I’m stalling, I know I am, but I make myself say the most important part.
“And Ruby … Ruby was waiting for me in her room. In here.”
She’d been sitting on this bench, dressed in her pajamas, but even those seemed like formal wear on Ruby. She was seventy-three by then, but looked younger, her dark hair turned silver, and as I stood there, dripping rain onto her carpet, she rubbed that fancy cream of hers into her hands, watching me in the mirror.
Have you finally come to your senses?
“I begged with her. I pleaded. I swear to god, Jules, I actually got down on my fucking knees right there.”
I point to where she’s sitting.
I can’t stay here. Please. Please, let me go.
“She got up, and she crossed the room, and she put her hands on my face. They were cold. Almost … almost slimy. From the cream she used. She was smiling at me. I was crying, and she was smiling. And then she said, ‘Do you remember Tyler Hayes?’”
Jules slowly draws her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees, her brows drawn tight together. “Who was that?”
I shake my head, swiping at my face. I hadn’t realized that tears were streaming down it, just like they had that night.
“This asshole kid I’d gone to school with. In tenth grade, we got in a fight after a soccer game. Just stupid teenage boy shit, I don’t even remember what it was about. But he got in one really solid punch and it broke my nose.”
I touch the slight bump on the bridge, remembering. “Hurt like a motherfucker. Ruby met me at the ER, and held my hand while they reset it. It was the only time I’d ever seen her be maternal in my life. So, there I am, with my nose throbbing and my stomach grinding because I’d puked from the pain, and we’re driving back up here, and she goes, ‘That Tyler boy. His father works for me. Well, for the company. He runs that little hotel on Main Street.’ And I knew that, of course, but I didn’t really care what his dad did for a living, so I think I just grunted or something. And then she said, ‘If you want, I’ll fire him.’
“I laughed because I thought she was joking with me. Like it was one of those, ‘Want me to kill him?’ things. Just something you say when a person hurts someone you love. Not something you actually do. But she was dead serious. ‘I can have the whole bed-and-breakfast shut down, actually,’ she said. ‘And the bank that has the mortgage on their house is obviously very keen to keep my business, so that’s another avenue to pursue. If you want.’”
Jules’s arms tighten around her knees, and I smile wryly. “I said no. In fact, I said, ‘It was a stupid fight, Ruby. You don’t ruin a guy’s life over that.’”
You might not, Ruby had said, her eyes staring straight ahead. Others would.
“And that’s when I remembered there had been other instances like this. Times when something shitty would happen, and she’d offer to use various weapons at her disposal to right the scales, and I always said no.”
The girl who dumped me right before my first homecoming dance. The guy who dinged my new car in the parking lot of the Food Mart, then acted like it was somehow my fault.
“I’d seen Howell pull similar strings for Libby and Ben, and I had no doubt Nelle had done the same for Howell, but it always felt gross to me, you know? So, I just thought Ruby was doing what this family did. I didn’t realize it was a test.”
You didn’t want me to make Tyler Hayes pay for what he’d done to you. You’re a good person, Camden, Ruby had said, moving to the bed and turning down the covers. At your core. I have given you every privilege, every advantage, everything that every McTavish has had since the first one showed up here three hundred years ago. And every McTavish since then has grown more self-centered, more uncaring. Not a one of them should have this. But you, my darling boy?
She had gotten into the bed, folding her hands on top of the sheets.
You are my redemption.
“Redemption,” I echo to Jules. “That’s what she called me.”
Jules is frowning now, but she’s still listening.
“And then,” I say on a sigh, “she told me about the pills.”
* * *
MY REDEMPTION, SHE repeats. And I’m going to prove it to you.
Her face looks beatific, skin almost unlined despite her age.
You want to be free of me, from all of this, but I’ve made that impossible for you. If I were to die, though … well, then you’d have what you wanted. Money, which you say you don’t care about, but also freedom. An entire fortune at your disposal, and no one to stop you from doing what you see fit with it.