“I always thought that was why you chose Colorado,” I say. “After we got married.”
Neither of us had had roots in California (or anything resembling a career), so a few years after we got married, we started talking about where we might like to settle on a more permanent basis. Even then, I think, I’d been hoping Cam might decide to head back to North Carolina, but instead, he’d started looking for teaching jobs in Colorado.
Now he glances over at me, eyebrows raised in question.
“Mountains,” I elaborate, waving one hand. “That they reminded you of home.”
He scoffs, taking his hand off my knee. “The Rockies are beautiful, but they don’t have shit on the Appalachians,” he says, and now it’s my turn to raise some eyebrows.
“Are you honestly going to tell me the ‘purple mountains majesty’ we left behind only rates a ‘meh’ from Camden McTavish?”
He laughs, leaning back a little. It’s nice, seeing him relaxed. I’ve felt like the farther east we’ve come, the tighter his shoulders have gotten, the longer his silences have grown. Last night, at our hotel in Kentucky, when I’d gotten into bed after my shower, my hand moving toward the waistband of his boxers, he’d stopped me with a murmured, “I’m half asleep already, sweetheart, not much use to you tonight.”
But he hadn’t gone to sleep for hours. I knew, because I’d lain awake next to him, feeling the tension in his body, practically hearing the whirring of his brain.
What was he thinking about? Normally, I would have asked, but there was something that prevented me, instead making my own breathing slow and steady so he’d think I had already drifted off.
Now, though, he seems more like himself. He must have been worn out from the drive, worrying over the logistics that awaited him once we arrived.
“No,” he tells me, his hand coming back to my knee. “I love the Rockies. I love Colorado. I just mean that the Rockies are … they’re babies, right? Young mountains, all jagged and rough. The Appalachians, though, they’re older. Much older.”
I turn back to look out the windshield at those dark shapes in the distance, drawing closer. “All mountains seem pretty old to me.”
“They are,” Camden says with a nod, his hand squeezing my leg. “But the Appalachians are older than just about anything else. They were here before mammals, before dinosaurs. Those mountains”—he points to them—“are older than bones.”
He’s smiling as he says it, fully in Teacher Mode, but the words still make me shiver. Now those looming shadows against the blue sky don’t seem quite as welcoming.
“And your family has lived there for almost as long, I take it?” I ask, hoping the joke will make me feel a little less spooked, but it’s clearly the wrong thing to say.
Camden’s smile fades and his hand returns to the steering wheel. “My birth family, who the fuck knows,” he says, signaling as he changes lanes. “But the McTavishes showed up sometime in the 1700s. Or at least that’s what Nelle says. I’m sure she’s done all the genealogy for the Daughters of the American Revolution or Highland Heritage or whatever rich old white lady organization she’s terrorizing.”
“And Nelle was Ruby’s older sister?” I ask. I know that she wasn’t, but I’m trying to find some way of getting Cam to talk about his family. For the past few days, we’ve talked about everything under the sun—a lot of time to kill when you’re crossing a continent—and I’ve been waiting for him to bring up something related to where we’re going, what we’re doing. I’d thought once we started getting closer, he might start revealing more, memories unlocking and all of that.
But no. Ask him about what he’s reading (the Roman history book I gave him for Christmas), ask him his thoughts on the hierarchy of fast-food chains (Burger King is overrated, Arby’s deserves more love, he can’t fuck with Taco Bell after some drunken incident in college), ask him about politics (a conversation that lasted for nearly all of Missouri), and he has plenty to say.
When it comes to his family?
Nothing.
Now, however, he sighs, tipping his head back against the seat. “Younger,” he says. “Nelle is about four years younger. She was born right after they got Ruby back in the forties. Literally just a few months later.”
I assume that’s all I’m going to get, but then he shocks me by adding, “I sometimes wondered if that’s why she was always so pissed off. She knows she was conceived to replace Ruby, but then Ruby showed up and no one really needed her anymore. An understudy with no role to play.”
“She sounds fun,” I say, aiming for a playful tone.
Camden makes a noise that might be a laugh if it weren’t so bitter. It’s a side of him I’ve never seen before, and it’s kind of intriguing. What a weird thing to learn ten years into a marriage, that your person can still surprise you.
“She’s a piece of work,” he replies. “But at least she left me alone for the most part. Didn’t make hating me at least eighty-nine percent of her personality like the others did.”
“It is impossible for anyone to hate you.”
“You only think that because I go down on you so often,” he jokes, but his shoulders are tight again, his knuckles white around the steering wheel. Overhead, the sky is starting to darken, thunderheads forming on the horizon. It’s still summer here in the South, no matter what the calendar says, the heat and humidity thick outside. Camden says it will be cooler in Tavistock, but nothing like Colorado this time of year.
“I am not the most unbiased of women, no,” I reply, trying to keep things light, but we were so close to actually getting somewhere that I can’t help but add, “So out of the two who are left, Ben and Libby, which one hates you the most? I need to know so that I can adjust my fighting strategy accordingly.”
That gets me a genuine smile, and he glances over again. “God, I would pay a lot of money to see you take on either one of them. Both of them. But you’d have unfair advantages.”
Lifting his thumb off the steering wheel, he wiggles it. “One, Ben thinks he’s hot shit because he played football, but he played for a small private school that played against other small private schools, which means they all sucked.”
“Ah, so he’ll overestimate his skills, and then I’ll strike,” I say, nodding.
“Exactly. And two”—another finger––“Libby is a fuckup. Fucked up school, fucked up the two or three different careers she’s attempted, fucked up two marriages, and she’s not even thirty yet. I have no doubt she’ll also fuck up fighting. So.” He shrugs. “You should be set.”
“Thanksgiving just got extremely fucking real,” I say, and now Cam laughs, reaching over to take my hand, his fingers lacing with mine.
“It’s stupid, but it’s like I keep forgetting that I’m going back there with someone,” he says, and then he squeezes my hand. “With you. Whenever I think about being back there, I picture it like it was before. All of them as this … united front. And me. Alone.”
He lifts our joined hands, kissing my knuckles. “But now, I’m not alone.”
“Never will be again,” I tell him, meaning it.
With my free hand, I reach over to tuck his hair behind his ear. It’s longer than he usually wears it, more like it was when we first met, and I feel a sudden rush of affection.
He’s doing this for me. Walking back into the lion’s den because I asked him to. Because he loves me.
Guilt is oily and hot in my stomach.
Tell him, an insistent voice whispers. Tell him now, while there’s still time. Because if he finds out after you arrive …
But we’re almost there. We’re so close now, and soon, everything I’ve done will be worth it. And I will tell him. All of it, the whole story, no lies between us, just like it’s always been.
But not now. Not yet.