The Heiress(50)

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.