I’ll understand if you don’t answer this, but like I said, I had to try. I know we haven’t ever been close, and I hate that Nana Nelle and Ruby spent so much time pitting us against each other, but we’re not teenagers anymore, Cam. Come home, back to Ashby, and let’s get this shit squared away once and for all.
Sincerely,
Ben
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Ruby’s will/house issues
Camden,
I hope this email finds you well, and that contacting you via your workplace is not out of line. Unfortunately, you’ve made yourself hard to get in contact with any other way （although I assume that is on purpose）。
As you know, it’s in my nature to be blunt, so I will put this as plainly as possible: while I understand your reasons for putting time and distance between us, and I regret the words spoken in anger that caused you to make that decision, I feel that now, after ten years, it is time to attempt some kind of family reconciliation.
I could tell you that my mother has not been well （which is true）， or that it’s occurred to me that thanks to the acrimonious nature of my divorce from the mother of my children, you are the only family they have besides me or their grandmother （also true）。
I suspect that neither of these facts will sway you. However, despite our differences, I know that you loved Ruby and shared her deep affection for Ashby House. If family cannot bring you home, maybe the house can. There is flood damage to the east wing, plus I’m told that several of the windows will need to be replaced, along with sections of the roof, the steps to the back veranda, and Lord only knows what else.
Thanks to Ruby’s will, accessing the funds to do these vital repairs involves a jungle of red tape and more phone calls to that dipshit lawyer of yours than I’d prefer to make.
You may have washed your hands of us, but you still have responsibilities here, Camden. Responsibilities that Ruby left for you and would expect you to fulfill. And if you can’t do that, you can at least come down here and sort out a better fucking solution than making my almost eighty-year-old mother call Nathan fucking Collins twelve times a day just to get money that her father made.
So come home. Oversee the work yourself so that you know we’re not scamming you out of money you’ve never even fucking touched. And let’s fix this. Not just the house, but all of it. Because it’s been ten years of bullshit at this point, Cam. I told you when you left it wasn’t that simple, and now here we are.
Ruby is probably laughing at us down there in hell. Mother thinks she killed herself just to fuck us all over, to leave everything this goddamn mess, but I wonder, sometimes, Cam, I really do. Maybe we were too quick to cremate her and find out if she really took those pills herself. Thinking about it a lot here lately for some reason.
Do you ever think about it, Camden?
You may hate us but you always said you loved this house. You always said you loved Ruby. Now prove it.
H.
CHAPTER TWO
Camden
There’s a moment, right before I close the trunk of the car, when I think about calling this whole fucking thing off.
I could. It’s my home, my family. My decision, as Jules has reminded me a thousand times since that night in the kitchen, the night when I read Ben’s email and realized that you can put miles and mountains between you and home, but eventually, home will call you back.
I’d actually forgotten about the other email, the one from Howell. It had come in about six months ago, and I’d read it sitting at my desk, the only sound my students’ pencils scraping across the paper as they’d worked on their persuasive essays.
Clearly a lesson Howell had missed because nothing about that drunken rant had made me even think about coming home. I hadn’t spoken to Howell since the afternoon of Ruby’s funeral, but reading that email, I could hear his voice in my head as clearly as if he’d been standing right in front of me, ten years swept away clean.
I could smell the whiskey, too.
The email was classic Howell, starting out formal and mannered, the benevolent King of Tavistock, North Carolina, calling for the return of a wayward noble. Then by the end, devolving into a typo-riddled, expletive-filled mess dripping with guilt trips and vitriol.
And a threat.
A poorly worded one, but a threat nonetheless.
Ruby’s death had been officially listed as “heart failure,” but the empty pill bottles in her nightstand had told a different story.
That was the first—and maybe the only—time in my life I’d ever wielded the McTavish money and name like the rest of them did. I insisted that there would be no autopsy, no questions, just a simple cremation and a subdued memorial service with only the family in attendance. I hadn’t wanted the circus, hadn’t wanted all those old stories about Ruby dug up and splashed on the pages of magazines again.