I stand, bracing both hands on the table and leaning in. “Meanwhile, I thank God every goddamn night that I’m not related to any of you,” I say. “And honestly, I think Ruby did, too. So if we’re done––”
“We’re not!” Nelle all but shrieks, thumping the table with one fist, and now Libby gets up, going over to her and putting an arm around her shoulders.
“Nana Nelle,” she says, her voice sharper. “You shouldn’t upset yourself, your doctor said––”
“Your doctor said you had to be careful with your health,” Ben finishes, but he’s still looking at me. He’s not nearly as purple now, and there’s a light in his eyes that has something cold settling in the pit of my stomach.
“Your mother died young,” Ben goes on, speaking to Nelle but watching me. “And your father wasn’t all that old, either. Ruby, of course, lived to be seventy-three, but then she wasn’t actually your sister. I wonder how long she might have lived if she’d had a … natural death.”
Next to me, Jules stands, her hand curling around my elbow. “Camden, let’s go upstairs,” she says, but I feel frozen to the spot.
Even my lips feel numb as I say, “Is this what we’re doing, Ben? Rewriting the past? Ruby died in her sleep. Doesn’t get much more natural than that.”
I say it so easily, another lie that slips off my tongue.
Another one of Ruby’s secrets, locked inside my chest.
The memories are there, pushing against the back of my eyes, threatening to drown me, but I’ve had a lot of practice keeping things hidden over the years, and even as Ben smiles at me in a way that has my teeth clenched and sweat dripping down my back, I meet his gaze.
“Thing is, Cam,” Ben says, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels in a way that reminds me so much of Howell it’s eerie, “things weren’t great with you and Ruby at the time, if I remember. You weren’t even speaking to her, were you?”
I don’t answer, and Nelle sinks back into her seat, still trembling, but her gaze is turning triumphant now. I think of Howell’s email again, Nelle insisting Ruby killed herself, the only one who ever suspected the truth.
Libby stands there in her pink dress, her lower lip pulled between her teeth.
“And of course,” Ben adds, “you were here at the house that night. The night she died.”
“Yeah, I was,” I say, fighting the urge to curl my fingers into a fist. “You know that. I came back to get some more of my stuff. But I never even saw her that night.”
I’ve repeated that lie so many times that I can almost believe it’s true, can almost see myself at twenty years old, sullenly putting X-Men comics I hadn’t read in years and an old clock radio in a duffel bag, rain howling outside and Ruby far away in her own bedroom.
“It’s weird, though,” Ben says. “I mean, I wasn’t here that night, and Nana Nelle was up in her room asleep early. But Libby was here. And…”
Trailing off, Ben shakes his head. “Man. I hate to say this. Hate to even think it. But Libby says she saw you coming out of Ruby’s room. Thought it was weird you told a different story to the police when they came, but hey.”
Ben flashes that grin, but his gaze, when it meets mine, might as well be stone. “We’re family, right? We keep each other’s secrets. Until we don’t.”
Time feels slow now, my heartbeat a steady thud in my chest, my ears ringing.
I look over at Libby.
She wasn’t here that night. I remember. Her car passed mine coming down the mountain as I was going up, the window barely cracked because of the rain, but the firefly glow ember of the tip of a cigarette catching my eye. We’d looked at each other, her mouth twisting into a sour scowl, and then she’d flown past me, tires skidding a little on the muddy road.
“Isn’t that right, Libby?” Ben says, a little too loud, and she presses her lips together, twists one of her bangle bracelets around her wrist.
“Yeah,” she says at last, the words coming out as a sigh before she straightens her shoulders and says it again, firmer. “Yeah. You came out of Aunt Ruby’s room, and you were really upset. Shaking. I thought you’d been crying.”
She’s warming to the story now, looking over at Jules, who I still can’t bring myself to face. “It freaked me out, honestly, but like Ben said, we’re family, so…”
Libby shrugs. “But now I guess we’re not.”