I forgot about the portrait.
The moment I step into Ashby House, I feel almost disoriented, thrown back in time so violently that I half expect to look down and see soccer cleats on my feet, dirt and grass on my knees.
It’s the smell, for one thing. That beeswax polish Ruby liked the cleaners to use, the sick, funereal scent of fresh flowers that have been left in their vases a day or two too long, the faint tang of woodsmoke that never went away, even in the summers, like every fire ever lit in every fireplace soaked into the pores of the place.
The Tiffany lamp on the table just inside the front door, a replacement for the one I broke when I was fourteen, casting little squares of colored light onto the black marble top of the table it sits on. The carpet runner on the stairs, held in place by brass rods, the navy-and-maroon pattern worn away in the middle of each step by more than a century of feet going up and down.
The way the front hallway widens, opening up into empty space, the better to display the massive windows that look out onto the back lawn before it drops steeply down into rocks and trees. I kicked a soccer ball off the edge of that lawn once, wanting to watch it roll down the mountain, but it was immediately swallowed by the trees, tangled in branches before it got more than three feet down.
All of that comes rushing at me, thick and dizzying, and I wonder if this is what having a heart attack feels like. Chest tight, mind reeling, air suddenly hard to come by.
And then I lift my eyes and see Ruby staring down at me.
The portrait hangs at the top of the stairs, massive in its gilt frame. It was painted by Ruby’s third husband, Andrew. She was married to him the longest, ten years, and maybe she loved him the most because Andrew was the middle name she gave me. He painted her picture right after they met, around 1969, so she wasn’t even thirty at the time.
Younger than I am now.
Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders, no bouffant for Ruby McTavish, even in the sixties, and she’s wearing an emerald-green evening gown as she perches on the arm of some antique chair, her legs crossed demurely at the ankles, her hands clasped in her lap. Her smile is faint, but genuine, I think. I remember that expression. And it’s a good portrait, objectively. True to life, and the contrast of the opulent dress and décor with her casual pose works well.
I focus on the other details of the painting because I don’t want to look into those eyes.
But I have to, don’t I? I owe her that, at least.
I’m back, I think, looking up, and even though I haven’t heard her voice in more than ten years, I imagine her reply.
You certainly took your time, my dear.
“That’s her,” I hear Jules say—it’s not a question—and I swallow hard, putting an arm around her shoulders.
I never called her anything else. By law, she was my mother, but the word never suited her or me for that matter. She was always Ruby.
“Cam, this place…” Jules starts, looking around. She doesn’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t have to.
“It’s something,” I agree, and she turns to me with wide eyes.
“Okay, King of Understatement. God. How did you ever … I don’t know. Do math homework here? Eat Oreos? Look up tits on the internet?”
My shoulders relax a little.
Jules is here. Funny, quick Jules who loves me and understands me––as much as I’ve let her.
I can do this with her here. I can get through this.
“I actually did my math homework right through there,” I tell her, taking her shoulders and turning her to face another hallway, one that leads to the kitchen. “And I didn’t eat Oreos at all because Ruby had a thing about junk food. As for tits on the internet…”
Keeping my hands on her shoulders, I turn her to face me, bending my knees slightly so that we’re eye to eye. “These eyes never saw any tits at all until you took pity on me in the backseat of my car behind Senor Pollo’s.”
Her sputtering laughter chases away some of the shadows, just like I’d hoped it would, and that tightness in my chest fades as I pull her close, her body a soft, familiar shape against mine.
I’d always thought there was something about this house that poisoned everyone in it eventually. Turned the good to rot. But there’s too much sunshine in Jules for that to happen to her, and I need to remember that.
“Hope I’m not interrupting something!” a voice calls out, and that slight lift of happiness I’d been feeling slides away as quickly as it came.
I drop my arms from around Jules and turn around.
“Ben,” I say, and, sure enough, there he stands on the stairs.
It had been a shock to see that Libby was no longer a teenager, but Ben, strangely, looks almost exactly the same.
His hair is sandy blond, a few shades lighter than mine, and he’s just as tan as his sister, his teeth blindingly white as he smiles down at us. Ben’s dad, Howell, always wore polo shirts and khakis, his feet forever shoved into Docksiders, but Ben is in jeans and a fitted gray T-shirt, and as he makes his way down the stairs, I see he’s wearing a spotless pair of those expensive sneakers he’s always been addicted to.
I’ve got on a beat-up pair of leather ankle boots, but other than that, we’re dressed almost exactly the same, and there’s that dizzying sense of vertigo again because, as I sense Jules look back and forth between us, I know what she must be thinking.
Ben is two years older, and I’m maybe an inch taller than he is. He’s a little less lanky than I am, chest and arms thicker, and his hair is shorter. North Carolina still drips from his voice in a way that it doesn’t from mine, but, yeah, we look enough alike to be brothers. People used to assume we were, actually, an idea that horrified both of us.
Me in another life, I think now, looking at him as he offers his hand to shake. Me if I stayed here.
“Glad you made it,” Ben says, his glance brushing off of me, but fixing on Jules in a way that has my hands clenched into fists before I even realize it.
“The Prodigal Son returns,” he continues even though he’s staring at Jules. She’s smiling back at him, polite, but her toe nudges mine just the littlest bit.
A reminder, probably, that I owe her five dollars. Somewhere around Nashville, she had bet me someone in my family would say those exact words and I, stupidly, had thought that even Ben wasn’t that much of a cliché.
“And even better, he brings a new Mrs. McTavish,” Ben goes on, gesturing at one of the photographs on the table with the Tiffany lamp. “This house is named after the last McTavish bride, you know. Anna. My great-grandmother. Her maiden name was Ashby.”
He swings back to Jules. “What’s yours?”
I should’ve warned her about this, the family’s obsession with genealogy and who birthed who, like a dead relative you never met can tell someone everything they need to know about you.
Jules waves one hand. “Technically, I don’t have one. I mean, I kept my last name when I married Cam, so it’s actually Ms. Brewster. Jules Brewster.”
She offers her hand for him to shake, and Ben stares at it for a beat, thrown off his game. “Ms. Brewster,” he says, and, finally, he shakes her hand. “Okay, cool. I mean, it’s the twenty-first century, why not?”
His free hand forms a fist, snakes out, and I brace myself out of old habit. The thump on my arm doesn’t land as hard as it once did, though, and I wonder if he got weaker or if I got stronger. Maybe he has the same thought, because I see the way his eyes widen for a second, how he clenches and unclenches his fingers at his sides.
I’m not some skinny seventh grader anymore, Ben, I think, remembering the purple bruises I’d study as I lay in the massive bathtub upstairs. Violet splotches on my biceps, my thighs. Never out of anger, no, Ben would never. Always just “messing around,” just “guy shit,” just “Cam gets it, dontcha, Cam?”
Always the brightest smile and the hardest eyes.
The smile has faded, but the eyes are still like granite as he says, “Well done, man, well done,” like Jules is a twelve-point buck I’ve just brought home, not my wife. “Although, hey, some advice. You may wanna rethink that when you two have kids. Confusing for them, having parents with different last names. If Dad were still alive, he would’ve told you himself. His father was actually a Franklin, but of course Great-Grandad insisted Nana Nelle and my dad stay McTavishes.”
He shakes his head with a rueful chuckle. “So, yeah, trust me, you wanna have the same last name as your child. Otherwise people might think you two weren’t married at all. Or divorced. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“I would rather die,” Jules replies with big eyes, and I choke back a laugh as I take her hand, our fingers interlacing.
Confused again, Ben looks at her, a half smile playing around his mouth like he can’t tell if he’s being made fun of or not.
Men like him aren’t used to being mocked, which is probably why men like him exist in the first place.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I tell him, taking his focus off of Jules, and those hard eyes meet mine, one corner of his mouth lifting.
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not,” I agree. “But it’s the kind of thing you have to say, isn’t it?”
Ben’s smirk melts into a grin, and that fist hits my upper arm again. “Missed you, Cam,” he tells me. “Mean it.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, I’m serious,” he assures me, and then crosses his arms over his chest, his biceps bulging. “There was never any bullshit with you.”
He looks back at Jules, and gives her another one of those killer smiles. “Pardon my French.”
“No fucking worries,” she replies, and he barks out a laugh, throwing his head back.
“All ri-i-ight, Miss Jules,” he drawls. “But try not to say that in front of Nana Nelle. One funeral this month is enough for me, thanks.”
“Where is Nelle?” I ask. I don’t actually want to see her, but I’d like to get this over with. The sooner we’ve gone through the motions of the whole homecoming thing, the sooner I can leave.
“Not feeling up to company today, she says,” Ben replies, rolling his eyes. “One of her headaches. She’s had a tough time, since Dad died. She’ll meet you both at breakfast in the morning. Libby is headed out with friends tonight, I’m pretty sure. As for me, I have work to catch up on.”
It shouldn’t surprise me that Ben has a job. He’s thirty-four, for fuck’s sake, he should work, but I still find myself blurting out, “What is it that you do? For a living, I mean.”
Ben raises his eyebrows at me. “Umm. I’m a lawyer?” he says, implying that I absolutely should have known that. “Estate stuff, wills and trusts. I mean.” He spread his arms wide. “I figured the family could use someone who actually knew his shit in that regard, right?”
He’s smiling, his teeth still so damn white, but his eyes have gone hard. I make myself smile back even as I feel my throat go a little tight. “Right.”
Ben keeps grinning. “Anyway, I trust the two of you can entertain yourselves for the evening? Cecilia left a casserole in the fridge that you’re welcome to and, Camden, I assumed you’d want your old room back, so it’s ready for you.”
“Fine,” I say. “Sounds good.”
It doesn’t, actually. I’d hoped to stay in some other room. Any other room. The idea of taking Jules back to my childhood bedroom, even if it had been a bedroom prepared for a septuagenarian, is unsettling for some reason. Like I’m sliding right back into place here.
“Awesome,” Ben says and jerks his head toward the stairs. “I’ll get back to it then. I’ve got a shitload of paperwork for you tomorrow.”
“Can’t wait.”
He gives another one of those smiles that doesn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “Now that? That is clearly bullshit, Cam.”
Chuckling, he turns back to Jules. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Brewster. Welcome to Ashby House.”
His eyes linger on her for another one of those uncomfortable beats, and then he’s headed back to the stairs, taking them two at a time like he’s still fifteen and not in his thirties.
He stumbles just at the top, barely noticeable, and he quickly recovers, but for a moment, I let myself picture another outcome.
The sneaker sliding on that worn carpet. The hand reaching out to catch himself, but finding nothing to grab. The racket nearly two hundred pounds of muscle makes as it crashes into the wall, the mahogany banister.
Head hitting the parquet of the hallway, the sound wet, heavy. A pool of deep red spreading from beneath that blond hair.
I let myself hold that image as Ben rounds the newel post at the top, following his progress until he’s at the landing, and then my gaze slides up to meet Ruby’s.
It’s just a portrait, I remind myself. Canvas and oil paint, brushstrokes from a man who died before I was even born.
But as I look into Ruby’s smiling face, I suddenly feel her here.
Real. Alive. Watching me.
Knowing what’s inside my head right now.
And the thing is? I think she’d be proud of me.
From the Desk of Ruby A. McTavish
March 14, 2013
I suppose you want to know about the murder now.
Well, the first one.
It’s only fair. I spent all that time telling you about my parents and Nelle, Nelle’s birthday and meeting Duke, and maybe you wondered why I started there instead of getting right to the meat of it.
As it were.
I can almost see you frowning at the pages of these letters, unconsciously worrying at your cuticles as you read. (You should stop that, by the way. Picking your cuticles. Not only is it a bad habit, but it’s a tell, darling. A few moments in your company and anyone would pick up on it.)
But as any good writer—or hostess—would tell you, setting a scene is important. If you don’t understand what it was like growing up in Ashby House, the way silences and secrets clung to the drapery, littered the hardwood floors, spun webs just as deadly as those black widow spiders my mother was always so worried about, then you might not understand why I was so desperate to leave. How Duke wasn’t just a man I fell in love with and wanted to marry, but an escape into a whole new life.
You have to know all of that for this next part to make sense.
If a thing like this ever can make sense.
I’ve thought about this moment so much, you see. It’s a scene I’ve replayed countless times in my mind, because it was the beginning of it all, the moment that unlocked something inside me. Something that, until then, I had only suspected might exist.
For a long time, I believed that if I analyzed my memories enough, some answer would come to me, or I might see a way in which it could have been avoided and never happened at all. Where Duke and I each made different decisions that night that led to … what, exactly?
This is the part I always get stuck on. What happened that night in Paris feels so inevitable that, much like trying to imagine Duke as an old man, imagining a world in which we came home from our honeymoon, settled into a life together, had children … it’s impossible. Ludicrous, even.
It’s as though we were always meant to end up there, on that Aubusson rug on the landing of Duke’s father’s Paris flat in a lake of blood.
I abhor blood, I should add, and I remember kneeling in it in my nightgown, the white silk slowly turning red. I was looking at Duke’s shirtfront—what remained of it—and saw that it was no longer white either, and my muddled brain was thinking, I’ve never seen Duke in red before, like he’d simply changed into a new shirt.
Funny what the mind will do in trying times.
All right. I’ve gone to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine, and I’ve let myself remember the worst of it, that quiet aftermath, before the police—well, before anyone but me knew that Duke Callahan no longer existed.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
The honeymoon started out well. Magically, even. We’d spent our wedding night here at Ashby House, not in the bedroom I’d slept in all my life (save, of course, those eight months I was with the Darnells and my year at Agnes Scott), but one of the other suites, near the back of the house. The Ruby Suite, my mother called it. Not after me, but because it was done all in red. Heavy red velvet drapes around the window, a deep red carpet underfoot, red bed hangings, red coverlet.
Looking back, perhaps all that red was a sign.
In any case, that’s where I spent my first night as Mrs. Duke Callahan and became a wife in all senses of the word.
Are you cringing now, darling? Are you bracing yourself for an old woman to delve into purple prose as she details her sexual awakening? Are your eyes already darting ahead, praying to god you don’t see words like “petals” or “engorged”?
Never fear. A lady does not kiss and tell.
All I will say is that, much like the night of his death, this is a night I’ve replayed over and over, both looking for some hint of what was to come and because … well, to be frank, because I’ve often wished that this night was not as good as I remembered.
It’s much easier to recast Duke as a villain if I tell myself that everything I felt on our wedding night was due to being young and sheltered. I’d only kissed two boys before Duke, so naturally sex would be something of a revelation. It wasn’t him, it was me, et cetera.
But these letters are the place for truth, are they not? So now I can admit that yes, Duke was wonderful. That night was wonderful, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier in my life than I was that next morning, waking up next to him. I remember our legs touching underneath the sheets, and how that thrilled me, a man’s bare leg warm against my own, the hair there so different from my own smooth skin. I was fascinated by the contrast of us, of the sunlight playing on the golden stubble that had sprung up on his cheeks overnight, of how delicate and feminine my hand looked against the muscles of his chest.
I lay there in the early morning sun, my body pleasantly sore, my mind a soft muddle of happiness and sleepiness and pleasure, and looked at that gorgeous profile, softer as he slept, and thought, I am the luckiest woman in the world.
I believe they call this “ironic foreshadowing.”
I held that thought in my head for the first few days of our honeymoon. On the train to New York, boarding the ship to Paris.
Lucky, I thought, watching the way women watched Duke.
Lucky, I thought every night as he slid down my body, his lips marking places I’d never thought lips would touch.
Lucky, I was thinking just seconds before his fist met my cheek for the first time.
We’d been married for five days.
I said I was sheltered, and I had been. I knew what alcohol could do to people, had watched it slowly eat my mother from the inside out, but that was my only real experience with drunkenness. I thought if you drank too much, you might cry, as Mama did, or sleep too much, as Mama also did. I didn’t know that for some people, alcohol is the key to a cage inside of them, and inside that cage is a monster.
Duke had been gambling in the ship’s casino that night, and I’d been irritated with how late he returned to our cabin. He kissed my cheek after dinner and said he’d only be an hour or two, then with a wink, whispered, “Don’t you dare go to sleep before I get back.”
The promise in those words had fizzed in my blood like champagne, so I’d had a bath, reapplied my makeup, put on one of the nightgowns from my trousseau that he hadn’t seen yet. It was the same white silk I was wearing the night he died, though that was still a few weeks away.
And then I waited.
And waited.
And the longer I waited, the more irritated I became. My eyelids felt heavy with sleep, but I couldn’t lie down because then I’d muss my makeup, and be a mess when he finally returned. And why was a smoky ship’s casino, filled with boring men and their even more insufferable wives, more enjoyable than my bed?
Oh, the snit I worked myself into.
So by the time he did return, sometime past two in the morning, I was mad as a hornet.
And he was drunk as a skunk.
I could smell it when he walked in, that familiar and awful medicinal smell of gin, bringing me right back to dark hallways, to shh, Mama’s sleeping, to muffled retching behind closed doors.
He’d lost his dinner jacket somewhere, his bow tie hanging around his neck, undone, and for the first time, jealousy raised its ugly head. I thought of my fumbling fingers undoing that tie on our wedding night, how I’d laughed to cover my self-consciousness, and how he’d kissed the tip of my nose and told me I was adorable.
Had some other woman undone that tie for him tonight? My head was full of images of elegant red fingernails, diamonds winking in the low light of the casino, and it made my words sharper than I’d intended.
“You said an hour, Duke,” I reminded him. “It’s been nearly four.”
Holding up one hand, he swayed slightly. “Forgive me, Mrs. Callahan,” he said, and tried to give me that grin, but it was lopsided, and honestly, I was too mad for it to work anyway.
“Ran into an old friend from Yale, Darcy Butler. Did you ever meet Darcy? No, you wouldn’t have. They never let you past the Mason-Dixon Line. Important to keep the princess safe in her kingdom.”
I blinked at him, confused. He was still smiling, but there was poison in the words, hidden darts. I could sense it, but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know the dangers that followed that tone of voice.
“Anyway, Darce and I did some catching up, and then I lost abysmally at blackjack, so I had to keep playing until I’d dug myself out of the hole.”
Alarm bells began to ring faintly in my head. I didn’t like the sound of any of that, but then he pulled out a wad of cash, tossing it to the dressing table where most of it slid to the floor.
“And so I did,” he finished up, giving a bow. He was trying to charm me, I think, but I was in no mood, and I turned away, my robe fluttering.
“Well, thank god for that,” I told him, leaning down to pick up the bills that had fallen. “I would’ve been furious if you’d given all of Daddy’s money to some cruise ship gambler.”
My father had given us a honeymoon gift, you see. Fifty thousand dollars to spend as we saw fit, and it had been a joke between us since the morning after the wedding, what would we spend Daddy’s money on?
A camel, I had suggested, and then we’d wondered how much camels even cost and if you could buy one in Europe at all.
The crown jewels of England, Duke had decided, and I reminded him that, while fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money, I wasn’t sure it could buy that treasure.
So you see, I wasn’t trying to anger him or shame him. I wasn’t pleased with Duke, of course, and maybe that made the words sound more waspish than they were, but I thought I was pulling him into a familiar joke.
I straightened up, the money in my hand, quite a lot of it, and as I went to set it back on the dressing table, I thought to myself, Maybe Duke is the lucky one, not me.
And then he punched me.
Not a slap, but a closed-fist punch to my left cheek that made stars explode in my vision and sent me half slumping against the table. My bare feet tangled in my nightgown and robe, and I fell then, landing hard on my backside with my mind so dazed I hardly knew which way was up.
It didn’t hurt, not then. Or perhaps my brain was so busy trying to process the fact that my husband had just hit me that there was no room for anything else.
I felt like some kind of stunned animal lying there, looking up at him, blinking stupidly into that handsome face that, just hours before, I’d held in my hands as I’d kissed him on the deck, the night wind ruffling his hair.
It was the disorientation I remember the most. The feeling that I had just been violently hurled from a life I understood into one that made no sense at all.
“I don’t need your father’s fucking money,” Duke said, sniffing as he pulled the tie out from under his collar and tossed it on the bed. “Besides, that’s my money now, do you understand? And I’ll do what I want with it.”
He stepped over me to make his way to the en suite, and when I heard the door shut and the sink begin running, I made myself stand up, my legs shaking.
My cheek had finally begun to throb, but the rest of me was numb as I made my way to the dressing table, picking up a tissue to wipe away my lipstick. I didn’t meet my eyes in the mirror, didn’t want to see the bruise I knew was forming because then it would be real. This would all be real.
I have no idea how I slept that night, but somehow, I did, and when I woke in the morning, Duke was leaning over me, his hand—the same hand that had hit me so hard the night before—gently cradling my face.
“Christ, I’m a beast,” he murmured softly, his voice so tender. “I know better than to drink gin, and now look what I’ve done.”
“It’s all right,” I told him.
I know. I still can’t believe I said that. I can’t believe that in that moment, I genuinely felt sorry for him. He looked so sad. So remorseful.
And how benevolent I felt, laying my palm against his cheek and looking into his eyes and telling him I knew he hadn’t meant it, that this wasn’t who he was, that of course it was the gin, and I knew it would never happen again.
But I think even then I knew I was lying to myself.
My cheek turned a light purple, then a sort of sickly yellow green, and I covered it with makeup, and laughed at dinner about how too much champagne and the rolling of the ship had sent me into the side of my dressing table, whoopsie-daisy! And the other couples we ate dinner with at night laughed, and teased me when the waiter opened a fresh bottle of bubbly, and I pretended not to see the understanding—the pity—in some of the wives’ eyes.
He didn’t raise a hand to me for the next two days of that voyage, though. There was the fight with the earrings I told you about, but he was sober then, and I was the one who’d indulged in too many martinis before dinner, crying with rage because I found out he had canceled the Italian portion of our trip without telling me, preferring to linger in France once he’d heard from Darcy Butler that “several of the old gang” would be staying there.
Isn’t that funny? The man punched me in the face and my eyes stayed dry, but rob me of my chance to see the Colosseum and I was a mess of tears. Confusing time, one’s twenties.
And then, there was Paris.
The city I’d dreamed of my whole life, a place I’d imbued with magic and romance and every fanciful thing you can think of, and yet it was somehow still even better than I’d hoped. Even lovelier.
I’ve never been back, of course, and sometimes I think I resent Duke for that more than anything.
We stayed at his father’s pied-à-terre in the eighth arrondissement, just off the Champs-Élysées, a beautiful building made of white stone where bright pink flowers spilled out of window boxes and the most famous names in French fashion—Dior, Chanel—were just steps away. I still have one of the gowns I had made at Dior. The green one I’m wearing in Andrew’s portrait of me.
The days were glorious. I set off on my own in the mornings, drinking in the beauty of Paris in the spring, enjoying the solitude, the feeling of being a grown woman out in the world alone, buying what she wanted to buy, stopping into any little shop or museum or gallery that caught her interest.
Duke sometimes joined me in the afternoons, once he’d woken up, and that could be lovely, too. We’d walk arm in arm along the Seine, and I would pretend that everything was going to be fine, that we could be these people forever.
And then the nights would come.
Every night, we dressed and went out, trying new restaurants, new nightclubs, and it would feel thrilling and fun, and I’d smoke Gauloises in a long ivory holder, and Duke would light each one for me with a practiced flick of his platinum lighter, and I thought how people must look at us and think how young and bright and beautiful we were.
How lucky.
But then the champagne would lead to whiskey sours, the whiskey sours to straight whiskey, and I would learn that it wasn’t just gin that turned Duke into a beast.
A shove on the stairs when we got home because I’d been “flirting” with a waiter.
His fingers, clamped around my jaw, tilting my head back so far that I thought my neck might snap, the awful wormwood scent of absinthe in my nose as he demanded to know what I was implying when I asked who he’d been with that night.
The back of my skull, bouncing off the marble floor of the bathroom because I’d been crying in there, and didn’t I know this house had servants? They could hear me, and what were they going to think of Mr. Callahan’s new bride sobbing her eyes out in the downstairs toilet?
He got rid of the servants at night after that, sending them all home by seven. Another one of those choices that doomed him, although he couldn’t have known it at the time.
Every day, I put my makeup on, dressed well, and set out on the streets of Paris, thinking how lovely it was—and how nothing lovely would ever really matter again. This would be my life now, until Duke pushed too hard, or my head hit something at just the wrong angle, and I would never know when that moment was coming, only that it was.
That was the part I hated the most. Not the hits and the shoves, although those hurt. It was the uncertainty.
And the hope of it! God, I hated the hope. Because it was always there. This belief that maybe, today it would all somehow be different. Duke wouldn’t drink so much, or I wouldn’t say the wrong thing to set him off, and it would, miraculously, set us back on the right track.
I still loved him, sadly. Or I thought I did. I know now that what I felt for Duke was mostly lust, but that’s a powerful emotion in its own right, especially when you’re only twenty-one. I dreaded his hands even as I craved his touch, and it nearly tore me apart, those wildly disparate feelings. A terrible thing, wanting someone and hating them all at the same time. Is it any wonder, pulled taut as I was, that I finally snapped?
June 13, 1961
No sign that anything would be different that night. We’d been in Paris for well over a month by then, our other accommodations and travel plans canceled because Duke was having such a lovely time with all his old friends, a pack of men he’d known at Yale who were all pale imitations of him and therefore made him look even more golden in contrast. We’d stay until August, he’d decided, and I didn’t even try to protest.
I hadn’t been feeling well for days by then, nauseous, my head aching. I was terrified that I might be pregnant, but also, I’d fallen down the stairs the week before in an attempt to avoid one of Duke’s swinging fists and hit my head hard on the banister, so it was equally likely to be that.
I’d managed to make it through dinner, but begged off when Duke wanted to move on to a club. He hadn’t had much to drink at that point in the night, so I was sent on my way with a kiss and a fond farewell instead of glares and ugly words.
I’d returned to the flat, let myself in, and gone to bed.
I awoke hitting the floor, my head bouncing against the wooden frame of the bed.
For a moment, I thought I’d fallen, but then I felt the warm band of fingers around my ankle and looked up to see Duke crouching over me.
He was smiling, his bow tie once again undone, his shirt very white in the near darkness of the bedroom.
In his other hand, he held a rifle.
The sight of that blue-black barrel in the moonlight made my breath stop, my lungs tight, and a distant buzzing started up in my ears.
“Look what I won tonight,” he said, letting go of my ankle to caress the gun, his long fingers elegant and deadly against the metal. “Belonged to Darcy’s dad. Shot three elephants—no, four—in Rhodesia, and a tiger in India. Kept it over the mantel in his place here, and Darce fucking bet it on a pair. A pair.”
He laughed, and rose to his feet while I lay on the carpet, a rabbit in a predator’s sights.
Shifting the gun against his shoulder, he pointed it at me, one eye closed as he looked down the barrel.
“What do you think is more impressive? Shooting a tiger or shooting a person?”
I couldn’t breathe now, my skin numb even as every nerve in my body lit up in panic.
That laugh again. “Tigers are bigger,” he said, adjusting the angle of the gun slightly. “Deadlier, maybe. But people are smarter. Still, you don’t brag about that kind of thing, do you? Don’t hang the gun on the wall and say, ‘You know, boy, I shot my first wife with that gun.’”
My mouth was so dry that it was an effort to lick my lips, to make myself say something, and when I did, it was just his name.
“Duke.”
“When people kill tigers, they make them into rugs. And when they kill deer, their heads go on the wall. What would you even make out of a dead wife, I wonder?”
He was still smiling, and I realized, lying there on the floor, that this was fun to him. That he was thoroughly enjoying watching me tremble at his feet.
But the question you must be asking, the question I’ve asked myself: Did I think he would shoot me, right then and there?
Darling, I want so badly to say yes. I want to say that what happened next was true self-defense, because I feared for my life in that very moment.
But it’s the truth you asked for, and the truth you’ll get.
I was afraid for my life, yes. But no, I don’t think he would have shot me. There was no fun in that, after all. Just like there was no fun in beating me over and over, breaking skin, knocking out teeth. It was the fear he enjoyed, the threat. My terror made him feel in control, and all these years later, I wonder who taught him that. His father? His mother? A sadistic teacher at that all-boys school he went to in the mountains of north Georgia?
Or was he born like that? Was that desire for power, the satisfaction that came from having someone at his mercy, simply a quirk of his biology, just like his green eyes or his height?
I have no way of knowing.
What I do know is that he heaved a sigh and lowered the gun, setting it upright on its butt against the little bench at the foot of my bed.
“Head’s killing me,” he muttered, turning away.
Terrible last words.
I watched him walk out the door, heading for his own bedroom at the other end of the hall, and all the terror that had raced through me just seconds before ignited into something hot and wild, and I was moving almost before I knew it.
The metal of the gun was still warm from Duke’s hand, the weight familiar to me as I carried it out of the bedroom. I’d been hunting in the woods around Ashby House with Daddy since I was five, and I knew my way around firearms.
The flat was dim, moonlight spilling through windows high up on the wall above the landing, and the sconces on the stairs providing the only light. The carpet was soft underneath my bare feet, the silk of my nightgown cool, and Duke was just in front of me, almost to his bedroom door.
“Duke.”
I didn’t shout it, and my voice sounded surprisingly flat in my ears.
The butt of the gun nestled in the hollow of my shoulder like it had been meant to sit there.
He turned.
He was frowning, I remember that. He wasn’t scared, just irritated that I had decided to keep playing a scene he had already grown tired of.
I pulled the trigger.
I only wanted to scare him. I didn’t even think the gun was loaded.
Ah. And there I go. Giving you lies when I promised truth.
Let me try again.
I didn’t know whether the gun was loaded, that’s true. In retrospect, it’s insane that Darcy Butler’s father was displaying a loaded gun in his Parisian flat, and that Darcy and then Duke toted it all over the city.
But honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about that. Only later did it occur to me that the gun might have harmlessly clicked, and Duke would’ve flinched and then made me pay for my empty threat.
The shot was loud, so loud it seemed like it would blot out any other noise forever. I’d cried the first time I’d fired a gun, aiming for a rabbit I hadn’t wanted to hit, and my father had told me I was going to need to toughen up if I expected to run Ashby House one day.
I didn’t cry this time. I watched, feeling outside my own body, as the bullet tore through that clean white shirt of Duke’s, just along his ribs, as his face bloomed with surprise, eyes wide as they looked at me.
Remember, this was a gun meant for killing elephants and tigers.
You can imagine what it did to a person.
I fired again.
It’s that second shot that makes me a murderer to my mind. The first? I’d been terrorized for weeks at that point, scared past the point of endurance that night, and I can forgive myself for reacting. Maybe anyone could.
I think you can.
But the second bullet … that’s when I adjusted my aim. That’s when I knew exactly what I was doing.
That’s when I sent a bullet straight into the heart I thought would be mine forever.
It was so quiet after. My ears wouldn’t stop ringing, and Duke was slumped on the carpet, his eyes staring. His chest moved up and down in a jerky movement, once, maybe twice. There was a sound in his throat I never wanted to hear again, and I was glad when it was over, when he was still.
I knelt beside him for a while there in the darkness, like I told you. His blood soaking into my nightgown while I waited to feel something. Horror, remorse, fear. Anything at all.
Relief came first. It was over now. I’d never again wake up wondering if this was the day he went too far. And then, a flicker of sadness followed. Not for the Duke he’d actually been, but the Duke I’d thought he was.
But that was it. No shame. No grief. No worry or frantic thoughts of police and punishments, and good god, did they still have the guillotine in France?
It was more like I’d just solved a math problem that had been vexing me, and I wondered if this was what it was to be in shock. That was it, surely.
All those feelings—those natural, human feelings, like grief and regret—would come in time.
Or so I thought.
For now, however, there was one last thing to do.
I went to where I’d left the gun, and moved it to the top of the stairs, taking care to wipe it down with the unbloodied hem of my robe. Then I went back to Duke’s body, wrapping my arms around him, letting more of his blood cover me, pressing my cheek to his so that his blood soaked into my loose hair.
And then I began to scream.
You know the rest, darling. Or you can look it up. That part is less important to the story I’m trying to tell you. There were police (my “Conversational French” from Agnes Scott was sadly inadequate when it came to discussing something like this, it turned out) and of course it was a bit of a scandal, but the official story was that someone had seen Duke flashing his cash at a seedier casino he’d been in that night in Montmartre, and followed him all the way home with the intention of robbing him.
Duke himself assisted with this version of events by conveniently leaving the front door wide open when he came home, so eager was he to show me his new prize.
A scuffle, a loaded rifle, two panicked shots, the cash Duke’s friends swore he’d had in his jacket pocket that night all missing (tucked inside a hideous china dog I’d bought for Nelle, buried deep in one of my trunks), and there you had it.
Tragic, made more so by our youth and beauty, our clear love for each other. And on our honeymoon, too! Married less than two months.
Did people believe this story, or did Daddy’s money make it go away? I’ve never really known. It doesn’t matter.
I got away with it. That was all I cared about.
It feels good to write that down, I must say. The clear, pure truth of it, no excuses, no explanations.
I had gotten away with murder, and I was glad for it.
Is that enough truth for you, my dear?
-R
AVAILABLE SCHOLARSHIPS
The Duke Edward Callahan Memorial Scholarship was established in 1963 by Mrs. Ruby McTavish Callahan, Duke Callahan’s widow and a generous benefactor to the Preston Boys Academy, her late husband’s alma mater.
The scholarship, totaling $25,000, is presented to a graduating senior who best exemplifies the qualities Mrs. Callahan says were most present in her husband: a love of knowledge, a curiosity about the world, a skilled analytical mind, and, most important of all, kindness to his fellow man.
“While my time with Duke was sadly too short, it brings comfort to know that I can keep him alive with this scholarship to the school that shaped and molded him into the man he became. It is my dearest wish that every recipient of the Duke Edward Callahan Memorial Scholarship will use this opportunity to make the world a better, gentler place.”
––Mrs. Ruby Callahan