“Oh, it’s fine, Nana Nelle,” he says. “She’s not wrong. This is indeed ‘the good shit.’ The 1959 Dom Pérignon Rosé, a favorite in this house.”
Ruby’s favorite, actually. I had my first sip of it on New Year’s Eve when I was nine, and thought it tasted sour, the bubbles making me want to sneeze. She always had it around for special occasions, and it was only after I left this house that I learned those bottles run you around thirty grand.
If I had any doubt that I was completely fucked, Ben opening the 1959 Dom put that to rest.
Once we all have our flutes, Ben takes up a position next to Nelle, raising his glass, his eyes trained on me. He’s gleeful, like a little kid on Christmas morning, and I think again about that vision I had, his head cracked on the parquet by the front door.
“A toast,” he goes on, and everyone raises their glasses but me. At my side, Jules falters a little bit, her glass lowering slightly, hesitant.
“Cam?” she murmurs, placing her other hand on my arm.
But I’m still watching Ben, waiting.
“To family,” Ben says, gesturing around the table with his glass. “To the McTavishes. The real ones.”
I smirk at that, and his smile turns poisonous. “And to at long last evicting the interloper.”
There’s a loud slap as Libby tosses a folder on the table.
Had she been holding that in her lap the whole dinner? Just waiting for this moment?
If so, she fucked it up because she throws it just a little too hard, and it slides across the slick surface until it reaches the edge, papers spilling out onto the floor to my left.
“Fuck’s sake, Lib,” Ben mutters, but Libby just throws her hands up and says, “Look, just tell him already.”
“Tell him what?” Jules asks, and I take a deep breath, keeping my hand steady as I lift my glass of champagne and finally take a sip.
“They’re going to tell me,” I say, surprising myself with how calm I sound, “that the woman I knew—that we all knew—as Ruby McTavish wasn’t Ruby at all.”
Another swallow of champagne, but it might as well be acid sliding down my throat. “They’re going to tell me that she was really Dora Darnell.”
From the Desk of Ruby A. McTavish
March 29, 2013
Roddy Kenmore was a drug-addled fool who I never should have married in the first place, and the only regret I felt when I watched him slip under that dark salt water was that I hadn’t shoved him sooner.
There. That’s the last husband sorted, and, frankly, that one sentence is more effort that I want to expend on him.
Oh, fine. I suppose I can give you a little more information.
After Andrew, I was as lost as I’d ever been. I left Ashby House for over a year, unable to bear the giant rooms, the rural seclusion, without Andrew by my side. Nelle was thrilled, of course, finally Queen of the Castle. I thought about letting her keep the damn thing, just signing it over to her and never darkening its door again, instead making my own way in the world without the McTavish name. I had no idea what that would look like, though. I’d gotten so used to life there at Ashby, in Tavistock. Out in the rest of the world, my money still opened doors and smoothed paths, but it wasn’t the same. I liked the power of the name, the safety it implied. Being the latest in a long line, a person with roots that ran deep.
It’s no surprise to me that Roddy Kenmore found me when I was floundering like this. The Roddys of this world have a sixth sense for homing in on the vulnerable, the lost, the rudderless.
I actually met him at one of those clubs I’d bought back in the sixties, the one in Miami. When I first invested in it, it was called “The Palma Palace,” and then in the seventies, it was just “Palma” for several years. By 1985, it had become “Paloma,” and it was making a rather staggering amount of money. (Lucky for you, I sold it in 1989 for a mint. Two years later, I believe there was some mess with drugs and maybe a murder? I don’t remember. Perhaps you now understand why I wouldn’t be all that interested in murders I did not commit.)
So, there I was at the Paloma, dancing in a Halston dress, the music so loud it drowned out any rational thinking, which must be why I found myself dancing with a man who was little more than a boy, really. Twenty-six, but he seemed even younger with his long red hair and his bright smile.
Roddy was always the husband that didn’t make sense. Duke was an obvious choice at the time, Hugh was a logical second husband, and anyone could see Andrew and I were mad for each other. So why did I marry a spoiled brat who said “irregardless” and thought Tiffany lamps had all belonged to someone named Tiffany?
For one, he was a good time. At least at first. Roddy had one goal in life, and it was to have as much fun as possible. There was no past with Roddy, no future, only the present, only now, now, now, and, with a past like mine, can you blame me for wanting a taste of that?
For another, Roddy was filthy fucking rich, darling. Yes, yes, I am, too, but remember, at this point in my life, I was giving serious thought to leaving all things McTavish behind me. Roddy’s money—or really, his father’s money—would allow me to do that.
As for why he married me, well …
I could flatter myself here. I did still look very good at forty-five, my figure unchanged, my hair just as dark and lustrous. I was exciting and good in bed (sorry, darling), and I suspect there was a little dark glamour clinging to me with that trail of dead husbands, and that was definitely the sort of thing Roddy would have been drawn to.
But again, we’re being honest here. While the above attributes probably didn’t hurt, the real draw was the eight-figure trust fund Roddy could access once he was married.
One flight to Los Angeles, a short cruise down to Mexico, and I became Mrs. Roddy Kenmore. It was the first of my marriages to make national news, do you know that? A little feature in People magazine, me in that off-the-shoulder white dress with the floppy sun hat (it was the eighties, darling, don’t roll your eyes), Roddy in a white suit with a shirt unbuttoned to his navel and all that red hair blowing in the breeze.
Did I think we’d be happy? Did I think it could last?
I’m not sure I was thinking at all, honestly. I know Roddy wasn’t. It’s hard to think of much when you’re coked out of your mind every waking hour.
I’d known he enjoyed the occasional sniff recreationally. Everyone he hung around with did. What I hadn’t known was how finally having access to all that money would make Roddy decide that every single dollar of it should go straight up his goddamn nose.
Christ, it was irritating. A nonstop party sounds all fine and good until you’re faced with the reality of it. The sweaty nights, the late mornings—afternoons, really—waking up with strange people still in the living room, the constant headache at the base of my skull from too little sleep and too much noise.
Now, you’re reading this and thinking, “Yes, that all sounds annoying, but surely this one you could’ve divorced.”
That’s fair. I could have, yes. It would have been a hassle, and the money would’ve been a nightmare, but you’re right that I did not have to kill Roddy Kenmore.
I wanted to.
Why? I still wonder myself. I think there was a part of me that felt that after killing Andrew, it would be disloyal to let Roddy live. How could I kill the man I’d loved so much and then just divorce someone who hadn’t meant anything to me?
What can I say? It made sense at the time.
So. A midnight sail. My idea, whispered in Roddy’s ear at dinner on Avalon.
Wouldn’t it be nice, just the two of us?
For all his faults, Roddy really was a beautiful boy, and I can still remember the sleepy smile he’d given me there tucked into our red leather booth, the flickering votive on the table playing along his freckles.