Still, I liked writing with you, and I miss it. I miss you, which is strange since we only met that one time. But I guess once someone has shared their murder confessions with you, you feel a certain bond.
Or maybe it’s a family thing. I mean, you’re my great-aunt after all.
Were my great-aunt.
It was a gut punch, reading about your death online. Heart failure, huh? Don’t you have to have a heart for it to fail? （You should imagine a little cymbal crash here, by the way. Or was that joke too mean? I guess it doesn’t matter, what with you being dead. Anyway, I still think you’d laugh.） For a month or so, I waited for … I don’t know. Something. Like, maybe someone would find my letters to you and would know to get in contact with me. Or that there’d be one last secret bequest in your will, and I’d get to show up all dramatic and in a black veil to whispers of, Who is she? （It’s possible I watched a lot of soap operas with my mom as a kid.） Instead, there was nothing but silence.
It’s so weird that for the last year, you’ve been such a big part of my life, and I’d like to think that I was a big part of yours, and yet nobody knew. Now nobody will ever know.
Except me.
When it became clear that no one was getting in touch with me, that you didn’t have any other tricks up your sleeve, I figured I should probably abandon our whole plan. What was the point if you were gone? I mean, sure: I knew that Cam was cute and rich, but I figured there were other cute and rich guys out there, maybe even ones with less fucked-up families （although I’ll admit, probably not any with a house as amazing as Ashby）。
Still, I’d already been thinking about moving to California, and I had that money you gave me when we met, so I thought, “Why the fuck not?”
（I’ll try to stick to only one “fuck” in this letter, too. It was a good rule, and I’m sorry my first letter to you probably sounded like a Quentin Tarantino script. You probably don’t know who that is. And it doesn’t matter because I am writing to a dead person who will not read this. But that’s hard to remember sometimes. I guess it’s because I’ve got your letters here in front of me. When I read them, I can see you and hear you so clearly, it’s like you’re in the room with me.） （But also, please don’t be in the room with me—this situation is weird enough without adding ghosts to the mix.） Anyway. California.
I wasn’t going for Cam, I was going for me. Might as well try out the acting thing for real, right? And I had a friend from high school in San Bernardino, so off I went.
I’m not gonna lie, so far, it kind of sucks. California is expensive, for one thing, and also San Bernardino is not L.A. I’m not exactly getting discovered babysitting for my neighbor’s kids, you know? So it has not been the best time, and I was honestly thinking about heading home.
And then tonight happened.
God, Ruby, I wish you were really here. I wish you’d really read this. You probably wouldn’t believe me, but that’s okay. You’d laugh, at the very least. You’d spread your hands wide and say something like, Fait accompli, darling, and I’d wonder yet again if in addition to being a murderess, you were a witch.
Because it had to be magic, Ruby. It had to be something.
I met Camden.
Not on purpose! I didn’t seek him out. I wouldn’t have even known how to, since he seems very committed to never appearing on any social media, ever. But tonight, I walked into this place called Senor Pollo’s, and there he was, behind the bar.
I recognized him from the pictures you sent, and for a second, I’m pretty sure I just stood there with my mouth hanging open because how, right? Of all the wing places and all that.
He smiled at me. He poured me a beer. We talked, and we …
You know what? I’m gonna preserve a little mystery there.
I feel like you’d understand.
Was it fate? Destiny?
Ruby, was it you?
EPILOGUE
Jules
Eight Months Later
Mountain views are overrated.
Watching the morning sun break through the clouds over a navy-blue sea, whitecaps foaming, I sip my herbal tea and let that familiar contentment sink into me, wiggling my toes in the warm sand beneath my chair.
I keep thinking I’ll get tired of it eventually, sitting here just after sunrise, another gorgeous day unfurling before my eyes. But it’s been five months since we bought this place on a tiny spit of land off the coast of South Carolina, and I still feel my stomach flip with happiness every morning.
Or maybe, I think, resting my hand on the firm curve of my stomach, that’s just my little freeloader here.