That first night, I noticed more than his eyes, of course. He was tall, a little too thin back then, brown hair longer and shaggier than he wears it now, and I liked the way he moved behind the bar, liked how his hands looked when they held a glass or opened a bottle.
He was cute, yes, but it was more than that. There had been something about him that was so calm, so still. So sure of himself, even though he was just barely twenty-two and, as I’d later learn, going through his own shit.
We kissed later that night beside my shitty car. He spent the next night in my even shittier apartment.
And that had been that.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this part now. I mean, it probably doesn’t even seem all that romantic to you. Cheap college bar, my heart won forever by a free beer and a cute smile, sex on a mattress I’d gotten from Goodwill and suspected someone had died on.
But it was romantic. More than that, it was real.
And I guess I just want you to know that, before you hear the rest of it.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though.
For now, we’re here, in our little rental in Golden, Colorado, a place we’ve lived for the past five years, where Camden teaches ninth-and eleventh-grade English at an all-boys prep school and I churn butter on a make-believe farm. We’re happy with each other, if not exactly with the lives we’re leading, and later, I’ll realize it’s because we knew eventually this moment would come.
That we were waiting for this.
For a cool September evening, a random Wednesday that shouldn’t have been anything special at all, when Camden nods at his phone and says, “It’s my family. They want me to come home.”
HEIRESS, PHILANTHROPIST, ONETIME KIDNAP VICTIM, RUBY MCTAVISH CALLAHAN WOODWARD MILLER KENMORE DIES AT 73
One of North Carolina’s most famous (some would say infamous) women has passed away peacefully at her legendary mansion in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ashby House.
Ruby McTavish was born on June 1, 1940, the oldest child of lumber magnate Mason McTavish and his first wife, Anna Ashby McTavish, in the town of Tavistock, North Carolina, a once-sleepy hamlet transformed by the power of the McTavish fortune.
That fortune came at a cost, however. In 1943, when she was barely three years old, young Ruby McTavish vanished on a family picnic in the mountains surrounding Ashby House. The disappearance held the nation in its grip for nearly a year with the McTavishes offering what was, at the time, the highest reward ever for any information leading to her safe return.
Authorities had assumed the child had succumbed to exposure in the thick forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and were stunned when the private detective hired by Mason McTavish found the child alive and well, living in Spanish Fort, Alabama, with a family by the name of Darnell, eight months after she first disappeared. The return of “Baby Ruby” was a balm to a country still locked in the Second World War, and the joy at seeing a family reunited overshadowed the grubby and sordid end of her alleged kidnapper, Jimmy Darnell, who was killed while attempting to escape the local jail before his trial could begin.
While the kidnapping had a happy ending, it would not be Ruby’s last brush with notoriety. Married four times, Ruby seemed singularly unlucky in love, losing her first husband, Duke Callahan, to a shooting on their Paris honeymoon, her second to an electrical accident at Ashby House, the third to a lingering illness, and the last, Roddy Kenmore, to a boating mishap.
It was this last husband that gave her a nickname people in North Carolina barely dared to whisper: “Mrs. Kill-more.”
However, no charges were ever brought against Ruby McTavish, and those closest to her insist it was not in her nature to hurt anyone.
“If you ask me, she just had bad taste in men,” one confidante said. “Duke was reckless, Hugh was stupid, Andrew had always had health issues, and Roddy was a [expletive] basket case. I see where it looks bad, but I promise you, that woman was a saint.”
Saint or not, Ruby McTavish—who reverted to her maiden name after the death of her last husband—did devote a large part of her life to charitable works, most involving disadvantaged youth. It was through this work that she met and eventually adopted her only child, a young boy she named Camden, who, with her death, becomes sole heir to a fortune rumored to be in the high eight figures.
In addition to Camden (20), Mrs. McTavish is survived by a sister, Nelle (69), a nephew, Howell (49), a great-nephew, Ben (23), and a great-niece, Elizabeth (17).
A cause of death has not been released.
—The Asheville Citizen-Times, April 2, 2013
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: [FWD] Ruby’s will/house issues
Cam,
By now, I guess you’ve heard about Dad. Nathan Collins said he’d get in touch with you and let you know, so I assume he did that. Nana Nelle thought it was “tacky” to let your lawyer tell you a family member died, but I reminded her that you’d made it pretty clear you didn’t want to talk to any of us.
Honestly, I don’t blame you, especially after the last email Dad sent to you (hope you don’t mind me attaching that message, by the way, but I wanted you to be sure I wasn’t bullshitting you about knowing what he said). If it’s any consolation, you weren’t the only person to get an email like that. His drinking had been bad for the past twenty years, ever since Mom left, really, but the last six months of his life were particularly rough. Probably sounds shitty to say, but me and Libby both felt like we’d already lost him by the time he wrapped his car around that tree last month.
Anyway, it doesn’t look like you replied (and, hey, I can’t judge since I stopped responding to similar texts and voicemails from him), and for all I know, you won’t reply to this one, either, but I had to try.
I’m not going to give you the same old guilt trip bullshit Dad tried. You were always a straight shooter, so I will be, too. With Dad gone and you in Colorado, I feel a responsibility for not just Nana Nelle and Libby, but for Ashby House itself. Dad wasn’t lying about the repair work that’s needed, but it’s more than that. Maybe it was everything with Ruby, all the husbands, the rumors. Maybe it was because Dad was admittedly a dick to a lot of the locals. Maybe we’ve all just been up on this mountain for too damn long. I don’t know, man. But I do know that the McTavish name used to mean something—used to make shit happen—and I want it to again. And none of that can happen until we untangle the mess Ruby left us with that damn will.
I’ll understand if you don’t answer this, but like I said, I had to try. I know we haven’t ever been close, and I hate that Nana Nelle and Ruby spent so much time pitting us against each other, but we’re not teenagers anymore, Cam. Come home, back to Ashby, and let’s get this shit squared away once and for all.
Sincerely,
Ben
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Ruby’s will/house issues
Camden,
I hope this email finds you well, and that contacting you via your workplace is not out of line. Unfortunately, you’ve made yourself hard to get in contact with any other way (although I assume that is on purpose).
As you know, it’s in my nature to be blunt, so I will put this as plainly as possible: while I understand your reasons for putting time and distance between us, and I regret the words spoken in anger that caused you to make that decision, I feel that now, after ten years, it is time to attempt some kind of family reconciliation.