The Heiress(53)

—The National Enquirer, July 10, 1985





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Camden

For a few seconds, just the space of a couple of heartbeats, really, a stunned silence hangs over the table. It feels good, watching the wind visibly slip from their sails, and I savor it more than the expensive champagne in my glass.

Then I feel Jules’s hand on mine.

Her expression is stricken, her skin pale, and any satisfaction at getting one over on the McTavishes drains out of me in an instant.

I should have told her. I know that. I had plenty of chances before now, and ever since Nathan’s phone call this afternoon, I’ve known this was coming. But something held me back.

No, not something. Someone.

Ruby.

“You knew,” Ben says, and I squeeze Jules’s fingers, pleading with my eyes for her to understand before I turn to look at Ben.

He’s still standing at the head, his face almost as pale as Jules’s except for two red flags of color on his cheeks. Both fists are planted on the wooden tabletop, his body practically vibrating with anger. I take a deep breath, make myself have another sip of champagne before I answer.

“When I turned eighteen,” I say, looking at Nelle and Libby, both of whom are frozen in their chairs. “She brought me into her office––”

“My father’s office,” Nelle says, the words brittle, and I ignore her.

“And she told me that she’d had some lab run a DNA test. She used your hair to do it, Nelle,” I say, nodding at her as she seethes in her chair, her knobby fingers tight on its arms.

I can still remember how it felt that afternoon, the winter sunshine coming through the windows, a fire crackling in the hearth, making the room too warm, and the scent of Ruby’s lavender hand lotion kicking off a sick, pulsing headache behind my eyes.

Or maybe it hadn’t been the scent. Maybe it had been her words, so calm and cool, so classically Ruby.

Anyway, it’s the sort of thing I think you should know, she’d said, like she was telling me what the code to her safe was, or which funeral home I should call when she died. Just a normal bit of business, mother to son, matriarch to heir.

“It’s funny,” I go on, tapping the edge of my knife against the table with one hand, Jules’s cold fingers still clutched in the other. “You’re actually the reason she got the test done.” I nod at Nelle. “Well, you and Howell. She knew, by the way. About the two of you taking her hairbrush, sending it out for testing. She was just smart enough to get ahead of you.”

She’d actually been amused by it, chuckling as she’d shaken her head.

Science, darling. Who knew it would come for me in the end?

Nelle’s mouth works, lips trembling as little flecks of spit appear in the corners. “I knew it. I knew she’d interfered somehow. Howell said I was being paranoid, that she couldn’t have done such a thing, but he never knew Ruby like I did. None of you did. A snake in the grass from the day she slithered into this house.”

Honestly, this might be the first time I’ve liked Nelle, Ruby had said. No idea she had it in her.

I still don’t know how Ruby figured out what Nelle and Howell were up to, or who she paid off to make sure that particular DNA test came back declaring that she was just as much a McTavish as they were. Ruby only ever shared what she thought was necessary.

Still, to her credit, she decided it was necessary for me to know the truth she’d hid from the rest of the family: that she’d had her own testing done, and there it was, in black and white. She had no biological link to Eleanor McTavish, no miraculous recovery for Baby Ruby after all. Just a child stolen from poor parents to replace the one the rich parents had been too careless with.

Or at least that was the story Ruby had told me then. I had always suspected there was more to it, but what did it matter now?

My mouth is dry, but my glass is empty, so I clear my throat before saying, “Nathan called me this afternoon. He’d gotten a call from someone at First Carolina Bank, saying that a McTavish had been in with the key to a safety-deposit box that Ruby had set up in 2010. You, I’m guessing?”

I nod to Ben, who is now almost purple with rage.

“You knew,” he says again. “You’ve known for the past fourteen fucking years that she had no right to give any of this to anyone. She had no right to it herself.”

“She had every right,” I fire back, my own temper sparking. “Blood doesn’t fucking matter, Benji. Mason left it all to her. Not to the eldest surviving McTavish, not to the ‘heirs of his body’ or whatever bullshit term you want to pull out of your little legal hat. He left it all to Ruby. Who then left it all to me.”

“You grasping little bastard,” Nelle says, rising shakily to her feet, one hand still clutching her chair. “Waltzing around here these last few days like lord of the manor. No wonder she loved you. Like calls to like, and you were both trash.”

“Nana,” Libby says, reaching over, but Nelle shakes her off.

“I won’t have it!” she goes on, her voice breathless and shrill.

“You really thought you’d uncovered something, didn’t you?” I say, almost laughing now. “Let me guess,” I continue, turning to Ben. “When Howell died, you started going through his things. His office, right? Which used to be Ruby’s. You found that key taped to the back of a drawer. Which your dad never did because he wasn’t nearly as diligent as you. Or as desperate.”