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That’s when I found the email Howell sent, just a few nights before he died. Yes, it was full of drunken assholery, but Cam hadn’t deleted it, and I’d started to wonder: if the same request—to come home, to sort out the financial tangle they were all trapped in—came from someone more reasonable, someone who didn’t write the first email I’d ever read that actuallysmelledlike Johnnie Walker Black, would Cam heed it?
It was a risk. A big one.
But like I said, I’m a quick learner.
I knew reaching out to Nelle was out of the question—I was going to have to play this carefully, and enlisting the help of a septuagenarian whose only online presence was a listing in her church’s directory and one blurry Facebook photo from something called “A Cake Bee” was not going to get this done.
I considered Libby for a long time. For one, she was very online and very easy to contact. For another, we’re close in age––we even look a little bit alike––and I thought that might make it easier to build some kind of kinship with her. But there was always something about her, some slyness in her expression, something about all the jobs, the vacations, the flightiness, that made me think I couldn’t trust her.
And of course, there were the exclamation points. Couldn’t risk Camden seeing an email with the subject line, JULES AND LIBBY’S SUPER SECRET PLAN!!
So in the end, Ben was really the only choice. But he was also the right one.
Ben wasn’t quite as hard-core as Libby when it came to social media, but he was on there, and it didn’t take very much scrolling to see that almost everything he posted had a common theme.
A picture of him in the woods, hiking poles planted firmly on either side of him, his teeth glowing, and a caption reading,Nothing like hiking in your own backyard! #TavistockNC #AshbyHouse #RootsWhereIStand #BothMetaphoricalAndLiteral #lol
A long Facebook post about some hardware store in Tavistock, reminding us to “shop local,” and “when my great-great-grandfather” this, and “being a steward, not an owner,” and, I shit you not, the word “ancestral” used three times in two paragraphs.
Over and over again, from his handles––@McTav on Twitter, @McTav_2 on Instagram, @TavistockedAndLoaded on TikTok, where he exclusively posted videos of Tavistock and Ashby House—to his online bio at the law firm where he worked (Benjamin McTavish resides in the iconic Ashby House), it was clear that being a McTavish was maybe the most important thing in Ben’s entire life.
How it must sting, knowing that the name was the only thing he could really lay claim to.
Once I knew the bait to use, dangling the hook was easy.
And that’s why Ben thinks I’m on his side. That I’m going to talk Cam into taking some kind of reasonable settlement from the trust and turning over the rest of it—the house, the bulk of the money, whatever else comes with this kind of life—to the McTavishes. Ruby’sactualfamily. Everyone gets what they want, or so Ben believes. Camden gets his freedom, I get some money, and they get to keep Ashby House, and preserve the McTavish legacy.
But as you and I both know, I’m playing for the whole thing.
This is why I wanted you to understand that I really do love Camden. This isn’tjustabout the money. This is about us taking back what belongs to him and living the life we deserve.
Yes,we. Because I deserve this shit, too.
I grew up in a trailer park in Panama City. I’ve dug in the seats of my car for spare change to pay for hamburgers at McDonald’s. I’ve gone without running water for a week so that we could keep the power on in the summer.
I’ve watched the Nelles and the Libbys and the Bens from the fancier suburbs drive by in nice cars, spending money like they’ll always have it.
So, yeah, fucking sue me: when I found out the man I was married to had access to that kind of wealth, but wouldn’t touch it because the family who adopted him was a bag of dicks?
I thought,Fuck that,and tried to figure out how to fix it.
That was a lot of swearing, but this topic always gets me heated. Camden is worth a thousand of them, a genuinely kind and decent person. Ruby McTavish saw that, and I’d wager she saw what her family was, too (though she probably wouldn’t have called them a bag of dicks). That’s why she left Camden everything. She saw what I see in those different-colored eyes every time I look at him––someone worthy. Someone with integrity.
That’s not me. Like I said, I’m not that great of a person. Lying, scheming, sins of omission… I didn’t major in theater for nothing. But that’s why Cam and I are so perfect together.
He makes me feel like more than some Florida trailer park trash, like I’m every bit as shiny and good as he is. But he needs me to do the harder things, the shady things, thenecessarythings. Things that might tarnish his shine.
So, are we good? Do you get it?
Because right now, I have some shopping to do.
When Camden came back from town the other day, he told me it was looking “down in the mouth.” I could tell that itbothered him, the idea of his hometown drying up, but to me? The girl from Shady Palms Trailer Park near Tallahassee?
Tavistock seems pretty goddamn idyllic. It’s like every small town from a Hallmark movie, but on speed. Vaguely Bavarian buildings, a whole section of the main thoroughfare that’s closed to traffic and is pedestrian-only, and more places to buyLIFE IS GOODT-shirts than any town probably needs.
I love it immediately.
I wander for a while, stopping into a bookstore, a stationery place. I pick up a journal for Cam, and a pretty plaid scarf for me, the kind of thing I can see myself wearing on foggy mornings, driving down from the mountain in my brand-new Mercedes SUV, picking up coffee, tipping extravagantly, hearing people say when I leave, “That’s Mrs. McTavish. She owns Ashby House.”
