Chapter Eleven: Jules

CHAPTER ELEVENJules

So, I guess I have some explaining to do, huh?

I know, I know. It looks bad. Me on that trail, Ben revealing I was the reason he asked Camden to come home. The heavy implication that I’d promised something in return.

Second-act plot twist, your heroine is actually a potential villain.

But I’m not, I swear. Everything I’ve done, everything I’m doing, is for Cam.

Yes, I want this house. And yes, I’m not the kind of person who willingly turns their back on hundreds of millions of dollars. (Are you?)

I’m not as good a person as Cam is. He can reject all of that because he knows the strings that come with it are too tightly knotted, but what he doesn’t understand is that we can cut those knots.

Together.

It’s just … I couldn’t ask him myself.

It would’ve broken something inside him, knowing I wanted him to walk back into this place. It had to be someone else, someone he already hated, who pulled him back in. Once we were at Ashby House, I could handle the rest.

But that first part? Getting one of the McTavishes to reach out?

I’m not going to lie, that was tricky.

Like I said, when we first got married and decided to leave California, I thought Cam might choose that moment to return home. And when he didn’t, I thought, Maybe that’s for the best, and I tried to put all thoughts of Ashby House out of my head.

I really did.

Yes, I kept up the Instagram stalking, and I might have set a few Google alerts for anything McTavish or Ashby House related, but I told myself to let it go. To let Cam live the life he wanted, a life where we were happy––if not Living in a Gorgeous Mountain Estate Happy.

And then, a few months ago, Howell died in a car accident.

I found that out thanks to one of those Google alerts, and I waited for Cam to mention it. Waited for some kind of summons from North Carolina. There would have to be a funeral, right? The whole family would gather to mourn the McTavish patriarch. It would be the kind of thing Camden couldn’t refuse.

But he never said a word. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure he knew Howell was dead.

This probably isn’t much of a defense, but I want you to know, I did wait at least two weeks before I finally opened Cam’s laptop when he was at work and searched his email for any communication from his family. Anything that might clue me in as to whether Camden had even been contacted about his uncle’s death.

That’s when I found the email Howell sent, just a few nights before he died. Yes, it was full of drunken assholery, but Cam hadn’t deleted it, and I’d started to wonder: if the same request—to come home, to sort out the financial tangle they were all trapped in—came from someone more reasonable, someone who didn’t write the first email I’d ever read that actually smelled like Johnnie Walker Black, would Cam heed it?

It was a risk. A big one.

But like I said, I’m a quick learner.

I knew reaching out to Nelle was out of the question—I was going to have to play this carefully, and enlisting the help of a septuagenarian whose only online presence was a listing in her church’s directory and one blurry Facebook photo from something called “A Cake Bee” was not going to get this done.

I considered Libby for a long time. For one, she was very online and very easy to contact. For another, we’re close in age––we even look a little bit alike––and I thought that might make it easier to build some kind of kinship with her. But there was always something about her, some slyness in her expression, something about all the jobs, the vacations, the flightiness, that made me think I couldn’t trust her.

And of course, there were the exclamation points. Couldn’t risk Camden seeing an email with the subject line, JULES AND LIBBY’S SUPER SECRET PLAN!!

So in the end, Ben was really the only choice. But he was also the right one.

Ben wasn’t quite as hard-core as Libby when it came to social media, but he was on there, and it didn’t take very much scrolling to see that almost everything he posted had a common theme.

A picture of him in the woods, hiking poles planted firmly on either side of him, his teeth glowing, and a caption reading, Nothing like hiking in your own backyard! #TavistockNC #AshbyHouse #RootsWhereIStand #BothMetaphoricalAndLiteral #lol

A long Facebook post about some hardware store in Tavistock, reminding us to “shop local,” and “when my great-great-grandfather” this, and “being a steward, not an owner,” and, I shit you not, the word “ancestral” used three times in two paragraphs.

Over and over again, from his handles––@McTav on Twitter, @McTav_2 on Instagram, @TavistockedAndLoaded on TikTok, where he exclusively posted videos of Tavistock and Ashby House—to his online bio at the law firm where he worked (Benjamin McTavish resides in the iconic Ashby House), it was clear that being a McTavish was maybe the most important thing in Ben’s entire life.

How it must sting, knowing that the name was the only thing he could really lay claim to.

Once I knew the bait to use, dangling the hook was easy.

And that’s why Ben thinks I’m on his side. That I’m going to talk Cam into taking some kind of reasonable settlement from the trust and turning over the rest of it—the house, the bulk of the money, whatever else comes with this kind of life—to the McTavishes. Ruby’s actual family. Everyone gets what they want, or so Ben believes. Camden gets his freedom, I get some money, and they get to keep Ashby House, and preserve the McTavish legacy.

But as you and I both know, I’m playing for the whole thing.

This is why I wanted you to understand that I really do love Camden. This isn’t just about the money. This is about us taking back what belongs to him and living the life we deserve.

Yes, we. Because I deserve this shit, too.

I grew up in a trailer park in Panama City. I’ve dug in the seats of my car for spare change to pay for hamburgers at McDonald’s. I’ve gone without running water for a week so that we could keep the power on in the summer.

I’ve watched the Nelles and the Libbys and the Bens from the fancier suburbs drive by in nice cars, spending money like they’ll always have it.

So, yeah, fucking sue me: when I found out the man I was married to had access to that kind of wealth, but wouldn’t touch it because the family who adopted him was a bag of dicks?

I thought, Fuck that, and tried to figure out how to fix it.

That was a lot of swearing, but this topic always gets me heated. Camden is worth a thousand of them, a genuinely kind and decent person. Ruby McTavish saw that, and I’d wager she saw what her family was, too (though she probably wouldn’t have called them a bag of dicks). That’s why she left Camden everything. She saw what I see in those different-colored eyes every time I look at him––someone worthy. Someone with integrity.

That’s not me. Like I said, I’m not that great of a person. Lying, scheming, sins of omission … I didn’t major in theater for nothing. But that’s why Cam and I are so perfect together.

He makes me feel like more than some Florida trailer park trash, like I’m every bit as shiny and good as he is. But he needs me to do the harder things, the shady things, the necessary things. Things that might tarnish his shine.

So, are we good? Do you get it?

Because right now, I have some shopping to do.

When Camden came back from town the other day, he told me it was looking “down in the mouth.” I could tell that it bothered him, the idea of his hometown drying up, but to me? The girl from Shady Palms Trailer Park near Tallahassee?

Tavistock seems pretty goddamn idyllic. It’s like every small town from a Hallmark movie, but on speed. Vaguely Bavarian buildings, a whole section of the main thoroughfare that’s closed to traffic and is pedestrian-only, and more places to buy LIFE IS GOOD T-shirts than any town probably needs.

I love it immediately.

I wander for a while, stopping into a bookstore, a stationery place. I pick up a journal for Cam, and a pretty plaid scarf for me, the kind of thing I can see myself wearing on foggy mornings, driving down from the mountain in my brand-new Mercedes SUV, picking up coffee, tipping extravagantly, hearing people say when I leave, “That’s Mrs. McTavish. She owns Ashby House.”

Oh yeah. If this works out the way I want, I will happily change my name and become Mrs. McTavish.

I pass by Libby’s shop, but there’s a CLOSED sign hanging on the door. Not surprising since she was still at the house when I left, collecting an assortment of powders and freeze-dried vegetables to make a green juice.

However, after grabbing a quick lunch at a crepe place near the square (a crepe place! By the square! This town is officially a Gilmore Girls Wet Dream), I duck into another shop and am surprised to see Libby, leaning against the counter, talking to the guy at the register.

She straightens up when she sees me, and I give a little wave, unsure of the proper decorum for running into your husband’s bitchy cousin in public.

But Libby gives me a bright smile and totters over in her nude platform heels. “Taking in the sights?” she asks, and I nod, holding up my bags.

“And supporting the local economy. It’s a gorgeous place.”

“Mmm,” she hums. “There was basically nothing here until my great-great-grandfather built it.”

She takes a long slurp of her iced coffee, and I nod even though I know that’s not true. I’ve read up on the history of Tavistock, and there was a little village here before Angus McTavish showed up. It wasn’t much, just a series of ramshackle cabins, but still. There were people who called this place home, and it was a place that mattered to them, that belonged to them.

That would obviously mean fuck all to Libby.

“Honestly, it’s kind of weird when you think about it,” she goes on. “Like, because my great-great-grandfather did something over a hundred years ago, I don’t really have to do anything, you know?”

I look into her eyes, trying to figure out if she’s fucking with me. Is she really this out of touch, or is she just being sar—

“Then again, I guess it’s also weird to have a great-great-grandfather who did nothing, so your best bet is marrying some guy who was a charity case to a rich old lady, huh?”

Well, there’s that question answered.

She winks at me, chewing on the end of her straw. “See you back at the house.”

She glides out of the store, and I take a second to pull out my phone, open up Instagram, and unfollow LaLaLibby.

I don’t need that information anymore anyway.

I turn to leave, but before I can a woman approaches, almost nervously. “Hi?” she says as though it’s a question. “Are you … you’re Camden’s wife, aren’t you?”

After Libby’s bitchery, this woman’s kind eyes are a balm, so I’m probably too enthusiastic as I reply, “Yes! Hi!”

She rolls her eyes in exaggerated relief. “Okay, I thought that must be you. I hadn’t seen you before, but you were talking to Libby, and we heard he was back in town, so—”

“Logical assumption.” I nod. “I’m Jules.”

“Beth. Lord, Camden McTavish. I thought he was never coming back.”

I don’t miss the way Cam’s name sounds in her mouth or the way her expression brightens. It doesn’t bug me—look, you don’t marry someone who is cute, tall, and comes from money, and not expect other people to have noticed those same attributes—but it’s also jarring. A reminder that Cam had an entire life here before me, that he’d forged connections I know nothing about. For most people, this wouldn’t be such a revelation, but Cam has always seemed to me like someone who just sprung to life fully formed. I’d liked that about him, honestly. We were both orphans, we both understood what it was like to feel alone in the world. We were the couple with no one but a handful of coworkers at our courthouse wedding. We’d never celebrated a holiday that wasn’t just the two of us.

I guess I’ve gotten used to never having to share him with his past.

“He was always quiet,” she goes on, “but nice. Guys who had way less reason to brag than he did could be arrogant pricks, you know? But Cam was sweet. Maybe it’s because he was adopted into all that money or something, I don’t know.”

“He’s still quiet,” I tell her. “Except when UNC makes it to the Sweet Sixteen. And nice. No exceptions there.”

“Good,” she says, nodding, and then she looks around before leaning in, lowering her voice.

“Between you and me, Camden is the best thing that ever came out of that family. Whole town knows it. I think if you two decided to stay, we might throw a parade.”

I laugh. “Always love a parade.”

“And,” she adds, her voice a whisper now, her dark eyes bright, “if you threw every other member of that family out on their tails? Well, hell, girl, you’d probably get a statue in the town square.”

It feels like fate. Providence. A sign from God.

See? This is why we had to come back. It’s not just about us, it’s a whole town that would be better without the rest of the McTavishes lurking around.

So how can anything we do to make that happen be bad?

I head back up to Ashby House later in the afternoon, stopping by the little grocery store at the base of the mountain for a few things first.

When I pull up in the drive, the sun is low in the sky, a glow settling in over everything, the gray stone gone fiery orange.

I’m practically skipping inside, paper sacks in my arms.

Camden is in the kitchen when I come in, and there’s something about the set of his shoulders that makes me wonder if he had a run-in with Nelle. I tense up, too, waiting for him to say something, waiting for the questions, but instead, he just comes over to take one of the sacks from my arms, pressing a quick kiss to the side of my head.

“There’s my girl. Thought about sending out a search party.”

Whatever it is that’s bugging him, it’s not about me, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief.

“I met an old friend of yours today,” I tell him, my tone teasing as I set my bag down near the sink.

Hands on the counter, arms spread wide, Cam raises his eyebrows. “Oh? Who?”

“Beth? Dark hair, shorter than me. Really good skin.”

Cam screws up his face for a second, thinking, and I shoot him a wry look.

“Killer body despite dressing like a third grader.”

His expression clears, and he nods. “Bethany Sullivan.”

Rolling my eyes, I toss him a bag of brown rice. “I thought that detail might jog your memory.”

“You don’t need to buy things.”

I swear to god, Nelle must be made of bone dust and Shalimar perfume because I never hear her enter a room, and yet there she is, just inside the kitchen.

“Cecilia purchases all our groceries,” she goes on, and I make myself smile brightly at her. Another tartan skirt today, I notice, but a red cardigan this time.

“I figured I’d just pick up some stuff while I was in town.”

“But it’s not necessary.”

“But I wanted to.”

“I see why Camden chose you,” she says, and it is definitely not a compliment. Her eyes are too mean for it to be anything other than a put-down.

Luckily, I have plenty of experience with mean.

“Because I don’t take any shit?”

Her mouth purses. I’m not sure if it’s the attitude or the four-letter word that bothers her, or maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s me.

In any case, she gives another one of those haughty sniffs.

“Ben wants us to have dinner as a family tonight in the formal dining room,” she informs us. “We have business to discuss. Camden, I trust you remember the dress code.”

“Didn’t exactly pack a suit, Nelle.”

Holy shit, this is a formal-dress-for-dinner household? I guess I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but still.

“You and Benjamin are close enough in size. He’ll let you borrow something of his.”

Her gaze turns to me. “And Libby can find something for you, I’m sure. I’ll tell her to bring something to your room. Seven o’clock. On the dot.”

She starts to leave then and I turn to pull a face at Cam. “On the dot,” she says again, but he’s already turning away, and as he does, I see something in his face I’ve never seen before.

Fear.

From the Desk of Ruby A. McTavish

March 25, 2013

Andrew understood people. More than that, he saw them. Better than they could see themselves, I think. It’s what made him such a brilliant artist. There’s a reason his portraits still hang in all those museums even when the subjects themselves weren’t always particularly interesting people. But Andrew made them interesting because he could recognize something in them that no one else could. You see it in the portrait he painted of me, I think.

I’d felt so remote at that point in my life, cut off from normal society, an island of a woman whose head was filled with far darker thoughts than anyone guessed. But Andrew saw that there was still something human inside of me, something warm and worth loving.

And he did love me. He loved me so much.

So you can see where I thought he might understand.

Ten years is not all that long to be married to someone in the grand scheme of things. Nelle and the Dreadful Alan were married for forty-two years, a worse punishment than even I would’ve dreamed up for her, but still, a marriage people would point at and say, “That’s a lifetime together.”

But those ten years with Andrew felt like a lifetime. In the best way.

They were the happiest ten years of my life.

I wasn’t used to happiness, and certainly not happiness that lasted so long. It made me soft. Stupid.

Worst of all, it made me think I was safe.

It was 1980. I had just turned forty, an interesting point in a woman’s life, the age at which she finally begins to feel like she might have finally become the person she was meant to be. I certainly felt that way.

Daddy had died not long after Hugh, just a few months later, and if he harbored any suspicions about Hugh’s death, they weren’t strong enough to make him change his will. McTavish Limited was mine, every holding, every investment, every zero.

Oh, Nelle got a lovely little nest egg, thanks to money Mama had put in trust. It was certainly enough to keep her happy for all her days, but when was Nelle ever happy? Besides, it was never the money that she cared about. It was the house, and that—every brick and board of it—belonged to me.

Daddy had put a caveat in the will that Nelle could never be cast out of Ashby House, that she was entitled to live there for the rest of her life. Still, I’d assumed that, with him gone and me and Andrew firmly installed, my sister would take Mama’s money and buy her, Alan, and Howell their own place.

I’m very rarely stupid, my dear, but when it comes to Nelle, I somehow always underestimate what a goddamn pill she can be.

She stayed on at Ashby, her and her horrid little family. By that winter of 1980, Alan was hardly ever around. He’d moved on from Violet to some other woman in town, and we all pretended he was busy with work. Howell was sixteen and had already crashed the gorgeous little Corvette Nelle bought him for his birthday, crushing it against a tree just at the base of the mountain. Wonder he didn’t break his fool neck, and in my darker moments, I often thought, Not a wonder. A shame.

But none of it was all that bad because I had Andrew.

He had a way of turning all these irritations and frustrations into funny little anecdotes. Oh, god, his impression of Nelle was a thing to behold! He could get that way she holds her mouth just right. And he was so good at poking fun at Alan’s cheerful blandness, Howell’s teenage entitlement, and things that would usually aggravate the fire out of me became things that, through Andrew’s alchemy, were funny.

He was the one who made me love the woods around Ashby as well, those woods I’d always had such a distaste for. But holding Andrew’s hand, seeing the leaves and the trees through his eyes, I fell in love with the land that surrounded my home. I even had new trails made, and we would wander them together, cut off from everything but each other.

You and me against the world,he would sing underneath his breath sometimes.

And so it was.

That’s how it felt that night in 1980, curled up on the sofa in the den with Andrew, watching the fire crackle in the fireplace. It was January, a wet mix of sleet and snow pattering against the windows. Andrew had one arm around me, idly stroking my hair, the other holding a book, one of those spy thrillers he always loved. I didn’t want him to lift his other hand from my hair, so every once in a while, he would murmur, “Turn,” and I’d reach up and turn the page for him, both of us amused every time, him joking that who would’ve thought a poor Yorkshire lad would one day have the lady of the manor flipping pages of a book for him.

I don’t believe in an afterlife—I’m sure you can understand why such an idea is abhorrent to me—but if there is a heaven, and through some mix-up of celestial paperwork I actually got to go there, this moment is where I’d want to spend eternity. Andrew’s hand on my hair, the fire before us, the snow outside, the crackle of pages turning and his soft chuckle in my ear.

“How’s your book?” I asked.

“Horrible,” he replied. “I’ve counted at least three plot holes, and the author has had to describe blood so often that he’s beginning to run out of synonyms for ‘red.’ I expect the next death to involve the word ‘vermilion’ at this rate.”

“And you’re loving it.”

“Very much.”

I smiled and settled back against his side, and to this day, I can’t say what made me say what I said next.

“When Duke died, I thought his blood looked almost black. But it was dark and there was so much of it.”

Andrew’s hand stilled on my hair, but the words kept coming out of me. “That’s why I can never read those thrillers of yours. They never seem to get it right. What it feels like, what it looks like, when someone dies violently. How much blood there is, the sounds they make. When Duke died, there was this rattling noise in his chest like nothing I’d ever heard before, but in those books, it’s always silent.”

I sat up then, looking at him, and he watched me with his sad eyes, interested, but not alarmed.

Not even when he said, “I thought Duke was already dead when you found him.”

And so I told him.

It was—more or less—the same version of events I told you, so you can go back and reread that letter if you want to. I can’t imagine what your face looked like as you learned the true story of Duke’s death, but Andrew’s never changed. I waited for shock or horror to sink in, for those dark eyes I loved so much to shutter closed to me, but he just listened and when I was done, he leaned over, his hand a warm weight on the back of my neck as he kissed my forehead.

“You brave girl,” he murmured, and it cracked something open inside me.

Not a monster. Not a murderess, a liar, a lunatic.

Brave.

The love I felt for him overflowed from that crack in my heart, the understanding in his face a balm I hadn’t known I needed, and I felt almost drunk with gratitude, with the freedom that came from saying it all out loud.

Like I said.

Soft. Stupid.

Stupid enough to get greedy, to want that same love and understanding poured over Hugh’s death as well, for both of my darkest sins to be washed clean.

If I hadn’t been so giddy with the relief of it all, maybe I would’ve found better words or known to soften the story. But it felt so good, you see, spilling all this darkness into a welcoming vessel, and so I didn’t catch the shock—the horror—that I had been waiting for when recounting Duke’s death slowly slide into his eyes as I described Hugh’s.

I didn’t notice how the fingers of his left hand, resting on the back of the couch near my head, began curling tightly inward like he was afraid he might touch me accidentally.

I didn’t realize I’d lost him until it was too late.

The silence stretched between us once the story was over, and he tried to smile at me, but it wobbled on his face. He cleared his throat and said, “What things to keep in your heart.”

Then he sat back, his book sliding off his lap and hitting the floor, pages bending. He didn’t pick it up. He only rubbed a hand over his mouth, and muttered, “What things to keep in mine.”

I knew then that he’d never tell anyone.

I want you to understand, that’s not what I was afraid of. I didn’t think he’d go running to the police or the press. I didn’t think he’d leave me, either.

Honestly, I wish he’d done either of those things. That would’ve been better. It would’ve been easier.

Instead, we went on as before, like nothing had changed, but everything had, of course. I’d catch him watching me, and the look in those eyes that I loved so much––the very first thing I had noticed about him––became worse than any prison sentence. Worse than a hangman’s noose.

I hope you never have to watch the one person you love most in the world, the person who loves you just as fiercely in return, lose that love, day by day, bit by bit, a steady draining away until there’s nothing left. Until they’re just a person who sleeps inches from you at night, and eats meals across a table from you, and reads books at your side, even smiles at you or laughs with you, but whose heart has shut you out forever.

Andrew was a good man. Truly. I think he loved me very much, and even after he knew the worst of me, he still wanted to love me. I think he tried.

But he couldn’t.

And if he couldn’t, I realized, no one could. No one ever would.

I waited for him to leave me. I would’ve let him go. I want you to understand that, before we get to this next part. If Andrew had only left, if he’d only told me he couldn’t stay married to me knowing what I’d done, I would have signed any papers he wanted, given him all the money in the world.

But he didn’t leave.

Not physically, at least. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally … oh, he left me in those ways. But he stayed in the house, stayed my husband, and the longer that went on, the more unbearable it started to feel.

Even now I ask myself why he stayed. I’ve had over thirty years to wonder over it, and I think he was waiting to get past it. To love me again. Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe.

At the time, however, those darker thoughts crept back in. Duke had wanted my money and my body and my fear. Hugh had wanted some idealized version of me, a woman on a pedestal. Andrew had, I believed, wanted me for me. But what if I’d been wrong? What if it was the money, the easy life in Ashby House, the heightened attention on his art that came from being the husband of a wealthy woman?

When I first started slipping the ant killer into his morning tea—just the smallest amount, never enough to kill—I didn’t actually want him to die. I just wanted to bring an end to the torture for us both.

Surely, he’d realize what was happening, and he would tell someone. Part of me even hoped he’d call the police, and I’d be forced to face some punishment for my sins. At the very least, he’d finally leave me, end the charade that we were both stuck in.

As he got sicker, thinner, I waited. For him to drive down that mountain and never return, to tell someone what I’d done to Duke and Hugh, what he now thought—what he must have known—I was doing to him.

But instead, I watched Andrew sit there in Dr. Donaldson’s office, nodding as he said the symptoms might be from all the years of exposure to his paints and their chemicals. Or, perhaps it was some kind of rare infection, or an autoimmune disease they had yet to detect. There were all kinds of ideas and theories thrown his way, charcoal tablets prescribed, sleep studies scheduled, and never once did Andrew say, “Or, perhaps my murderous wife is killing me.”

Not once.

I’ve never understood that. Even when he was retching in agony, even when I got more and more reckless––with bigger doses in his lukewarm tea and oatmeal, the only things he could keep down––he never said a word, never took those fucking tablets that might have saved him.

He just looked at me with those sad eyes of his, and I wanted him to die and I wanted him to live and I wanted someone to stop me, to march into Ashby House with handcuffs, a straitjacket, even, and finally—finally—put an end to it.

But no one ever did.

The worst thing, the thing I can’t even bear to think about all these years later, is that, in the end, I stopped.

No more ant killer, no more tea or oatmeal. Andrew had proven to me that he was loyal, that even if he didn’t love me anymore, he couldn’t bring himself to hate me despite all I’d done to him.

But it was too late. His kidneys, his liver, they’d endured too much damage over that long year.

The longest year of my life.

Andrew died on another wintery night, late December of 1980, snow falling outside, as soft as his final breath.

No rattle this time. Just a gentle sigh, then nothing more.

How unfair I’d been to all those novelists and their quiet deaths.

There was no autopsy because I said I didn’t want one, and by that point, what I wanted, I got, at least where Tavistock County was concerned.

Harlan Jackson Sr. took my check and patted my hand, telling me he’d handle everything.

Judge Claybourne was so appreciative of my donation to his reelection campaign.

The town was grateful for its new arts center the following year, Andrew’s name emblazoned above the doors in metal letters.

My home and my name closed around me, protecting me, shielding me, their queen in her castle who was secretly the dragon.

Well. Not a secret any longer, is it, my darling?

Not to you.

-R