Chapter Twelve: Camden

CHAPTER TWELVECamden

There are plenty of rooms in Ashby House that are comfortable. Cozy, even. The den is fairly modern with its earth-toned furniture and cream-colored rugs. There’s a sitting room in the east wing that actually has a flat-screen TV and a couple of gaming systems from when Ben and I were kids. And the kitchen was totally renovated to Cecilia’s specifications right before Ruby died.

But Ashby’s formal dining room hasn’t changed since 1904, and as I take my seat next to Jules at the teakwood table Ruby’s grandfather had shipped over from what was then Siam, I find my eyes landing on all the other bits of McTavish family history in this room.

There’s a black lacquered sideboard holding crystal bottles of expensive liquor that even Howell had never dared to touch without Nelle’s or Ruby’s blessing. The walls are covered in silk, deep green with a swirling gold pattern, and the chandelier overhead glimmers, despite the cobweb I can see clinging between several of the crystals.

At one end of the room is a huge bay window, but it’s too dark to see the view outside, so I find my eyes drifting to the painting that hangs on the opposite wall. It’s a hunting scene, featuring gently rolling fields and men in jaunty red jackets. It would be positively serene if it weren’t for the deer in the foreground, getting its throat ripped out by hounds.

I hated that painting as a kid, always wondered why anyone would hang it in a room where people eat, but it feels appropriate tonight.

I’m that deer, and as the other McTavishes settle around the table, I have no doubt they’re the hounds.

Jules reaches over and takes my hand where it rests on the table, giving it a little shake. I make myself give her a quick smile, squeezing her fingers in return but, in truth, I can hardly look at her.

Libby had done as Nelle asked, and sent up a dress in a heavy black garment bag. I’d assumed it would be typical Libby—bright, probably sexy, maybe a little too sexy for a family dinner—and had braced myself for the weirdness of seeing my wife dressed like my cousin.

And then Jules had come out of the en suite.

“What do you think?” she’d asked, standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her arms held out to her sides. “Fancy enough for family dinner?”

She looked beautiful––she was beautiful––but the words had frozen in my mouth, and Jules had laughed.

“Wait, so good you’re literally stunned speechless?”

“Clearly,” I’d said, shaking my head ruefully and taking her hands, kissing her forehead, and thinking, Libby, you sick bitch.

Jules would’ve fit into one of Libby’s dresses easily, but that’s not what Libby brought her. No, Libby gave her one of Ruby’s old dresses. Not just any dress, either, but one of her favorites, the one she most often wore when we did these dinners when I was growing up. She’d had it made in the late sixties and was always so proud that it still fit so well.

Same figure at twenty-eight and sixty-eight,she’d preen, throwing a look to Nelle, who always glowered back, her own body thinner, more wizened as she aged.

It’s a gorgeous dress. Even now, from the corner of my eye, I can see the way the chandelier sparkles off the crystal beading along the neckline, how the color of the fabric—not white, not beige, something Ruby called “candlelight”—makes Jules’s skin glow.

But it just adds another layer of unreality to the scene. I’m back in Ashby House, back at this table, back with these people, and my wife is wearing my dead mother’s dress.

Christ, I hate this family.

They’re all seated now, Nelle at the head of the table where Ruby used to sit, Ben at her right hand, where Howell always sat, Libby on the left.

Ben is cheerful, his tie loose and shoulders relaxed. Nelle is almost smiling, which, in her case, means she’s not actively scowling. Only Libby seems a little unsettled, her eyes darting again and again to the sideboard, her nails drumming the edge of the table.

I wonder if she feels guilty for the stunt with the dress, but guilt is not something I’ve ever known Libby to be familiar with. She’s probably just bored.

Still, that sense of unease lingers, potent as the smell of the gardenia-scented candles lit in the sconces on the walls.

“Ben, why don’t you pour the wine?” Nelle suggests, and he gets up to do just that. As he fills each of our glasses with a rich cabernet, I watch Nelle, sitting proudly in Ruby’s place.

How she must love this, queen of the castle at last.

“That contractor come by today?” Ben asks, and it takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.

“He did.” I take a sip of wine. “He said the ceiling on the second floor isn’t as bad as we thought. Didn’t think it was rain damage, though. Did a third-floor bathroom flood or something?”

Ben waves a hand, topping off his own glass even though it’s already pretty full. “Who knows? This house is as twisted as the people who live in it.”

He gives a hearty laugh, one that no one echoes, and I think we’re all relieved when Cecilia starts bringing in steaming dishes of food. I hate that she’s had to stay late for this, and I find myself thinking about hiring more staff for the house. Ruby had a paranoia about people working here, never wanting the maids or handymen that were so common on other estates like this. When I was a kid, I’d wondered if it was because of what happened to her. The kidnapping. That guy, Jimmy Darnell, had been an itinerant worker, so Ruby had good reason not to trust strangers in her space. She had a cleaning crew come out once a month, but Cecilia had done everything else, and as I watch her wince slightly while putting down a heavy tureen of soup, I realize she’s got to be in her mid-sixties by now. Ruby hired her not long after adopting me.

Maybe she’d like some help or––

No. Thoughts like that are for someone who plans to stay here, to take actual ownership of the house, and that’s sure as shit not going to be me.

No one really talks as we fill our plates and pass around platters of food. I’m sure whatever Cecilia prepared is delicious, but I can’t taste any of it, and when the dishes are cleared away, I couldn’t tell you what we’d just eaten.

I’ve just sat there, going through the motions, waiting.

Part of me wants to get up now, tell them to drop the bullshit, and let’s just get this over with. The production, the drama … Ruby could pull it off, but they can’t. They’re all sitting there, practically wiggling in their seats with anticipation, and when Ben leaves the table for a minute and returns with a bottle of champagne, I hate myself even more for not telling Jules we walked into a trap.

“Okay, Benji,” Libby says admiringly. “The good shit.”

“Language!” Nelle snaps, but Ben only laughs, the cork popping out of the bottle with a practiced twist.

“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.

Just the two of us and Captain Bart,he’d replied, and I’d looked over at the bar where the man who actually did the sailing on the Rude Roddy was pushing his sun-bleached hair out of his face and attempting to buy a deeply uninterested brunette a drink.

We don’t need him,I’d purred in his ear. You can sail us around just a little bit, can’t you?

Oh, the arrogance of rich young men. It’s far more fatal than I’ve ever been, if you ask me.

So we left Captain Bart to his fruity drinks and his bored brunettes, and headed out into the night.

I didn’t expect it to be quite as easy as it was, but Roddy was, as usual, out of his mind on something or other. He was also possibly the most impatient person I’ve ever known, the kind of man who hated to sit still, so when the wind wouldn’t cooperate, he’d marched to the stern of the boat where the engine was.

I can still see him there, shirtless and wearing jeans with holes in them, his foot bare where he braced it against the side of the boat.

“Fucking piece of shit!” he yelled as he yanked at the pull start, the motor spluttering.

Worse last words than Duke’s, darling.

A push. That’s all it took.

I can still see it so clearly. The sky overhead spangled with stars, the water below black and murky, Roddy precariously balanced, and me in a Pucci caftan of all things, wedding rings glimmering as I placed my hands on his bare back and shoved.

He couldn’t swim, you see, despite wanting to sail the Rude Roddy to Australia at some point in the near future. Or maybe Thailand? I can never remember. I never quite understood why someone who couldn’t swim took up sailing as a hobby, but then his father had sent him to some boarding school in Maine, so that may have had something to do with it.

An aside: I’m still irked about all that “Mrs. Kill-more” nonsense. I wouldn’t have even gotten the fucking nickname had I not married a man named Kenmore, and now his name and mine are linked forever by something even more binding and eternal than wedding vows—gossip.

Roddy is the one I thought I wouldn’t get away with, if I’m honest. It was hardly all that sneaky or subtle, my husband of two months drowning off the coast of Catalina Island and me, his new wife, the only other person on board. (This was in 1985, by the way, only a few years after that poor actress also found herself in those same dark waters, so Roddy’s name is often linked with hers. That I do regret. No one deserves such a fate.)

(To be linked with Roddy for eternity, I should clarify. As has been previously implied, there are some people who I clearly believe deserve drowning, although she was not one of them.)

But as it had with Andrew, the McTavish name and fortune wrapped around me, buttressing me as I glided through the inquest, the interviews, the implications. Before I knew it, I was back at Ashby House as though nothing had changed.

Ihad changed, though.

If Andrew’s death had proven to me that I was as monstrous as I’d always feared, Roddy’s made me decide it might be time to find out why that was.

Why did dealing out death come so easily to me? Why, with the exception of Andrew, had I never felt true guilt over it? Duke, I could justify to myself. He had abused me, no doubt would have continued doing so, and in that initial moment, I had genuinely been fearful for my life. But Hugh had been nothing more than annoying; Roddy, a mistake I could’ve easily undone without ending his life. And Andrew … even Andrew, I could’ve left, though it would have broken my heart. We could have split amicably; I could have set him free to wander the world with my secrets, secrets I knew he wouldn’t tell.

And yet.

It was then that my mind once again turned to autumn 1943, when I was snatched from the woods surrounding Ashby House to spend eight months with the Darnells of Alabama.

I couldn’t remember any of it, but it was a trauma that had to be locked inside of me, and might, I thought, be the explanation for this darkness in my soul. Had something happened to me in those eight months, something that had turned me into this woman without a heart? Or—that old buried fear, resurfacing yet again—was it because I wasn’t the real Ruby? Could I possibly be the lost Dora, just like the Darnells had always claimed?

I decided to find out.

It took longer than I’d thought, darling, and it’s a long story to tell. Too long for tonight, in any case.

I know, I know. This is the bit you’re the most interested in, but patience, darling.

As I told you, that was one of the qualities Roddy was most lacking in, and you see what happened to him.

-R

TRAGEDY IN CATALINA

Roddy Kenmore, heir to the Texas oil fortune, DROWNS off coast of Catalina just TWO MONTHS after marrying NOTORIOUS HEIRESS Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller!Friends claim Cursed Heir was sailing buff who, ironically, NEVER learned to SWIM.“Roddy was FUN, but he was kind of a dumb-a**,” says University Chum who wishes to remain ANONYMOUS.Only RECENTLY WED to Mrs. McTavish (20+ years his senior), the OIL HEIR had purchased a yacht that was regularly the scene of WILD PARTIES and RUMOURED DRUG USE, according to sources in the Catalina Island area.The TRAGIC NIGHT unfolded just a few miles from shore with no one save MR. AND MRS. KENMORE on the ship at the time.“Ruby really wanted Roddy to settle down,” claims a friend of the MUCH WIDOWED HEIRESS. “I think that night was really about giving them a chance to be alone, just the two of them. She couldn’t have known what would happen.”Other friends wonder just how one woman could be SO UNLUCKY in love!“Mrs. Kenmore? More like MRS. KILL-MORE,” says one marina employee!—The National Enquirer,July 10, 1985