The Heiress(73)

The sun breaks through the clouds, and I shade my eyes with one hand, glancing down the beach. Cam is nothing more than a speck, but I know it’s him, wrapping up his morning jog, and I smile to myself, patting my belly.

“That’s your daddy,” I tell my daughter, heaving myself out of my chair to make my way—slowly, very slowly—back up the steps to the deck and the sliding glass door leading into the open kitchen and den.

“Morning, Ruby,” I call.

Her portrait was the one thing that survived the fire. All of Ashby House was in ruins, but Andrew Miller’s painting was somehow mostly intact. The frame was too badly burned to save, and the edges of the canvas were stained with smoke and water damage, but Ruby herself had been no worse for wear.

“That happens sometimes,” one of the firefighters had said. “A whole house can be destroyed, but the paintings are virtually untouched.”

He said it was because the heat tended to snap their hanging wires early on, so they fall face down, protecting them.

Another story that made sense, sure.

But when I meet Ruby’s eyes over the fireplace of this new house, I wonder if there’s more to it.

I’d told Camden we could get rid of it if he wanted. I would understand. Now that I knew the full extent of what she put him through I wouldn’t have blamed him.

“We can donate it or something if you feel weird about throwing it away,” I said. “Any museum would be happy to take it, I bet.”

That had been in the early days, before we bought this place, when it was just the two of us (well, three, but we didn’t know it then) in a hotel room in Asheville.

He’d thought about it, but in the end, he’d shaken his head and said, “It’s all that’s left of her, really. Only thing left from Ashby House.”

Not the only thing, I think now, my hand once again going to my stomach. Ashby House may have been reduced to a dark rectangle of earth on a mountaintop miles away, but one night in that red bedroom gave us a permanent reminder of our time there.

And Ruby’s portrait, professionally repaired and reframed, was the first thing we hung in our new house.

I wondered if I’d feel differently about her, now that I fully understood all that she was, all that she’d done. She’d seemed like my savior, all those years ago. A woman who wanted to ease her conscience by fixing everything that was wrong in my life? Setting me up with her handsome son, ensuring that I would ultimately inherit her estate? What wasn’t there to like?

But she’d hurt Camden. Oh, I know that in her own way, she’d thought she was doing the right thing by him. I even think she had known she might die that night, had made her peace with it. She was giving Cam one final test, but in her mind, either outcome would mean that her project had been successful. He’d call the ambulance and prove his loyalty––or he’d let her die and prove his independence. Either way, I’d be waiting in the wings.

Still, she’d manipulated him—manipulated me—in ways I might never fully understand.

And yet.

I couldn’t make myself get rid of that fucking portrait.

Or her letters.

Lost in the fire, I’d told Cam, and that was for the best. Why would we need them now? I knew everything there was to know about Ruby, about her crimes and her schemes and her plans.

I understood her.

And learning the truth about Ruby’s past had released something in Cam as well. No more shadows in his eyes, no more guilt.

No, that was my emotion to carry, but I was fine with that. It seemed like a small price to pay.

The sliding glass door opens, and Cam comes in, damp with sweat and sea air. “How are my ladies this morning?”

“The littlest lady is apparently doing some kind of spin class in there, and this lady is thinking you should make her an omelet.”

“Well, I have my marching orders,” he says, dropping a kiss on my forehead and then heading toward the sink to wash up.

I smile and drift into the den as he hums to himself.

He’s lighter now, Cam. Finally free, from all of it.

The money, it turns out, was not such a terrible burden once it was no longer connected to that place, those people.

Cam is already using it to do good things. He made a major donation to this community center in Tennessee, and there’s a trust his lawyer is putting together in Tavistock that will make sure the town has a sizable endowment for decades to come.

And of course, even with all that generosity, we’ll still have more than we could ever spend. The three of us—or four, five, who knows what shape our family will take?—will never have to worry about money.

Somehow, impossibly, we’ve gotten our happy ending.

I stand in the living room, the soft sound of the waves in the distance a soothing soundtrack as I gaze up at Ruby’s portrait.

Only I know that behind her dark eyes, slid between the canvas and its backing, are all the letters Ruby had sent me. The ones I had saved and hidden for years, the ones I’d taken with us to Ashby House because I’d known that once we were there, it would be time for Cam to learn the truth, too.

The ones I’d run through a burning house to save.

Even that last letter, the one hidden in her office and never sent, was now tucked away with the others, the full accounting of Ruby’s sins—and mine—hiding in plain sight.