The Heiress(5)

Ashby House was the reason for that.

So maybe it could be the solution, too.

After that, things moved fast. Jules quit her job at Homestead Park and pulled out of the local theater production of Chicago, where she’d been cast as Velma. I put in for extended leave at the school. “Shouldn’t be more than a few weeks,” I’d said to the head of the English department, hoping it was true, but knowing it probably wasn’t.

My ninth graders were reading The Odyssey, and just a few weeks ago, we’d gotten to the part about the lotus-eaters, a tribe of people living on an island, gorging themselves with the lotus flowers that make them forget home, forget anything that’s not the island and their fellow lotus-eaters, all of them settling into peaceful, blank apathy.

Ashby House was like that.

Stay there long enough, and you forget there’s a world outside its tall doors, its oversize windows, and shadowed lawns. It swallows everyone eventually. Look at Ben and Libby, for fuck’s sake. Look at Howell.

I barely remembered his ex-wife, Ben and Libby’s mom, Rebecca. She’d taken off early on, when Libby was about five or six, and after that, it was like she had never even existed. Like anyone who left Ashby House had to be erased from the collective memory or something.

But Howell had stayed, and while they’d briefly left for college, both Ben and Libby had drifted back to Ashby eventually. Nelle, of course, had never left. Never would.

Four people rattling around a fifteen-bedroom mansion because the idea of life outside its walls, of buying a smaller place––or, god forbid, renting an apartment like a normal person––was completely unthinkable.

It had been unthinkable to me once, too.

Until the idea of staying had seemed even worse.

I stand there, cold in the chilly morning air, the light jacket I threw on over my long-sleeved T-shirt not doing much against the bite of Colorado in mid-September. I haven’t worn this jacket in years. It’s been buried in my closet alongside the other clothes I brought from North Carolina that I never touched once I got out west. A pair of camouflage cargo shorts, a seersucker suit Ruby had insisted I buy, khakis, Docksiders, and a fucking bow tie of all things, all remnants of a past life––not so much of the Cam I’d been, but the Cam that Ruby had wanted me to be.

Does he still exist, that Cam? Is he tucked somewhere inside my soul, or is he a ghost, wandering the halls of Ashby?

I guess I’m about to find out.

There’s a rattle of keys at the front door as Jules steps out onto the porch, locking up behind her. Her hair is pulled into a messy bun, sunglasses sliding down her nose as she turns to face me, an oversize duffel bag on one shoulder, and something seizes in my chest as I look at my wife.

Again, there’s that overwhelming urge to say, Fuck it––to email Ben that I’m not coming; to instead call my lawyer, Nathan, and tell him to release any funds any of them ask for.

To do whatever it takes to sever that tie for good and keep the thousands of miles, rivers, and a whole goddamn mountain range between me and what I left behind in North Carolina.

But then Jules smiles, practically bouncing down the steps, and says, “I’m so glad we’re doing this.”

I smile back, reaching to pull her close, her chin tilting up so that I can kiss the tip of her nose.

“You’re doing that face,” she tells me, and I don’t have to ask what she means. Any time I’m overthinking things—brooding, Jules would say—I apparently make a face. Jules mimics it for me now, her jaw tight, her brows drawing slightly together, and I huff out a laugh like I always do.

“It’s going to be fine,” she continues, reaching up to rub her thumb over that trio of wrinkles on my forehead. “You’ll see.”

She thinks it’s all the money shit that has made things tense. She gets that Nelle and Howell were never the most welcoming of family members, even though Ruby adopted me when I was only three––still a baby in most regards, and who the hell cold-shoulders a baby? She knows that Ben and Libby are spoiled and more than a little vapid and that I don’t have much in common with them. She understands that I chose to leave the money Ruby left me mostly untouched because I knew that that kind of wealth came with strings attached.

Everything about my estrangement from my family makes perfect sense to Jules because I’ve made it make perfect sense. I’ve told her the truth, or at least the most basic version of it, and she’s accepted it.

And if I call this trip off right this second, she’d probably accept that, too. But she’d be disappointed. Confused, probably. A little sad.

Worst of all, she might be curious.

We’ve already left our jobs and shut down the house. The car is packed. I’ve got Tavistock, North Carolina, plugged into the GPS and hotel rooms booked for nights in Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky. Sure, we could get there in three days instead of four, but Jules liked the idea of taking the scenic route, and besides, I’m in no hurry to face my family. And if I back out now, how long before my wife starts wondering what was so bad about going home that I’d rather undo all of that planning, all of that effort?

How long before Ben sends another email, one a little sharper, a little colder?

No, I made my choice when Jules slipped her hand into mine that night and said those words.

It might be nice to know you a little better.