The Heiress(71)

Camden helped with that, a bit. He’s such a sweet boy, the best I’ve ever known, and I’m sure you’ll agree.

But it wasn’t quite the same, was it? I could take from the McTavishes, but how to give to the Darnells?

And then you!

You fell into my lap with your strange phone call and your rather unsubtle hints at blackmail, and I suddenly understood why it couldn’t be your grandmother or even your mother who showed me the path to making things right.

It had to be you. You, and my Camden. Born in the same year, you know. In 1992. Just two months apart.

Fate, one might say!

Now, like I told you, Camden is being a bit difficult. I’d hoped he’d stay here in North Carolina, but he continues to insist on going to some college in California. Not even one of the nicer ones near the beach, either, but in San Bernardino. He’s just doing this to upset me, some kind of delayed rebellion, I assume, but fair warning, our plans may need to shift a bit. He’s coming to see me tomorrow evening, though, and I think I have just the thing to make sure he’s right where we need him when you’re ready to make the drive up here.

You’ll need to be subtle, I should warn you. Camden is naturally suspicious, and I’m afraid I may have only made that worse over the last few months. But I have faith in you, my darling!

My great-niece.

What a thing.

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. And besides, you can go by Jules.

Ruby, jewel, do you see? Clever of us, isn’t it?

And thank you for your response to that packet of letters. It was a difficult thing, unpacking all of that after all this time, but you were right that night at the diner. (About the need for absolute truth between us, not the hash browns. Smothered, covered, fluffed, buttered, I have no idea, I just know I couldn’t sleep that night from the heartburn.)

You’re a tough cookie, but you understood what I was telling you. You had compassion for me in spite of all of it.

And yes, I have heard that tale about the scorpion and the frog. The poor little frog agrees to carry the scorpion across the river, even though he worries that the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion promises he won’t, but sure enough, he can’t resist, sinking them both beneath the water.

“Why did you do it?” the frog asks before he drowns. “Now we’ll both die.”

“Because it is my nature,” says the scorpion.

Yes, darling. If that’s the story that my confessions made you think of, I think you might understand all of us better than you know.

You’ll be good for Camden. He’ll be good for you.

And I will sleep well at night, knowing I’ve left Ashby House in the very best hands—the only hands—I could.

-R





September 3, 2013

Ruby,

Well, this is a first for me: writing a letter to a dead lady.

But honestly, I wasn’t sure what else to do. I guess this is the kind of thing normal girls would journal about, but when have I ever been a normal girl? When were you?

You can’t answer that, I know.

Still, I liked writing with you, and I miss it. I miss you, which is strange since we only met that one time. But I guess once someone has shared their murder confessions with you, you feel a certain bond.

Or maybe it’s a family thing. I mean, you’re my great-aunt after all.

Were my great-aunt.

It was a gut punch, reading about your death online. Heart failure, huh? Don’t you have to have a heart for it to fail? (You should imagine a little cymbal crash here, by the way. Or was that joke too mean? I guess it doesn’t matter, what with you being dead. Anyway, I still think you’d laugh.) For a month or so, I waited for … I don’t know. Something. Like, maybe someone would find my letters to you and would know to get in contact with me. Or that there’d be one last secret bequest in your will, and I’d get to show up all dramatic and in a black veil to whispers of, Who is she? (It’s possible I watched a lot of soap operas with my mom as a kid.) Instead, there was nothing but silence.

It’s so weird that for the last year, you’ve been such a big part of my life, and I’d like to think that I was a big part of yours, and yet nobody knew. Now nobody will ever know.

Except me.

When it became clear that no one was getting in touch with me, that you didn’t have any other tricks up your sleeve, I figured I should probably abandon our whole plan. What was the point if you were gone? I mean, sure: I knew that Cam was cute and rich, but I figured there were other cute and rich guys out there, maybe even ones with less fucked-up families (although I’ll admit, probably not any with a house as amazing as Ashby).

Still, I’d already been thinking about moving to California, and I had that money you gave me when we met, so I thought, “Why the fuck not?”

(I’ll try to stick to only one “fuck” in this letter, too. It was a good rule, and I’m sorry my first letter to you probably sounded like a Quentin Tarantino script. You probably don’t know who that is. And it doesn’t matter because I am writing to a dead person who will not read this. But that’s hard to remember sometimes. I guess it’s because I’ve got your letters here in front of me. When I read them, I can see you and hear you so clearly, it’s like you’re in the room with me.) (But also, please don’t be in the room with me—this situation is weird enough without adding ghosts to the mix.) Anyway. California.