The Heiress(16)

They had me sit in the middle of that massive bed, wearing my suit and bow tie, holding a basketball in my lap. I didn’t even play, but North Carolina is basketball country, and I guess they thought it would make me look more like a regular kid.

I looked like a fucking ventriloquist’s dummy who’d come to life in an assisted-living facility. No basketball was going to undo that.

But I smiled and let them take the picture because that’s what Ruby wanted and later, when the magazine arrived at the house, I flipped through it, mostly to see how bad the picture was. I needed to brace myself for the merciless mocking I was no doubt about to endure in school once the issue hit Tavistock mailboxes.

The picture was as terrible as I thought it would be, but what I hadn’t been prepared for was the caption.

Camden Andrew McTavish: The Luckiest Boy in North Carolina.

Even then, I’d known what bullshit that was. But I also got it, I guess. I’d been an orphan, in and out of the foster system since birth. A multimillionaire plucking me out of poverty, installing me in her palatial home, making me heir to her fortune?

Yeah, I see where that sounds pretty fucking lucky.

If you didn’t know Ruby.

The dirt track turns into gravel, and my heart beats faster. This is it, the last approach to the gates. The trees on each side nearly block out the sun now, their limbs arching and meeting overhead. It always made me feel like I was being slowly swallowed by something as I drove up this road. Everything gets darker, tighter, funneling you in.

I glance over at Jules, wondering if she senses the same claustrophobic air settling in, but she’s sitting up in her seat, her sunglasses shoved up on her head, her eyes taking everything in.

She’s smiling a little, hands clasped on her lap, and I try to see this place through her gaze.

It’s pretty, of course: the trees are thick and lush, and a few glimpses of the sky and the valley below peep out between the leaves. The mist that tends to linger in the treetops can make you feel like you’re up in the clouds, and I can see that for some people—for Jules—that might feel magical. That you’d feel tucked in and safe up here, not trapped.

I want to feel that way, too. More than anything. I want the past to stay buried, and to find a way to at least tolerate this place, because I think that Jules is going to love it. I think she wants to love it.

So for her sake, I’m going to try.

Making myself smile, I reach over and take one of her hands. “We’re almost to the gates. Once we’re through, the road turns a little, and you’ll want to look out your window to get the best view. There’s a sunflower garden on that side, and they should still be blooming. It’s nice.”

She smiles back at me, wiggling a little in her seat. “A sunflower garden? I was not aware that you grew up like a pretty, pretty princess, Cam.”

The smile is frozen on my face, and I wonder if she can tell how hard I’m forcing it. “Ruby’s idea,” I tell her. “Planted at some point in the eighties. Nelle hated it, thought it was tacky, but I always liked it. Or I did, until the time I was hiding in there and found a corn snake. Slithered right over my foot.”

Jules wrinkles her nose. “Okay, hard pass on that,” she says. “Definitely going to admire the sunflower garden from afar.”

I wish she could admire the whole damn house from afar.

I wish snakes were the worst things that lived on this property.

We’re almost at the gate now, and my fingers drum on the steering wheel, my gaze technically in front of me, but my thoughts far away.

The passcode for the gate is still there, in my head.

13–6–61

It’s the day Ruby’s first husband, Duke, died. She switched the month and day because, as she’d told me when she first gave me the code, “He died in Europe, after all.”

She said it with a light shrug, like it was obvious, just a completely normal thing to say. A completely normal thing to do, making the passcode to your house the date of your husband’s murder. But then she always did that. She’d say the craziest shit in the most cheerful voice, and it was stunning how quickly you found yourself agreeing with her.

Right, yeah, day then month! Like in Europe, since that’s where someone shot him in the chest with a rifle twice. Makes perfect sense, Ruby!

I asked her only once why that date. Why not his birthday or their wedding day? Or any other date that wasn’t associated with blood and a dead body?

Well, no one will ever guess that date, will they, my darling? It’s too morbid, so it’s the last thing anyone would think I’d use.

Sitting at her dressing table in her room, slathering her hands with some fancy cream that arrived by courier every six weeks from France. I’ve never smelled it before or since, but I bet it still lingers in the rooms of Ashby House. Sharp lavender, so astringent it almost made your eyes water, and some other scent underneath, woodsy and rich.

I’d been ten, maybe? Something like that. Too young to point out the obvious alternatives.

No one would guess random numbers, either. Or digits from a phone number you barely use. Or my real birthday since you just told everyone it was the same day as yours so we could celebrate at the same time. So why the fuck is it this day? Why do you want to remember that date every time you go in and out of those gates? Why––

“Cam?”