We don’t need him, I’d purred in his ear. You can sail us around just a little bit, can’t you?
Oh, the arrogance of rich young men. It’s far more fatal than I’ve ever been, if you ask me.
So we left Captain Bart to his fruity drinks and his bored brunettes, and headed out into the night.
I didn’t expect it to be quite as easy as it was, but Roddy was, as usual, out of his mind on something or other. He was also possibly the most impatient person I’ve ever known, the kind of man who hated to sit still, so when the wind wouldn’t cooperate, he’d marched to the stern of the boat where the engine was.
I can still see him there, shirtless and wearing jeans with holes in them, his foot bare where he braced it against the side of the boat.
“Fucking piece of shit!” he yelled as he yanked at the pull start, the motor spluttering.
Worse last words than Duke’s, darling.
A push. That’s all it took.
I can still see it so clearly. The sky overhead spangled with stars, the water below black and murky, Roddy precariously balanced, and me in a Pucci caftan of all things, wedding rings glimmering as I placed my hands on his bare back and shoved.
He couldn’t swim, you see, despite wanting to sail the Rude Roddy to Australia at some point in the near future. Or maybe Thailand? I can never remember. I never quite understood why someone who couldn’t swim took up sailing as a hobby, but then his father had sent him to some boarding school in Maine, so that may have had something to do with it.
An aside: I’m still irked about all that “Mrs. Kill-more” nonsense. I wouldn’t have even gotten the fucking nickname had I not married a man named Kenmore, and now his name and mine are linked forever by something even more binding and eternal than wedding vows—gossip.
Roddy is the one I thought I wouldn’t get away with, if I’m honest. It was hardly all that sneaky or subtle, my husband of two months drowning off the coast of Catalina Island and me, his new wife, the only other person on board. （This was in 1985, by the way, only a few years after that poor actress also found herself in those same dark waters, so Roddy’s name is often linked with hers. That I do regret. No one deserves such a fate.）
（To be linked with Roddy for eternity, I should clarify. As has been previously implied, there are some people who I clearly believe deserve drowning, although she was not one of them.）
But as it had with Andrew, the McTavish name and fortune wrapped around me, buttressing me as I glided through the inquest, the interviews, the implications. Before I knew it, I was back at Ashby House as though nothing had changed.
I had changed, though.
If Andrew’s death had proven to me that I was as monstrous as I’d always feared, Roddy’s made me decide it might be time to find out why that was.
Why did dealing out death come so easily to me? Why, with the exception of Andrew, had I never felt true guilt over it? Duke, I could justify to myself. He had abused me, no doubt would have continued doing so, and in that initial moment, I had genuinely been fearful for my life. But Hugh had been nothing more than annoying; Roddy, a mistake I could’ve easily undone without ending his life. And Andrew … even Andrew, I could’ve left, though it would have broken my heart. We could have split amicably; I could have set him free to wander the world with my secrets, secrets I knew he wouldn’t tell.
And yet.
It was then that my mind once again turned to autumn 1943, when I was snatched from the woods surrounding Ashby House to spend eight months with the Darnells of Alabama.
I couldn’t remember any of it, but it was a trauma that had to be locked inside of me, and might, I thought, be the explanation for this darkness in my soul. Had something happened to me in those eight months, something that had turned me into this woman without a heart? Or—that old buried fear, resurfacing yet again—was it because I wasn’t the real Ruby? Could I possibly be the lost Dora, just like the Darnells had always claimed?
I decided to find out.
It took longer than I’d thought, darling, and it’s a long story to tell. Too long for tonight, in any case.
I know, I know. This is the bit you’re the most interested in, but patience, darling.
As I told you, that was one of the qualities Roddy was most lacking in, and you see what happened to him.
-R
TRAGEDY IN CATALINA
Roddy Kenmore, heir to the Texas oil fortune, DROWNS off coast of Catalina just TWO MONTHS after marrying NOTORIOUS HEIRESS Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller!
Friends claim Cursed Heir was sailing buff who, ironically, NEVER learned to SWIM.