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Not physically, at least. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally… oh, he left me in those ways. But he stayed in thehouse, stayed my husband, and the longer that went on, the more unbearable it started to feel.
Even now I ask myself why he stayed. I’ve had over thirty years to wonder over it, and I think he was waiting to get past it. To love me again. Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe.
At the time, however, those darker thoughts crept back in. Duke had wanted my money and my body and my fear. Hugh had wanted some idealized version of me, a woman on a pedestal. Andrew had, I believed, wanted me for me. But what if I’d been wrong? What if it was the money, the easy life in Ashby House, the heightened attention on his art that came from being the husband of a wealthy woman?
When I first started slipping the ant killer into his morning tea—just the smallest amount, never enough to kill—I didn’t actually want him to die. I just wanted to bring an end to the torture for us both.
Surely, he’d realize what was happening, and he would tell someone. Part of me even hoped he’d call the police, and I’d be forced to face some punishment for my sins. At the very least, he’d finally leave me, end the charade that we were both stuck in.
As he got sicker, thinner, I waited. For him to drive down that mountain and never return, to tell someone what I’d done to Duke and Hugh, what he now thought—what he must have known—I was doing to him.
But instead, I watched Andrew sit there in Dr. Donaldson’s office, nodding as he said the symptoms might be from all the years of exposure to his paints and their chemicals. Or, perhaps it was some kind of rare infection, or an autoimmune disease they had yet to detect. There were all kinds of ideas and theories thrown his way, charcoal tablets prescribed,sleep studies scheduled, and never once did Andrew say, “Or, perhaps my murderous wife is killing me.”
Not once.
I’ve never understood that. Even when he was retching in agony, even when I got more and more reckless––with bigger doses in his lukewarm tea and oatmeal, the only things he could keep down––he never said a word, never took those fucking tablets that might have saved him.
He just looked at me with those sad eyes of his, and I wanted him to die and I wanted him to live and I wanted someone to stop me, to march into Ashby House with handcuffs, a straitjacket, even, and finally—finally—put an end to it.
But no one ever did.
The worst thing, the thing I can’t even bear to think about all these years later, is that, in the end, I stopped.
No more ant killer, no more tea or oatmeal. Andrew had proven to me that he was loyal, that even if he didn’t love me anymore, he couldn’t bring himself to hate me despite all I’d done to him.
But it was too late. His kidneys, his liver, they’d endured too much damage over that long year.
The longest year of my life.
Andrew died on another wintery night, late December of 1980, snow falling outside, as soft as his final breath.
No rattle this time. Just a gentle sigh, then nothing more.
How unfair I’d been to all those novelists and their quiet deaths.
There was no autopsy because I said I didn’t want one, and by that point, what I wanted, I got, at least where Tavistock County was concerned.
Harlan Jackson Sr. took my check and patted my hand, telling me he’d handle everything.
Judge Claybourne was so appreciative of my donation to his reelection campaign.
The town was grateful for its new arts center the following year, Andrew’s name emblazoned above the doors in metal letters.
My home and my name closed around me, protecting me, shielding me, their queen in her castle who was secretly the dragon.
Well. Not a secret any longer, is it, my darling?
Not to you.
-R
CHAPTER TWELVECamden
There are plenty of rooms in Ashby House that are comfortable. Cozy, even. The den is fairly modern with its earth-toned furniture and cream-colored rugs. There’s a sitting room in the east wing that actually has a flat-screen TV and a couple of gaming systems from when Ben and I were kids. And the kitchen was totally renovated to Cecilia’s specifications right before Ruby died.
But Ashby’s formal dining room hasn’t changed since 1904, and as I take my seat next to Jules at the teakwood table Ruby’s grandfather had shipped over from what was then Siam, I find my eyes landing on all the other bits of McTavish family history in this room.
There’s a black lacquered sideboard holding crystal bottles of expensive liquor that even Howell had never dared to touch without Nelle’s or Ruby’s blessing. The walls are covered in silk, deep green with a swirling gold pattern, and the chandelier overhead glimmers, despite the cobweb I can see clinging between several of the crystals.
