The Heiress(67)

“Stuffing your pockets with valuables before you slink out of town?”

Ben stands there, still in the suit he’d worn to accompany Nelle’s body to the funeral home, that blinding grin on his face.

“Just looking for something to read,” I lie, and he winks at me.

“I liked you, you know. Thought you had spunk.”

Of course, he did.

“I didn’t like you. I thought you were a dick,” I reply, and his grin widens as he points at me.

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. A straight shooter!”

If he does finger guns at me, I swear to god––

“Kapow!”

He blows imaginary smoke from the tip of his finger, and I grit my teeth.

“Really cheerful for a man whose grandmother just died,” I tell him, and finally, he drops some of that Good Ol’ Boy bullshit.

“She lived a long life and died happy in her bed. None of us could wish better for someone we love.”

“Right, because love is in such abundant supply in this family.”

I head for the door, frustrated and anxious. This was my one chance, and now it’s gone. It’s already late in the afternoon, Cam will be back soon, and then we’ll never step foot in this house again. This will become Ben’s office, probably, and what if he finds––

“I’m guessing you’re looking for this.”

He pulls a tight rectangle of folded papers from his suit jacket, and my mouth goes dry.

Still, I make myself say, “I wasn’t looking for anything.”

“Oh, you weren’t?” He raises his eyebrows. “Huh. Well, I’ll be damned. Because I found this not long after Daddy died. Right before you got in touch.”

He nods at the bookcases, specifically at a jeweled box nestled onto one of the shelves, glittering dully in the low light. Its top sits at a drunken angle, the hinges broken.

“Didn’t make much sense at the time,” he goes on, “but I hung on to it anyway. Just in case.”

What a stupid fucking mistake I’d made, assuming Ben was annoying, but harmless. A toothless Doberman. How many other people had been suckered by his surface charm covering simple meanness, not knowing that he was smarter than he let on?

“And then, of course, when you got in touch after Dad died, Camden’s sweet wife Jules, just wanting to see his family home one time, promising the moon if I would just tell him we needed him here … well, some things, you just don’t forget.”

Still holding the papers in one hand, he lifts them and snaps his wrist, the pages unfolding in front of his face as he makes a show of squinting, scanning through the lines until he gets to the one he wants.

“Right, here it is. ‘I think your idea of using another name is very smart, dear girl, and of course I can help with the paperwork. Julianne is a lovely middle name, so I agree, use that.’”

I’m shaking, my vision going gray around the edges, and I think of Camden, wherever he is right now, coming back to me, coming back to this.

“‘And besides,’” Ben goes on, his voice a high, syrupy imitation of what Ruby sounded like, grating over my ears. “‘You can go by Jules. Ruby, jewel, do you see? Clever of us, isn’t it?’”

Ben looks at me over the top of the paper.

“Clever, indeed.” His voice is his own again, dripping with menace as he moves closer. “Guess she never got around to sending this before she died, but I’m guessing there were others, weren’t there? Because there’s all this talk of ‘confessions.’ Confessing to what, Mrs. McTavish?”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t try to brazen this out,” he says sharply, cutting me off. “You can’t, although I admire the effort. Like I said. Spunk.”

He bites the ending of the word off between his white teeth, and I grimace.

I try another tactic. Licking my lips, I say, “What’s the point of this now? Camden’s agreed to give you everything. You don’t have to go to court over it, you don’t even have to hire lawyers. All he wants is to be free from this, from you. You’re getting everything you want, so why would you even bother to show this to him?”

But he doesn’t have to answer.

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, as soon as I look into his eyes, I know the answer.

“Right,” I say softly. “Because it will hurt him.”

Because Cam had the gall to exist alongside them, even though he wasn’t one of them. Because for all the petty cruelties they threw at him, they couldn’t break him.

Because he made them afraid that the life they’d known would someday be taken away from them.

Of course, they can’t forgive that.

Of course, even now, with everything they want stretching out in front of them, it’s not enough.

It will never be enough.

The anger that floods through me is hot. Clean. Maybe the purest thing I’ve ever felt.

“What won’t you people do?” I say, my voice still barely above a whisper. “Every opportunity in the world, and you turned out like this. These … these sad, grasping, pathetic fuckers who’d kill each other just to get a bigger piece of the pie.”

I’m not thinking of Nelle when I say it, truly. It’s just a figure of speech.