Chapter Three: Jules

CHAPTER THREEJules

You probably know this already, but this country?

It is fucking big.

I thought I knew that, too. I’d grown up in Florida, ended up at college in California, then landed in Colorado. That last move, Cam and I had driven, and it had taken us over thirteen hours. I’d watched the dreaded Inland Empire of San Bernardino turn into the bright lights of Vegas, the high desert of Utah, and eventually, the jagged peaks of the Rockies, but there’s something different about driving farther east.

How all the land flattens out, the sky arching overhead, a big blue bowl turned upside down. The ugliness of nondescript interstates giving way to rolling hills and massive rivers, and then, finally, mountains again.

But not like the mountains out west.

We’re in Tennessee when they first appear, rising gently in the distance, dark and covered in trees, and it makes my stomach drop with nerves and excitement, knowing that we’re close now. Just a few more hours, and we’re at Ashby House.

Cam’s house.

Myhouse.

It’s a very weird thing, living in a just-okay rental when you know that your husband technically owns an estate. But Cam had made it very clear, very early on that he wanted nothing to do with the house, the money, all of it, and I’d done my best to respect that.

But a girl can google.

The first time I saw pictures of the house online, I’d damn near swooned. The gray stone made the house look elemental somehow, like it had carved itself out of the rock of the mountains around it. There was a wide green lawn, and dozens of windows sparkling in afternoon sunlight. A wide veranda in the back had views down the mountain, the treetops covered in mist, and I figured if you sat out there with your coffee for enough mornings in a row, you’d probably be physically incapable of ever being unhappy again.

Camden would, I know, disagree. He’d been plenty unhappy in that house, but that’s because of the people that were in it. If it were just the two of us, just him and me and all that space, all that beauty …

“Okay, now you are doing a face.”

I shake myself out of my real estate fantasies.

“I just can’t believe we’re almost there,” I say, pointing out the windshield. “I mean, those are the mountains of your homeland! Where your family is from! You actually came from this place and did not spring to life directly from my hot wing–induced fantasies.”

Cam grins at that, lifting one hand off the steering wheel to rest on my knee. “Yup, a real live boy, Appalachian born and bred.”

“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.

North Carolina has its share of beautiful homes. This is, after all, where you can find the world-famous Biltmore Estate, palatial home of the Vanderbilts.

Ashby House, just a few miles away in Tavistock, is not as grand and certainly a good deal more private—no tours here, I’m afraid!—but should you find yourself in the area, it’s worth the time to drive as far as the gates. In spring and summer, you’ll be lucky to see a chimney, but once the leaves fall, glimpses of the magnificent McTavish family home can be seen.

Built in 1904 by lumber magnate Alexander McTavish, the house is as eccentric as the family who owns it. Part Victorian, part Palladian, it features smooth gray stone and peaked roofs, marble patios and leaded windows. It should not work and yet, miraculously—almost mystically—it does. Guests of the home have commented that there’s something about Ashby House that makes you feel as if the rest of the world does not exist. As if you could stay safely tucked behind its walls forever and want for nothing else.

Originally called, rather fancifully, The Highlands, it was renamed in 1938 by Mason McTavish in honor of his (much younger) bride, Anna Ashby. Tragedy struck the home in 1943 when Mason and Anna’s young daughter, Ruby, was kidnapped from the forest surrounding Ashby House, but, as is befitting such a magical home, the story had a fairy-tale ending when Ruby was safely returned to her parents nearly a year later.

Ruby McTavish would eventually marry several times, and inherited the home when her father passed away in 1968. Widowed for a final time in 1985, Ms. McTavish resided in the home with her younger sister, Nelle, and several other family members before passing away in 2013.

The current owner is her adopted son, Camden.

––“Hidden Gems: Houses off the Beaten Path”

Southern Manors Magazine,June 2021

From the Desk of Ruby A. McTavish

March 14, 2013

I have to admit, I almost wasn’t going to write this today.

I know, I know, I promised you, but what is that saying? “Promises are like piecrusts, made to be broken.”

I’ve never made a piecrust, actually. Maybe I should learn? Probably too late now. Shocking how soon the “too late now” part of your life arrives. When you’re young, there’s nothing but possibility, just an endless line of tomorrows, and then you wake up one day and realize that no, you cannot move to Paris on a whim because so many of those old buildings don’t have elevators and stairs are hell on your knees now. And besides, you never learned to speak French, and now your brain, once so fresh and spongy and ready to soak up knowledge, feels about as pliable as a peach pit.

I could tell you to learn from an old lady, to not let the “too late now” moments surprise you, too, but it won’t do any good. No one listens to old ladies.

I certainly didn’t.

In fact, if I’d listened to one particular old lady, this next part of the story might never have happened. Which, I think most people would agree, would’ve been for the best.

But even now, even knowing what came after, I can’t bring myself to regret rejecting Mrs. Sidney’s advice when it came to Duke Callahan.

Oh, yes, my dear. We’re finally at the first of my husbands.

(Finally. That’s the word you’d use, isn’t it? Please bear in mind that I have made you read exactly one fucking letter thus far and that it was only around ten pages. You come by your impatience naturally, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.)

(Also, please note that I wrote that word again. I think I’m going to try to write it once per letter. And now I worry I’ve wasted it here when I could probably put it to better use later. Ah, well.)

I knew of Duke Callahan long before I met him. Everyone did. His father was even richer than mine, a tobacco millionaire with an estate in Asheville, a horse breeding operation in Kentucky, a penthouse in Manhattan, a pied-à-terre in Paris, and, rumor had it, a beautiful mistress installed in each location.

Duke was his eldest son and heir, the crown prince of Edward Callahan’s kingdom, his father’s pride and joy—and also the thorn in his side. The story was that Edward had named his son Duke because that’s how certain he was that the boy would follow his lead and play football for Duke University, but Duke was nothing if not his own man. He went to Yale instead, and his father had, briefly, disowned him.

That had not fazed Duke.

This doesn’t surprise me, by the way. One thing I quickly learned about Duke Callahan during our very brief marriage was that the man was completely unflappable—at least when he was sober. During an argument on our honeymoon, I threw a pair of earrings he’d given me into the Atlantic Ocean (emeralds, once belonging to Marie Antoinette, worth a not-so-small fortune, and yes, I do still regret this fit of pique).

Thousands of dollars sailing over the side of a ship, a brand-new bride in furious tears, what felt like half of first class gawking at us, and Duke had merely sighed, lit a cigarette, and said, “Suppose I should’ve given you rubies,” before ambling back inside.

In fact, the only time I think I ever saw him look surprised was when I shot him.

But we’re not there yet, are we?

No, now it is the night of Nelle’s sixteenth birthday. Summer, 1960.

Nelle had, as you might imagine, been a huge pill about the whole thing. First, she wanted to wear red, then pink. Then finally it was silver, and I was told—told, mind you—that I could wear green, so I had chosen a mint-green chiffon draped over a gold taffeta lining.

Nelle had not seen the dress before the party, too consumed with making sure she had the right amount of flowers, the perfect band—no, not the one Loretta wanted, the one that had played at Nancy Baylor’s Sweet Sixteen last year—and the cake had the lemon filling, yes? Not strawberry—Linda Hanson had had a strawberry cake—and the thing looked like it was bleeding when they cut into it, no one wanted to eat a bleeding cake.

I’d thought about pointing out that the lemon might look like pus simply because I’d wanted the pleasure of watching Nelle’s head explode, but in the end, I’d kept my mouth shut, determined to get through the night with as little conflict as possible.

It had been a hard year for all of us. Mama had died in August of 1959, her liver shot to hell, her face sallow and lined and so much older than her thirty-nine years. Daddy had managed to wait until January of 1960 to make an honest woman out of Loretta, and while I wasn’t exactly close to my stepmother, I didn’t dislike her, either. She was sweet and a little simple, desperate to fulfill her role as An Important Man’s Wife, and she and I mostly stayed out of each other’s way.

I was home that summer from Agnes Scott, the ladies’ college Daddy had sent me to in Atlanta. I liked it for the most part, but there was a sense that all of us there were simply killing time, waiting for a man to marry us. We read Chaucer and discussed Shakespeare and learned conversational French and filled our brains with knowledge that no one would care about the second a man went down on one knee.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I liked Atlanta, liked living with other girls, but I missed the mountains of home. I missed Ashby House and its familiar hallways, the hidden corners where I’d sit and read or simply stare out the windows at the trees below.

But now that I was home, I missed the independence I’d had in Atlanta, missed going for malts with Becky and Susan and Trina after Western Civilization. Staying up as late as I wanted to read with no one calling, “Is your light still on? It’s past eleven, Ruby!”

It was a strange feeling, being caught between two lives.

I think that’s something you might understand.

So, there I was that summer night in 1960, twenty years old, growing out of being someone’s daughter, not sure I was ready to be someone’s wife, and searching for a place to hide in my own home because my sixteen-year-old sister was absolutely livid about my dress.

I told you, she’d “allowed” me to wear green. And so I had. But apparently it was meant to be only green, not green over gold. She was wearing silver, which somehow made her look “less special.” (I still don’t fully follow this logic, I should add. Maybe I’ll go up to Nelle’s room once I’ve finished this letter and ask her. I might get the pleasure of seeing her head explode all these years later!)

Normally, I would have given her hell right back, but as I said, it was a strange summer, and I had no real desire to engage in another sisterly skirmish, so I’d retreated, heading for the one room I knew would be deserted during a party—my father’s office.

I opened the door, the only light a banker’s lamp on Daddy’s desk, the familiar smell of furniture polish and cigar smoke hanging in the air.

But as I closed the door behind me, I realized it was not cigar smoke I was smelling at all. It was a cigarette, freshly lit, and the cologne in the air wasn’t the lingering hint of Daddy’s Acqua di Parma. It was something sharper, warmer. Something that made my toes curl in their mint-green pumps.

“If my mother sent you to drag me back to the party, you should know that I’m not going without a fight.”

Startled, I stepped back, my heel hitting the brass plate at the bottom of the door, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet room.

I had known Duke Callahan would be at Nelle’s party. Nelle had practically danced around the room when his RSVP had been delivered. I later learned that he had been something of her “white whale” for the past year, and long after Duke was dead, I found an old diary of Nelle’s stashed behind those fancy copies of Charles Dickens that no one ever read. Mrs. Eleanor Callahan was scribbled on several pages, and I suddenly understood that Nelle’s tears at Duke’s and my wedding had had nothing to do with hay fever as she’d claimed.

I’d caught only the briefest glimpse of him earlier, as he’d made his way across the foyer to say hello to Daddy. That was when Mrs. Sidney had issued her warning, lifting the little skewer from her martini and gesturing at Duke’s retreating back with it, the pickled pearl onion on the tip nearly slipping off.

“Trouble,” she pronounced, puckering her lips. Her pale pink lipstick had bled into the fine lines there, and I suspected the empty martini glass in her hand was not her first cocktail of the evening. “And, from what I hear, on the hunt for a wife. Pretty and rich as you are, sweetheart? I’d steer clear.”

And I had, until I walked into my father’s study to find Duke Callahan leaning against the bookshelves lining the far wall.

He straightened up, walking closer to me, his eyes slightly narrowed. The end of the cigarette tucked between his lips glowed a bright, hot red as he took a drag, smoke curling around his head when he exhaled.

“On second thought,” he said slowly, “I think I’d go anywhere you wanted me to.”

Then he grinned.

It was a good grin, one he’d probably flashed a million times in his twenty-four years, and never once thought anything about it.

The people who’d seen it, though?

They thought about it.

The girl at the café who’d brought him his coffee, the boy who’d shined his shoes at the train station in New Haven. The mothers of his friends who’d welcomed him into their homes, then spent the rest of the night conjuring up that smile and wondering why it made their stomachs flutter, their blood feel hot.

And me.

I still think about it now, more than fifty years later.

And I think, sometimes, how if he hadn’t given me that grin, if I hadn’t fallen so instantly and powerfully in what I thought was love, he might still be alive.

Duke Callahan, an old man. I can’t even picture it.

Or maybe I just don’t want to.

There’s a picture of him in my nightstand if you want to see him. Oh, I know, you can look him up on the internet, but honestly, I think Duke would prefer to be admired in that silver frame. He’s smiling, but you should know that’s not the smile. It’s close, but not quite the same.

Actually, don’t look. The picture doesn’t do him justice. To understand Duke, you had to see him in person, and I’m afraid that, thanks to me, no one can ever do that again.

He wasn’t just handsome, you see. Handsome, I could’ve resisted. So many young men in my circle had those same good cheekbones, the chiseled jaw and straight nose, hair the same burnished gold as an old coin. All of them could wear a suit well and hold a cocktail just so and knew exactly how to light a woman’s cigarette in a way that felt both chivalrous and the tiniest bit predatory.

I always found them boring, if I’m honest. There was a sameness to them that made me think they must all take the same class in that sort of thing at their various boarding schools. They all played at being some kind of debonair man-about-town, but they each ended up back in their hometowns, doing whatever it is their fathers did, marrying the girls their mothers wanted them to marry.

But Duke? No, underneath all those familiar traits and manners, I knew he was something different.

I remember being so glad for the dim light in Daddy’s office because maybe he couldn’t see me blushing. (He absolutely could, he told me later, and used that observation to launch into a soliloquy of things he noticed about me that gradually grew more and more explicit until I was blushing everywhere a person could blush, but I suppose that’s not the kind of story you want from me. Fair enough.)

“The only place I want you to go,” I said, making myself stand up as tall as I could, “is out of my father’s office.”

“Ah,” he said, pleased. “So, you are the infamous Ruby. I thought as much.”

I probably should’ve pressed him on that “infamous” bit, but at the time, there was a chorus in my brain shouting, He said my name, he said my name, why does my name sound so different when he says it?

“I can’t believe I’ve never met you before now,” he went on, stepping closer. “How come you didn’t have one of these big parties when you turned sixteen?”

Hands clasped behind my back, I watched him from beneath my lashes. Later, I’d perfect this particular look, coy and careless all at once, but that night, there was no artifice in it. I just couldn’t look directly at him without stammering.

“I did,” I told him. “Four summers ago. You just didn’t come.”

I dared a glance then. He had moved even closer, standing just beside Daddy’s desk. “Well, that was fucking stupid of me.”

(Knew I was going to use it again later! Damn.)

He wanted to shock me, maybe. Watch my mouth drop into a horrified O, my eyes widen.

Instead, I met his gaze evenly while my heart threatened to pound right out of my chest.

“Yes,” I said, as though ice water flowed in my veins. “It was.”

That made him laugh, and if the smile was an arrow to the heart—and other, lower portions of one’s anatomy—then the laugh was Fourth of July fireworks, wonderful, thrilling, the kind of thing that made you want to hug yourself with the sheer delight of it.

“Your father said you were at college in Atlanta,” Duke went on. “Are you home for the summer or home for good?”

He propped one hip there on the corner of Daddy’s desk as he reached into his evening jacket for a sterling silver case. It popped open with a loud snick, and he plucked out a cigarette from a neat little row of them. His family’s brand, of course, Callahans, but a special blend made only for the Callahans themselves.

“For the summer,” I told him. “I think.”

“You think?” he echoed as he pressed the tip of the unlit cigarette to the smoldering end of the one still in his mouth. His cheeks hollowed slightly as he sucked at the filter, the ember glowing a hotter red, and then, newly lit cigarette between those long, elegant fingers, he offered it to me.

I never much cared for smoking, something that was probably more offensive to my fellow North Carolina blue bloods than all the dead husbands would end up being, so maybe it’s a good thing I was only the tobacco heir’s wife for those few months. But I took the cigarette from him all the same, and had you been alone in that room with him, you would have, too.

“Atlanta is fine and all, but … I’ve missed it here,” I replied, and he snorted slightly at that, smoke puffing from his nostrils.

“You need to see more of the world if you think this mountain is worth missing, sweetheart.”

I should’ve been offended by that, but I was twenty and the most attractive man I’d ever met had just called me sweetheart, so please cut me some slack, darling.

I moved a little closer to him, taking a drag on the cigarette, the flavor rich and bitter. “I’d like to,” I told him. “See more of the world, that is. London. Rome. Paris. Paris, especially, actually.”

“I’ll book the honeymoon now,” he said, teasing, and oh, how that thrilled me. Not just the word “honeymoon,” and all the secret, wonderful things that implied, but the idea that there might be a third door besides Dutiful Daughter and Dutiful Wife. A wife still, yes, but the kind that didn’t throw boring parties or pretend to be excited about Jell-O salads. Wife to a man like this, a man who would take her with him when he went out in the world, who wanted her to experience the same things he did.

A partner.

As I said, darling, I was twenty. Truly my only excuse. Not for believing that such men exist, because they do—I married one eventually—but believing that this man was one of them.

“Maybe you should take me out to dinner first,” I told him, and he ground out his cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray just behind him on the desk.

“Maybe I will,” he answered, and then threw me a sly glance from the corner of his eye. “Or we could have a picnic. Unless that brings back bad memories.”

It was the first time anyone other than Nelle had ever referenced my kidnapping, and it was yet another thing that, in retrospect, should have offended, but instead just made Duke all the more intriguing, all the more different from anyone else I’d known.

“No bad memories,” I confirmed. “No memories of it at all.”

That was the truth. Other than that odd moment of naming my doll Grace, nothing from that time of my life ever resurfaced, the story continuing to feel like something that might have happened to someone else.

“I remember it,” Duke said, rising to his feet. “Or remember people talking about it, I guess. You were quite the little celebrity for a while.”

“Isn’t it odd how that happens?” I asked, and, seeing his confusion, added, “Celebrity—or notoriety, really—all because of something that happened to you, not something you actually did. Like that poor girl back in the spring, the one whose fiancé fell at the falls. Daddy said her picture was in the paper for weeks.”

I’d been in Atlanta at the time, but news from Tavistock still made its way to me through phone calls and letters from home, and there had been no bigger story than the death of Peter Whalen, a UNC student who’d taken his fiancée, Jill, up to the waterfall deep in the woods a few miles from Ashby House. He’d been leaning down to tie his shoe when he’d slipped on some wet rocks, plunging down to the rocks and water below.

“Never knew why that was such a story,” Duke said with a shrug. “My grandfather had a cousin who took a tumble from those falls back around the turn of the century. It’s a dangerous place, people should be more careful.”

“It wasn’t just that he died,” I said, lowering my voice and stepping a little closer. “They didn’t put it in the papers out of respect for his family, but Daddy heard it from the sheriff himself. Peter Whalen wasn’t dead when he hit the rocks.”

Duke lifted his eyebrows at that, and the clear interest in his gaze made me a little bolder. “He was hurt, very badly from what I understand, and Jill tried to get down to him, but couldn’t. So she left him to go get help. But when she came back with the sheriff and his officers, Peter wasn’t there.”

Now Duke leaned forward, his fingers loosely clasped on one thigh. “Go on.”

I could see myself in my room in Atlanta, the pale green phone cord twisting around one finger as Daddy relayed the gruesome story to me, my mind conjuring up the falls, those sharp rocks at the bottom. The sound of rushing water not loud enough to drown out Peter Whalen’s screams or Jill’s cries of horror as he lay broken and bloody.

It had felt like a scary story, the sort of thing you tell around campfires. Not a thing that had happened to real people, people in the same woods that had once taken me.

I suppose I should now say that I feel guilty for how much I relished the darkness of the account, how vividly I could picture those horrific details, but surely there’s no point in lying to you.

“They found him—most of him, at least—a few hours later,” I told Duke, my voice barely above a whisper, the air hushed and heavy around us. “He’d tried to crawl away, they thought, get out of the water. But something found him.”

“Something?” Duke’s voice was as low as mine now, his pupils wide and surrounded by the narrowest band of blue.

“A bear, probably. Maybe a mountain lion.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“No, I don’t think it was him,” I answered without thinking, the quip entirely inappropriate, one of those dark jokes that always sat on the tip of my tongue, but very rarely slipped out in front of someone.

And Duke laughed.

I found myself smiling back, secret, conspiratorial, and his eyes dropped to my mouth. “I have no idea what to make of you, Ruby McTavish,” he said, and until that moment I had never realized that you could feel someone’s voice like a touch.

“No one does,” I said.

I didn’t say it to be cute. It was just the truth.

No one knew what to make of me. I was a rich man’s daughter who hid at parties rather than flirt with available bachelors. I was pretty enough, but there were other more beautiful girls. I did well enough in school, but wasn’t a brain.

And there was this darkness that seemed to cling to me, a past that people only ever spoke about in whispers. A suspicion, even inside my own heart, that I had been placed in the wrong life, living out a role written for someone else.

Maybe it was the darkness that Duke liked.

He had his own streak of it, I’d learn, hidden beneath that smooth, implacable sheen.

But let’s leave that for the next letter. For now, let me leave us here in the dim light of my father’s office, the low murmur of voices and muffled music from the band downstairs the soundtrack to a kiss that would change my life and end his.

You’ll let me do that, won’t you?

-R

BABY RUBY A BRIDE!

She stole hearts around the nation as the famous “Baby Ruby” during the 1940s, but now, Ruby McTavish has captured one heart in particular––that of tobacco heir and man-about-town Duke Edward Callahan.

The bride, daughter of Mr. Mason McTavish and the late Anna McTavish of Tavistock, North Carolina, walked down the aisle this past Saturday, April 22, on the grounds of her family home, Ashby House. Wearing her mother’s wedding gown from 1937 (altered and updated by Mme. Durand of Paris, a personal friend of the groom’s father, Edward Alton Callahan), Miss McTavish carried a bouquet of white roses, pink camellias, and the crested iris native to her home state. Her maid of honor was her younger sister, Miss Eleanor McTavish, and the rest of her bridal party consisted of friends from childhood and her school chums from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta where, up until her engagement, Miss McTavish had been studying literature.

The couple plan on settling in the groom’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, after a lengthy European honeymoon that will see them sail to Paris before moving on to Nice, the Loire Valley, Rome, Milan, and finally London.

Congratulations, and bon voyage to Mr. and Mrs. Duke Callahan!

—Society Chatter Newsletter(Southeastern Region), Spring 1961