“I killed her.”
The words hang in the air, words I’ve never said out loud before. You’d imagine it would feel good, getting something like that off your chest, even if you know it’s about to ruin your fucking life.
But it doesn’t feel like anything. It’s just a fact, one I’ve tried to run from, though I’ve now learned you can’t run from these kinds of things.
They always catch you in the end.
Jules is still sitting on the floor, her legs twisted to one side, her eyes wide in a pale face. Her legs and feet are bare, her toenails turquoise. I flash back to her painting them in the bathroom of our little house in Golden, singing softly to herself as I lay in our bed and watched her, warmth in my chest, contentment in my bones.
How fucking stupid I was, thinking I could have that forever.
“I, uh. I’d come back from college. I was going to UNC then, but I’d already started the paperwork to transfer. Do you know why I picked CSU San Bernardino?”
She shakes her head, and I rub the back of my neck, a humorless laugh harsh in my throat. “Neither did I. I just searched ‘colleges in California,’ and told myself I’d choose one at random. It didn’t matter where, just so long as it put the whole country between me and this place. Because I knew by then. I knew what Ashby House did to people. How it twisted them. It’s not just the money. I mean, the money is part of it, but it’s more than that. It’s what happens when you live in a place that never expects you to … well, leave, I guess. To go out in the world and actually do something with your life. Ruby, her family? They might as well be gods here. It’s why they all stay. They’re so used to everyone knowing who they are, to their last name opening doors and greasing wheels, and…”
I blow out a shaky breath. These secrets have been stuck inside me for so long, and now they’re all tumbling out. “When nothing has ever been hard for you. When you’ve never had to do the normal shit everyone else does to get through their day, you start thinking maybe you aren’t a normal person. Maybe you are better. Which means you can do what you want. Anything you want.”
Jules hasn’t moved, but I can see her chest moving up and down, her lips parted, and I wish there were some way to make her understand, to pour all these experiences into her head, all the years of living in this house. To make her see how confusing it was to be simultaneously the coddled Golden Boy and the outsider, the orphan.
“Ruby used to say that to me,” I continue. “‘You’re a McTavish now, Camden. That makes you special.’ But I saw what being ‘special’ looked like to this family.”
It looked like Ben wrecking a boat on Beaver Lake, slamming into some poor kid on a Jet Ski who never walked again. No matter that Ben was drunk, no matter that he should have been arrested. The kid lost his legs, but thanks to the McTavish fortune, he had a full bank account for life.
It looked like Howell’s wife, sunglasses hiding black eyes, but new diamonds always appearing in her ears, around her neck, before the bruises even faded. Howell was a mean drunk but a regular at Tiffany’s.
It looked like Nelle, placidly watching the police haul away one of the cleaning crew on robbery charges. Then, later that same evening, appearing at dinner wearing the very same bracelet she’d claimed had been stolen. “I found it in my jewelry box,” she’d said with an elegant shrug, and nothing more. There was no phone call down to the station, and certainly no guilt at having jumped to conclusions.
It looked like Libby sitting on the edge of my bed, expecting me to be enthralled, assuming I’d be seduced.
And yeah, you know what? It looked like Ruby, picking some poor kid out of the foster system and hanging a golden anchor around his neck just to piss off her family.
“She hated it,” I tell Jules, sinking down on the bench in front of Ruby’s dressing table. “The idea of me leaving. I think it was the only time she ever raised her voice to me.”
You’re a little old for teenage rebellion, Camden, and frankly, I’m tired of this discussion. Transfer to Duke, transfer to Wake Forest, but you have responsibilities to this family, and I will be damned if you abandon them!
“I stopped taking her calls. She stopped paying my bills. I got a job working at a restaurant in Chapel Hill only to have the manager call me into his office after my first shift and say that he needed to let me go.”
I laugh bitterly, shaking my head. “It took two more jobs that shitcanned me after only a day to realize what Ruby was doing. As long as I was in North Carolina, I was within her reach. In trying to make it hard for me to leave, she only proved why I couldn’t stay.”
“Is that…”
Jules’s voice is whisper-thin, and she stops, takes a deep breath. “Is that why? So that you could be free?”
It’s not an absolution, but it’s not a condemnation, either. She hasn’t gotten up, hasn’t run out screaming, and fuck knows I shouldn’t be dumb enough to hope for anything more, but that’s what the little spark in my chest feels like right now.
“I don’t know,” I tell her truthfully. “Maybe? I didn’t … it wasn’t something I planned. I didn’t come here that night to … to do that.”
But I’d just lost another job, my credit cards were frozen, my bank account was locked. I’d told myself I didn’t need her money, I could make it on my own. I didn’t care if I slept in my car and ate cheap hot dogs and canned chili for the rest of my life, though of course, I didn’t realize how naïve that was. For one thing, the car wasn’t mine, and a phone call from Ruby would’ve had it on the back of a tow truck within the hour. And if I couldn’t keep a job for more than two days, I couldn’t make enough money to buy hot dogs, much less a new car, and the more jobs I lost, the harder it would be to get new ones. Everywhere I turned, there was some new, Ruby-shaped roadblock in front of me. Every path of escape had slowly been cut off.
“I didn’t realize how hard it would be,” I tell Jules now, and when she blanches, I lift a hand, shaking my head.
“No. No, I don’t mean that … part. I mean, just leaving. I didn’t understand how every part of my life was tied to Ruby. To what she’d given me. To what she could take away. When I came up here that night, all I wanted to do was talk to her, to see if we could find some kind of compromise. I thought there had to be a way, you know? I thought…”
I thought I could find the right words to make her see reason, to let me go. What I didn’t get was that there was nothing reasonable about any of this to Ruby.
That Ruby would never let me go.
I breathe in through my nose, knowing I have to finish this.
“It was raining that night. Ben was off at college and Libby was in town.” I laugh, but there’s no actual mirth in it. “So, yeah, she was lying at dinner, but she was also telling the truth in a fucked-up way. Howell was doing some guys’ fishing weekend down in Georgia. Nelle was upstairs watching TV—she got really obsessed with Downton Abbey. A rich family in England, that big house, World War One? Classic Nelle.”
I’m stalling, I know I am, but I make myself say the most important part.
“And Ruby … Ruby was waiting for me in her room. In here.”
She’d been sitting on this bench, dressed in her pajamas, but even those seemed like formal wear on Ruby. She was seventy-three by then, but looked younger, her dark hair turned silver, and as I stood there, dripping rain onto her carpet, she rubbed that fancy cream of hers into her hands, watching me in the mirror.
Have you finally come to your senses?
“I begged with her. I pleaded. I swear to god, Jules, I actually got down on my fucking knees right there.”
I point to where she’s sitting.
I can’t stay here. Please. Please, let me go.
“She got up, and she crossed the room, and she put her hands on my face. They were cold. Almost … almost slimy. From the cream she used. She was smiling at me. I was crying, and she was smiling. And then she said, ‘Do you remember Tyler Hayes?’”
Jules slowly draws her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees, her brows drawn tight together. “Who was that?”
I shake my head, swiping at my face. I hadn’t realized that tears were streaming down it, just like they had that night.
“This asshole kid I’d gone to school with. In tenth grade, we got in a fight after a soccer game. Just stupid teenage boy shit, I don’t even remember what it was about. But he got in one really solid punch and it broke my nose.”
I touch the slight bump on the bridge, remembering. “Hurt like a motherfucker. Ruby met me at the ER, and held my hand while they reset it. It was the only time I’d ever seen her be maternal in my life. So, there I am, with my nose throbbing and my stomach grinding because I’d puked from the pain, and we’re driving back up here, and she goes, ‘That Tyler boy. His father works for me. Well, for the company. He runs that little hotel on Main Street.’ And I knew that, of course, but I didn’t really care what his dad did for a living, so I think I just grunted or something. And then she said, ‘If you want, I’ll fire him.’
“I laughed because I thought she was joking with me. Like it was one of those, ‘Want me to kill him?’ things. Just something you say when a person hurts someone you love. Not something you actually do. But she was dead serious. ‘I can have the whole bed-and-breakfast shut down, actually,’ she said. ‘And the bank that has the mortgage on their house is obviously very keen to keep my business, so that’s another avenue to pursue. If you want.’”
Jules’s arms tighten around her knees, and I smile wryly. “I said no. In fact, I said, ‘It was a stupid fight, Ruby. You don’t ruin a guy’s life over that.’”
You might not, Ruby had said, her eyes staring straight ahead. Others would.
“And that’s when I remembered there had been other instances like this. Times when something shitty would happen, and she’d offer to use various weapons at her disposal to right the scales, and I always said no.”
The girl who dumped me right before my first homecoming dance. The guy who dinged my new car in the parking lot of the Food Mart, then acted like it was somehow my fault.
“I’d seen Howell pull similar strings for Libby and Ben, and I had no doubt Nelle had done the same for Howell, but it always felt gross to me, you know? So, I just thought Ruby was doing what this family did. I didn’t realize it was a test.”
You didn’t want me to make Tyler Hayes pay for what he’d done to you. You’re a good person, Camden, Ruby had said, moving to the bed and turning down the covers. At your core. I have given you every privilege, every advantage, everything that every McTavish has had since the first one showed up here three hundred years ago. And every McTavish since then has grown more self-centered, more uncaring. Not a one of them should have this. But you, my darling boy?
She had gotten into the bed, folding her hands on top of the sheets.
You are my redemption.
“Redemption,” I echo to Jules. “That’s what she called me.”
Jules is frowning now, but she’s still listening.
“And then,” I say on a sigh, “she told me about the pills.”
MY REDEMPTION, SHE repeats. And I’m going to prove it to you.
Her face looks beatific, skin almost unlined despite her age.
You want to be free of me, from all of this, but I’ve made that impossible for you. If I were to die, though … well, then you’d have what you wanted. Money, which you say you don’t care about, but also freedom. An entire fortune at your disposal, and no one to stop you from doing what you see fit with it.
But she doesn’t say “see,” exactly. The s slides, s-s-s-s-see, a hiss almost, and I notice one eyelid drooping.
I’ve made it … so easy for you.
Her words are slowing down, and she waves one hand lazily at her nightstand.
Not even sure what all I took. Think … think some pills still left from … from Duke, things they-they don’t … sell the-ese days-s-s. As soon as I s-a-saw your … your car. In the drive. Swallowed them down w-with a glass …
She smiles then, hazy.
A glass of the 1959 Dom.
My stomach lurches and I rise to my feet.
What have you done? What the fuck have you done?
You could let me … let me die and get all you ever wanted. B-but you won’t. Just like … like you never told th-them. About Dora Darnell.
Her smile widens, teeth glinting. About me. You wouldn’t … wouldn’t do that. And you’re not going to do that. Not going to do this. You’re … you’re going to call … call the … ambulance, the siren …
Her eyes open and close, the lids heavy, then lifting quickly, her thick lashes blinking against her pale cheeks, chest heaving.
B-better than me, she says on a wheezing breath. I made you better th-than all of us … I made you …
She keeps smiling at me, and then her smile starts to change.
Camden.
Confusion on her face, then something that would be panic were the drugs not pulling her under. A jerky movement, a thin hand slapping at her nightstand, nails tapping the acrylic of the French phone by her bed, and suddenly I find my legs.
I don’t even think, I don’t let myself think.
I pick the phone up, unplugging the cord from the back, and clutching it to my chest, I begin to back away from the bed.
Ruby watches me, panting now, fighting to keep her eyes open, her mouth opening to scream, but all that comes out is a breathy sort of moan, and I keep backing up, backing up, backing up until my heels hit the wall, my head thumping back, my eyes never leaving her.
As Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore slowly dies in her bed, I sink down against the wall, holding on to the phone so tightly that later, I’ll find red grooves in my palms, a bruise making a purple line against the skin of my chest.
I sob as she finally stops struggling, sitting there on the floor as her breathing slows, steady at first, like she’s sleeping.
But there are gasps after that, and then, for a long time, so long I can feel my mind cracking inside my skull, there’s a rattling, guttural noise.
And my mind must crack because that’s when I get up from my spot against the wall, the phone clattering out of my grip, and grab a pillow from her bed and press it over her face, just wanting her to stop, stop making that sound, she needs to stop …
She does.
Later, I put the phone back into place, plug it back into the wall. I wipe it down with a washcloth from Ruby’s bathroom that I shove in my back pocket and, later, throw out the window of my car somewhere near the Georgia border.
I’m in my bedroom that next morning when Cecilia knocks, her face tearstained, her hands reaching for me.
Oh, honey, she says, and I let myself be hugged and wonder how soon I can leave Ashby House forever.
WHEN I’M FINISHED, I’ve stopped crying, but Jules had started somewhere around the part with the phone, tears dripping onto her gray T-shirt, leaving dark splotches.
“She gave me everything,” I say. “And she trusted that I’d save her. She took all those fucking pills because she believed I was a good person. But I wasn’t. She was right. If she died, I was free, and I … I chose that. Chose it over her. I let her die rather than stay here.”
Jules gets up then, moving across the carpet on silent feet, and stands in front of me.
She cups my face in her hands, and then leans down and kisses me.
“I love you,” she says when we part, and I didn’t know until that moment how much I needed to hear that. “I love you, and you are a good person, Camden. The best person I know.”
I shake my head, wanting to deny that, needing to, but she won’t let me. “You were a kid,” she says, her grip tightening on my face. “And she threw you into this … this fucking snake pit to prove something to herself. She let Nelle and Howell and even Ben and Libby treat you like shit just to see what you could take. She killed herself, Cam.”
Jules is right, I know she is, but I still want to deny it, am already opening my mouth to protest when she pulls me to my feet, her hand firm in mine.
“You need to see something.”
She pulls me out of Ruby’s room and down the hall, back to our bedroom, and picks up a sheaf of paper from the nightstand. Even without her letterhead at the top, I’d know it was from Ruby’s desk. I’d seen that heavy, cream-colored vellum my whole life, done my fucking algebra homework on it.
“The other day when I was in Ruby’s office, looking through photo albums, I … okay, I took the snooping a little too far, and went through her desk. I found these.”
Letters. Not addressed to anyone, but I can hear Ruby’s voice as my eyes scan the first line.
Well, darling, here we are.
“I took them out because I thought they must be to you, but I didn’t read them until last night. I couldn’t sleep, and after I read them, well … then I really couldn’t sleep.”
Pages and pages, written in Ruby’s careful, neat hand, all dated in the days just before she died.
I’ve never seen them before.
I don’t want to read them, I don’t want Ruby’s voice in my head, and I try to hand them back to Jules. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her, but she patiently shoves the papers back at me, her hazel eyes imploring.
“It does, Cam,” she says softly. “I promise you.”
I’m exhausted, drained, but I sit on the edge of the bed, willing to humor her.
I read the first page, then the second. Three more, five more.
Page after page, confession after confession, Ruby’s familiar, chatty voice, and then all these nightmares, all this death. I feel heavy with it, weighed down with the knowledge of who this woman, the only mother I’d ever known, really was.
But right behind all of that?
Relief.
Because now I know. The rumors, the whispers, the secret Google searches at the library, the guilt for suspecting that the woman who raised me was a murderer making my palms sweat and my stomach ache.
All of it was true.
What’s more, I feel like I understand her better now. She did these things, and she wanted to tell me about them because I was her son, and she thought I deserved to know.
And then I get to the last letter and remember that nothing was ever that simple with Ruby.