joel.

A note leads Ruth to the studio loft, where she finds bold paintings Maggie made that summer, one inscribed: "Happy birthday, June Baby!" (163). Ruth realizes that Maggie gave up her art, her love, and her life with Diana because she became pregnant with Ruth. She confronts Joel, who confirms Maggie was never in love with him; when Maggie discovered she was pregnant, Joel proposed.

At a Fourth of July party, Charlie follows Ruth to the attic during a power outage and kisses her. Downstairs, Lucy organizes a round of Never Have I Ever that exposes the tension among Ruth, Charlie, and Louis, who has grown attentive to Ruth throughout the evening. Later, Louis tells Ruth he wants to be with her. She says no.

Ruth's period does not come. At work, she snaps at a rude customer and is fired. On a remote beach, she sees a woman caught in a riptide, the woman's toddler alone on the sand. Ruth swims out to rescue her, fighting exhaustion and a terrifying impulse to surrender. During the struggle, she realizes she has been hiding from life, refusing to take risks, and lying to herself about her grief.

Charlie finds Ruth that evening and drives her to Diana's house. They sleep together, then sit in the studio looking at Maggie's paintings. Ruth tells Charlie she loves him, and he says it back. But Ruth realizes she cannot be with him; it would mean jumping into someone else's life and hiding from herself again. They part in tears.

Weeks later, a pregnancy test confirms Ruth's fears. She decides to have an abortion, certain she does not want to be a mother. Lucy makes an appointment at Planned Parenthood in Providence for August 7, the same day as the article deadline. Ruth tells Louis, who is supportive. Unable to finish the piece, she emails Ethel to withdraw. The procedure goes smoothly, and Ruth feels certainty rather than regret.

A storm hits the island. Charlie, stranded on the mainland, calls to say he has told Nadia about sleeping with Ruth. Nadia is alone at the house with no power. Ruth walks through the storm to check on her. By candlelight, Nadia asks if Ruth and Charlie are in love. Ruth says their love is nostalgia, not something to build on. She apologizes and asks Nadia not to cut her out of Charlie's life.

The wedding is called off. Charlie says goodbye at the ferry dock, telling Ruth he and Nadia are taking time. In Diana's studio, Ruth develops the roll of film from the camera. Among the images are three photographs Diana took: Diana under the beech tree, Ruth asleep on the beach in a secret portrait, and Diana in her hospital gown, posing like a fashion model. Ruth cries, then begins to write. For the first time all summer, the words come easily. She writes about Diana, her mother, her abortion, all of it. She sends the piece and photographs to Ethel.

Ruth reconciles with Joel and shows him the paintings. Among Maggie's things, she finds baby clothes her mother crocheted before Ruth was born, evidence of Maggie's intentional welcome. Ethel responds that the piece is not right for Vogue but calls it powerful and provides contacts at other publications. Diana's lawyer reveals that Diana left Ruth her studio apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Ruth believes it was likely the apartment Diana once prepared for Maggie, and she understands the gift as a fresh start.

On her twenty-eighth birthday, Ruth moves into the sunlit apartment. She pulls her mother's painting of the dunes from the bin and hangs it on the wall above her bed.