(I do not need to tell you how I felt about this nickname, or how I felt when I discovered he signed all our correspondence to friends and family, “Love from Hugh-Roo!”)
Yes, almost a widow again. Seconds away from finally being free, but despite being the klutziest man alive, Hugh had gotten lucky.
Would that luck hold?
It took awhile, figuring it out. I ginned up and tossed out a million different schemes from a fall during a hike to a swimming mishap, all of them discarded because they required my presence. I could be present for one husband’s terrible death, that was one thing. But there when the second one corks it?
Harder to explain.
And then I remembered the barn.
It wasn’t really a barn, in that at no point had it ever held animals. It was more an outbuilding that my father had had grand plans for at one time, a place to entertain his hunting buddies and drink while trading war stories. He’d had it wired for electricity, no easy feat, back in 1949, but it was dodgy, and once, when I’d gone out there exploring, I’d found a dead raccoon on the barn’s wood floor, its body stiff, tiny droplets of blood on its mouth and nose.
When I’d told Daddy later, he’d nodded and said, “Probably touched the wrong wire.”
I hadn’t thought about that barn in ages, and had rarely been into the woods surrounding Ashby House since I was a child. Daddy took me on walks and shooting expeditions when I was younger, but I’d never much enjoyed it. I’d always told myself it was the memory of being taken from those same woods that made the trees feel so close, the light seem so far away, but the truth was, being in the wilderness was not my idea of a good time. Honestly, it wasn’t until I married Andrew that I started …
Well. We’ll get to that later.
In any case, when I began to think of the issue of What to Do with Hugh, the barn—and that dead raccoon—came back to me in glorious Technicolor.
I could not ask Hugh to go string lights up in the barn. Obviously.
What I could do was start dreamily sighing to others when he was nearby about how I wish Daddy had fixed up the barn, remember how he was going to hang Christmas lights out there? Oh, that would be so pretty. Why, if we had those, it might be nice to hold my and Hugh’s anniversary party out there! But no, it was too much work, and who had the time to fuss around with silly little lights in a barn when we could have the party in Ashby House?
I maintain that I did not really kill Hugh Woodward. I had no way of knowing if the plan would work, after all. He might have hung those lights up just fine, or hired someone else to do the job, and I would’ve had to dance with him under their twinkling glow while he sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” off-key in my ear.
I left it to fate.
And fate, once again, was on my side.
-R
Tavistock, North Carolina, doesn’t have as much to offer as its nearby neighbor Asheville, but it is a charming slice of Appalachia with a walkable downtown, various shops selling everything from hiking gear to stationery, and a selection of surprisingly good restaurants.
And if it’s an Instagram Moment you’re after, be sure to head to the square where you’ll find a classic gazebo lit up with fairy lights on all sides. The site of many a wedding, the gazebo is surrounded by green lawn, and if you time it just right, you’ll get a gorgeous sunset background, complete with the Blue Ridge Mountains rising in the distance.
The gazebo was financed by local philanthropist Ruby McTavish in the 1960s, and a bronze plaque on the floor bears the inscription: In Loving Memory of Hugh Woodward, Devoted Husband to the End of His Days.
—North Carolina Hiking Guide, 2015 Edition
CHAPTER NINE
Jules
“It’s wrong that I find this so hot, isn’t it?”
I’m standing in the doorway to one of the upstairs bathrooms, leaning against the wall as Cam looks over at me, safety goggles on, a sledgehammer in his hands. What was once a 1960s-era avocado green toilet is in pieces at his booted feet.
He grins at me, pushing the goggles up. “If I knew smashing outdated fixtures was your kink, I would’ve torn out that sink back in Golden.”
Ah, yes, the sink. The one in our master bathroom that had clearly been installed sometime in the mid-eighties and featured a truly bizarre red swirl in the marble, making it look like Lady Macbeth had just been washing her hands.
“You couldn’t have,” I remind him, “because that was a rental.”
His smile fades just the tiniest bit, and I hate it even as something in me wants to cross the bathroom and grab his face and say, That was never our home, and you knew it. We could’ve bought a house, but we never did. You always knew we’d be back here. To claim what’s yours.
What’s ours.
But that’s a little intense for a random Tuesday morning, so instead, I just step forward, kicking a stray piece of green porcelain. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but this wasn’t actually one of the bathrooms that was fucked up, right? I mean”—I gesture to the aggressively floral wallpaper—“ugly as sin, but technically functional.”
“The man’s a machine.”
I turn to see Ben just behind me in the hallway, smiling as usual. This morning, he’s wearing a pair of dark gray pants made of some kind of waterproof material, hiking boots replacing his usual expensive sneakers. A long-sleeved T-shirt in navy blue brings out his eyes, and I guess there are women who would appreciate how well it clings to his gym-toned torso, but I am definitely not one of them.
“He’s already replaced the floors in one of the third-floor bedrooms, and I hear we have a cement truck coming tomorrow?”
Ben has his hands in his pockets as he rocks back on his heels, and a muscle in Cam’s jaw ticks as he turns back to his work. “The terrace steps” is all he says, but Ben gives a hooting laugh.
“Shit, Camden. If I’d known you’d go this gung ho, I would’ve emailed you years ago.”
“I would’ve deleted it.”
He would have, I know. For the past decade, any communication with his family has gone straight in the trash, both virtual and real.
Ben chuckles, shaking his head. “Yeah, you would’ve. Still. Glad you’re here now, man.”
Cam doesn’t reply, but takes another swing at the half-destroyed toilet, and I feel it again, that tug of guilt low in my stomach.
“Mind if I steal your bride for the morning?” Ben asks, and Camden pauses, his knuckles white around the shaft of the sledgehammer.
I turn to Ben, surprised. “What for?”
He gives me a wink, one that I guess is meant to be charming, but just makes my skin crawl. “You’ve seen Ashby House, and it’s impressive, no doubt, this bathroom being an exception. But Ashby’s real worth is the land around it. Thought I’d give you a tour.”
I bite back a grimace. The land around Ashby is beautiful, I can’t argue that, but I like looking at it safely behind these walls. I’m not sure I actually want to go traipsing through the forest that once swallowed up “Baby Ruby.”
And it’s clear from Camden’s expression that he’s not too wild about that idea, either.
But I can’t think of any reason to object, and besides, I wouldn’t mind getting a better sense of what Camden, and therefore I, actually own.
“Works for me,” I say with a shrug. “Am I dressed for it?”
I’m wearing an old pair of jeans with a lightweight sweater and a pair of Converse sneakers, nothing too fancy, but also nothing too rugged, and Ben takes a little longer than I like looking me over.
“Yeah, we’re not gonna venture all that far,” he says, and then, looking past me, adds to Camden, “No farther than the falls. Does that sound okay?”
I almost scoff at that. Camden is not in charge of me, doesn’t get to say what I do or where I go, but when he doesn’t answer Ben right away, I feel my pulse kick up a beat.
We’re not in Colorado anymore. We’re no longer just a simple English teacher and his wife who works at the local tourist attraction. Here, Camden is a McTavish, the de facto owner of Ashby House, and maybe that means he could say no, and Ben would have to accept it. I would have to accept it.