Nothing Ever Happened in Ash Fork

Ruby Calder has kept her father's quarry books since she was nineteen and kept herself to herself for twenty-six years. When Cairo Delgado rides back into Ash Fork as the Copper Vultures' new treasurer, she finally lets herself believe that all that waiting was for him. He takes her to the quarry overlook, tells her he loves her, and she gives him everything she saved. Two hours later a Facebook message from a stranger named Farrah arrives with a video: Cai in a Kingman motel bed with a woman Ruby has never seen. Ruby doesn't cry. She sells the quarry, moves to Flagstaff, and takes a bookkeeping job at an aggregate firm, where the Copper Vultures are forced to apply for a county permit through her office. Cai walks in with their attorney and a sealed envelope: the Kingman video was staged, the woman was paid, and the rival chapter behind it has already been indicted. Ruby reads every page, approves the permit, and tells Cai no. Because it wasn't the cheating that broke her. It was the eleven seconds she believed she was nothing. In Ash Fork, nothing ever happens. That's why Ruby left.