“And Ruby … Ruby was waiting for me in her room. In here.”
She’d been sitting on this bench, dressed in her pajamas, but even those seemed like formal wear on Ruby. She was seventy-three by then, but looked younger, her dark hair turned silver, and as I stood there, dripping rain onto her carpet, she rubbed that fancy cream of hers into her hands, watching me in the mirror.
Have you finally come to your senses?
“I begged with her. I pleaded. I swear to god, Jules, I actually got down on my fucking knees right there.”
I point to where she’s sitting.
I can’t stay here. Please. Please, let me go.
“She got up, and she crossed the room, and she put her hands on my face. They were cold. Almost … almost slimy. From the cream she used. She was smiling at me. I was crying, and she was smiling. And then she said, ‘Do you remember Tyler Hayes?’”
Jules slowly draws her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees, her brows drawn tight together. “Who was that?”
I shake my head, swiping at my face. I hadn’t realized that tears were streaming down it, just like they had that night.
“This asshole kid I’d gone to school with. In tenth grade, we got in a fight after a soccer game. Just stupid teenage boy shit, I don’t even remember what it was about. But he got in one really solid punch and it broke my nose.”
I touch the slight bump on the bridge, remembering. “Hurt like a motherfucker. Ruby met me at the ER, and held my hand while they reset it. It was the only time I’d ever seen her be maternal in my life. So, there I am, with my nose throbbing and my stomach grinding because I’d puked from the pain, and we’re driving back up here, and she goes, ‘That Tyler boy. His father works for me. Well, for the company. He runs that little hotel on Main Street.’ And I knew that, of course, but I didn’t really care what his dad did for a living, so I think I just grunted or something. And then she said, ‘If you want, I’ll fire him.’
“I laughed because I thought she was joking with me. Like it was one of those, ‘Want me to kill him?’ things. Just something you say when a person hurts someone you love. Not something you actually do. But she was dead serious. ‘I can have the whole bed-and-breakfast shut down, actually,’ she said. ‘And the bank that has the mortgage on their house is obviously very keen to keep my business, so that’s another avenue to pursue. If you want.’”
Jules’s arms tighten around her knees, and I smile wryly. “I said no. In fact, I said, ‘It was a stupid fight, Ruby. You don’t ruin a guy’s life over that.’”
You might not, Ruby had said, her eyes staring straight ahead. Others would.
“And that’s when I remembered there had been other instances like this. Times when something shitty would happen, and she’d offer to use various weapons at her disposal to right the scales, and I always said no.”
The girl who dumped me right before my first homecoming dance. The guy who dinged my new car in the parking lot of the Food Mart, then acted like it was somehow my fault.
“I’d seen Howell pull similar strings for Libby and Ben, and I had no doubt Nelle had done the same for Howell, but it always felt gross to me, you know? So, I just thought Ruby was doing what this family did. I didn’t realize it was a test.”
You didn’t want me to make Tyler Hayes pay for what he’d done to you. You’re a good person, Camden, Ruby had said, moving to the bed and turning down the covers. At your core. I have given you every privilege, every advantage, everything that every McTavish has had since the first one showed up here three hundred years ago. And every McTavish since then has grown more self-centered, more uncaring. Not a one of them should have this. But you, my darling boy?
She had gotten into the bed, folding her hands on top of the sheets.
You are my redemption.
“Redemption,” I echo to Jules. “That’s what she called me.”
Jules is frowning now, but she’s still listening.
“And then,” I say on a sigh, “she told me about the pills.”
* * *
MY REDEMPTION, SHE repeats. And I’m going to prove it to you.
Her face looks beatific, skin almost unlined despite her age.
You want to be free of me, from all of this, but I’ve made that impossible for you. If I were to die, though … well, then you’d have what you wanted. Money, which you say you don’t care about, but also freedom. An entire fortune at your disposal, and no one to stop you from doing what you see fit with it.
But she doesn’t say “see,” exactly. The s slides, s-s-s-s-see, a hiss almost, and I notice one eyelid drooping.
I’ve made it … so easy for you.
Her words are slowing down, and she waves one hand lazily at her nightstand.
Not even sure what all I took. Think … think some pills still left from … from Duke, things they-they don’t … sell the-ese days-s-s. As soon as I s-a-saw your … your car. In the drive. Swallowed them down w-with a glass …
She smiles then, hazy.
A glass of the 1959 Dom.
My stomach lurches and I rise to my feet.
What have you done? What the fuck have you done?
You could let me … let me die and get all you ever wanted. B-but you won’t. Just like … like you never told th-them. About Dora Darnell.
Her smile widens, teeth glinting. About me. You wouldn’t … wouldn’t do that. And you’re not going to do that. Not going to do this. You’re … you’re going to call … call the … ambulance, the siren …
Her eyes open and close, the lids heavy, then lifting quickly, her thick lashes blinking against her pale cheeks, chest heaving.
B-better than me, she says on a wheezing breath. I made you better th-than all of us … I made you …
She keeps smiling at me, and then her smile starts to change.
Camden.
Confusion on her face, then something that would be panic were the drugs not pulling her under. A jerky movement, a thin hand slapping at her nightstand, nails tapping the acrylic of the French phone by her bed, and suddenly I find my legs.
I don’t even think, I don’t let myself think.
I pick the phone up, unplugging the cord from the back, and clutching it to my chest, I begin to back away from the bed.
Ruby watches me, panting now, fighting to keep her eyes open, her mouth opening to scream, but all that comes out is a breathy sort of moan, and I keep backing up, backing up, backing up until my heels hit the wall, my head thumping back, my eyes never leaving her.
As Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore slowly dies in her bed, I sink down against the wall, holding on to the phone so tightly that later, I’ll find red grooves in my palms, a bruise making a purple line against the skin of my chest.
I sob as she finally stops struggling, sitting there on the floor as her breathing slows, steady at first, like she’s sleeping.
But there are gasps after that, and then, for a long time, so long I can feel my mind cracking inside my skull, there’s a rattling, guttural noise.
And my mind must crack because that’s when I get up from my spot against the wall, the phone clattering out of my grip, and grab a pillow from her bed and press it over her face, just wanting her to stop, stop making that sound, she needs to stop …
She does.
Later, I put the phone back into place, plug it back into the wall. I wipe it down with a washcloth from Ruby’s bathroom that I shove in my back pocket and, later, throw out the window of my car somewhere near the Georgia border.
I’m in my bedroom that next morning when Cecilia knocks, her face tearstained, her hands reaching for me.
Oh, honey, she says, and I let myself be hugged and wonder how soon I can leave Ashby House forever.
* * *