“Roddy was FUN, but he was kind of a dumb-a**,” says University Chum who wishes to remain ANONYMOUS.
Only RECENTLY WED to Mrs. McTavish （20+ years his senior）， the OIL HEIR had purchased a yacht that was regularly the scene of WILD PARTIES and RUMOURED DRUG USE, according to sources in the Catalina Island area.
The TRAGIC NIGHT unfolded just a few miles from shore with no one save MR. AND MRS. KENMORE on the ship at the time.
“Ruby really wanted Roddy to settle down,” claims a friend of the MUCH WIDOWED HEIRESS. “I think that night was really about giving them a chance to be alone, just the two of them. She couldn’t have known what would happen.”
Other friends wonder just how one woman could be SO UNLUCKY in love!
“Mrs. Kenmore? More like MRS. KILL-MORE,” says one marina employee!
—The National Enquirer, July 10, 1985
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Camden
For a few seconds, just the space of a couple of heartbeats, really, a stunned silence hangs over the table. It feels good, watching the wind visibly slip from their sails, and I savor it more than the expensive champagne in my glass.
Then I feel Jules’s hand on mine.
Her expression is stricken, her skin pale, and any satisfaction at getting one over on the McTavishes drains out of me in an instant.
I should have told her. I know that. I had plenty of chances before now, and ever since Nathan’s phone call this afternoon, I’ve known this was coming. But something held me back.
No, not something. Someone.
Ruby.
“You knew,” Ben says, and I squeeze Jules’s fingers, pleading with my eyes for her to understand before I turn to look at Ben.
He’s still standing at the head, his face almost as pale as Jules’s except for two red flags of color on his cheeks. Both fists are planted on the wooden tabletop, his body practically vibrating with anger. I take a deep breath, make myself have another sip of champagne before I answer.
“When I turned eighteen,” I say, looking at Nelle and Libby, both of whom are frozen in their chairs. “She brought me into her office––”
“My father’s office,” Nelle says, the words brittle, and I ignore her.
“And she told me that she’d had some lab run a DNA test. She used your hair to do it, Nelle,” I say, nodding at her as she seethes in her chair, her knobby fingers tight on its arms.
I can still remember how it felt that afternoon, the winter sunshine coming through the windows, a fire crackling in the hearth, making the room too warm, and the scent of Ruby’s lavender hand lotion kicking off a sick, pulsing headache behind my eyes.
Or maybe it hadn’t been the scent. Maybe it had been her words, so calm and cool, so classically Ruby.
Anyway, it’s the sort of thing I think you should know, she’d said, like she was telling me what the code to her safe was, or which funeral home I should call when she died. Just a normal bit of business, mother to son, matriarch to heir.
“It’s funny,” I go on, tapping the edge of my knife against the table with one hand, Jules’s cold fingers still clutched in the other. “You’re actually the reason she got the test done.” I nod at Nelle. “Well, you and Howell. She knew, by the way. About the two of you taking her hairbrush, sending it out for testing. She was just smart enough to get ahead of you.”
She’d actually been amused by it, chuckling as she’d shaken her head.
Science, darling. Who knew it would come for me in the end?
Nelle’s mouth works, lips trembling as little flecks of spit appear in the corners. “I knew it. I knew she’d interfered somehow. Howell said I was being paranoid, that she couldn’t have done such a thing, but he never knew Ruby like I did. None of you did. A snake in the grass from the day she slithered into this house.”
Honestly, this might be the first time I’ve liked Nelle, Ruby had said. No idea she had it in her.
I still don’t know how Ruby figured out what Nelle and Howell were up to, or who she paid off to make sure that particular DNA test came back declaring that she was just as much a McTavish as they were. Ruby only ever shared what she thought was necessary.
Still, to her credit, she decided it was necessary for me to know the truth she’d hid from the rest of the family: that she’d had her own testing done, and there it was, in black and white. She had no biological link to Eleanor McTavish, no miraculous recovery for Baby Ruby after all. Just a child stolen from poor parents to replace the one the rich parents had been too careless with.