The Heiress(46)

“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.”