“And of course,” Ben adds, “you were here at the house that night. The night she died.”
“Yeah, I was,” I say, fighting the urge to curl my fingers into a fist. “You know that. I came back to get some more of my stuff. But I never even saw her that night.”
I’ve repeated that lie so many times that I can almost believe it’s true, can almost see myself at twenty years old, sullenly putting X-Men comics I hadn’t read in years and an old clock radio in a duffel bag, rain howling outside and Ruby far away in her own bedroom.
“It’s weird, though,” Ben says. “I mean, I wasn’t here that night, and Nana Nelle was up in her room asleep early. But Libby was here. And…”
Trailing off, Ben shakes his head. “Man. I hate to say this. Hate to even think it. But Libby says she saw you coming out of Ruby’s room. Thought it was weird you told a different story to the police when they came, but hey.”
Ben flashes that grin, but his gaze, when it meets mine, might as well be stone. “We’re family, right? We keep each other’s secrets. Until we don’t.”
Time feels slow now, my heartbeat a steady thud in my chest, my ears ringing.
I look over at Libby.
She wasn’t here that night. I remember. Her car passed mine coming down the mountain as I was going up, the window barely cracked because of the rain, but the firefly glow ember of the tip of a cigarette catching my eye. We’d looked at each other, her mouth twisting into a sour scowl, and then she’d flown past me, tires skidding a little on the muddy road.
“Isn’t that right, Libby?” Ben says, a little too loud, and she presses her lips together, twists one of her bangle bracelets around her wrist.
“Yeah,” she says at last, the words coming out as a sigh before she straightens her shoulders and says it again, firmer. “Yeah. You came out of Aunt Ruby’s room, and you were really upset. Shaking. I thought you’d been crying.”
She’s warming to the story now, looking over at Jules, who I still can’t bring myself to face. “It freaked me out, honestly, but like Ben said, we’re family, so…”
Libby shrugs. “But now I guess we’re not.”
“Plan B, huh?” I say. I’m actually smiling, but it’s like there’s broken glass in my throat. “Can’t scare Camden off with the big Ruby reveal, so we threaten to accuse him of murder instead?”
“Okay, this is officially insane now,” Jules says, the first words she’s spoken in what feels like ages, and Ben cuts his eyes at her.
“You wanted to be a McTavish, right?” he says. “Well, this is what it looks like, sweetheart.”
She scoffs, about to fire back with her own retort, but I don’t give her the chance.
“Fine,” I say. “You know what, Ben? You win. Keep your money. Keep this house. It’s worth it never to have to see a single one of your faces again. Fuck all of you. And fuck Ruby for ever bringing me here.”
With that, I reach for the bottle of champagne, still half-full. I snag it with one hand, and reach for Jules with the other.
She lets me lead her from the room, and as we make our way to the staircase, I can hear the others all start talking at once, but I ignore it. My only thought is getting upstairs, packing our bags, and heading back to Colorado as soon as humanly possible.
I’ve already got one foot on the bottom step when I realize Jules is tugging at me, her feet planted.
“Camden,” she says, and I turn, bottle of champagne still in hand.
“Can you believe that shit?” I ask her, gesturing with the bottle. “Now do you get it? Now do you see why I never wanted to come back here?”
“They’re assholes, I know,” she says, dropping my hand. “No disagreement from me on that score. But … you’re just going to let them win?”
I stare at her. Some of the adrenaline is wearing off now, and it’s making me feel muddled, confused.
“They’ll always win,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.
“No. No, they don’t have to. Jesus Christ, Cam, you can’t think this plan of theirs would actually work? That anyone would believe them?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her, wishing she weren’t wearing Ruby’s dress, wishing I didn’t feel Ruby’s eyes boring into my back from her portrait at the top of the stairs. “I mean … what do you want me to do, Jules? Fight them? Spend the next decade tangled in legal shit with people I hate? People who hate me?”
“Of course, I don’t want that,” she says, but the words come out too fast, and she keeps glancing back toward the dining room.
Any relief I was feeling starts to drain out of me as I look at my wife, planted at the foot of the stairs.
“You do,” I say, slow. “You do want that. You want me to fight it. You want this place, and everything that comes with it. Even after that display. Even after what they accused me of.”
Jules climbs a couple of steps, her hand resting on the banister, the simple wedding set I bought for her catching the light. “I just don’t understand why you’re giving in so quickly. And why didn’t you tell me about Ruby? About knowing she wasn’t a McTavish?”
A headache is starting to pound behind my eyes, and I want to fall asleep almost as badly as I want to get in the car and get out of here.
“It didn’t matter. They’re the ones obsessed with blood, about some kind of clannish bullshit and who has the right to what.”
“But you have rights, Camden,” she fires back. “And a damn good lawyer. Call Nathan. Tell him about the shit they just pulled, what they’re accusing you of––”
“It’s not fucking worth it, Jules! How many times do I have to say it?”
I have never raised my voice to her since the day we met. I’ve hardly ever yelled at anyone, and now my words seem to echo around the cavernous hallway as she lifts her eyes to mine, her expression turning stony.
“Fine,” she says, moving past me. “Fine. Let them have it all. We’ll go back to the rental, and you’ll go back to teaching, and they can live the sweet life because two hundred years ago, their ancestors did a thing and ours didn’t. Got it.”
“Jules,” I say, all the fight gone out of me now, but she just keeps moving up the stairs, and I watch her go, eventually hearing the distant slam of our bedroom door.
Sighing, I trudge up the stairs, too, but instead of making the turn to our room, I go down the other hallway, almost without thinking.
I’m at Ruby’s room before I quite realize it, and when I push open the door, that familiar scent hits me. Lavender and cedar, still preserved just as I remember it, like everything else in this bedroom.
Her dressing table, her tiny watercolor paintings that she’d bought at a yard sale and proclaimed “delightful,” plopping them down alongside a genuine Degas sketch in a silver frame.
The Belgian lace bedspread that scratched the back of my legs when I’d sit in here after soccer practice. She always insisted I come in and tell her about my day.
I sink heavily onto the bed now, setting the champagne bottle on the nightstand with a thunk before dropping my head into my hands.
The real reason I can’t stay and fight is because I got lucky tonight. If I leave now, if I cut every string tying me to my past, I might be okay. But if I stay here, if I go toe to toe with Nelle and Ben and Libby, those strings are only going to get tighter and tighter until they finally choke me.
And I can never tell Jules why.
I look back to the champagne, but then I think of something else, sliding open Ruby’s nightstand drawer.
I expect it to be empty, but her things are still there. Reading glasses, an old Reader’s Digest, a pot of lip balm.
And her pills.
She had dozens of them, all kept in a little silver pillbox, and I close my hand around it now.
Even in the darkness, I know the shape of the one I’m after.
I’ve never taken anything to help me sleep, figuring I deserved whatever bad dreams or sleepless nights I got, but tonight, I want oblivion.
A bitter white square under my tongue, a swig from the bottle, and I curl up on Ruby’s bed, still in Ben’s suit, only my shoes kicked off, and let the blackness take me.
* * *