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You’re a little old for teenage rebellion, Camden, and frankly, I’m tired of this discussion. Transfer to Duke, transfer to Wake Forest, but you have responsibilities to this family, and I will be damned if you abandon them!
“I stopped taking her calls. She stopped paying my bills. I got a job working at a restaurant in Chapel Hill only to have the manager call me into his office after my first shift and say that he needed to let me go.”
I laugh bitterly, shaking my head. “It took two more jobs that shitcanned me after only a day to realize what Ruby was doing. As long as I was in North Carolina, I was within her reach. In trying to make it hard for me to leave, she only proved why I couldn’t stay.”
“Is that…”
Jules’s voice is whisper-thin, and she stops, takes a deep breath. “Is that why? So that you could be free?”
It’s not an absolution, but it’s not a condemnation, either. She hasn’t gotten up, hasn’t run out screaming, and fuck knows I shouldn’t be dumb enough to hope for anything more, but that’s what the little spark in my chest feels like right now.
“I don’t know,” I tell her truthfully. “Maybe? I didn’t… it wasn’t something I planned. I didn’t come here that night to… to do that.”
But I’d just lost another job, my credit cards were frozen, my bank account was locked. I’d told myself I didn’t need her money, I could make it on my own. I didn’t care if I slept in my car and ate cheap hot dogs and canned chili for the rest of my life, though of course, I didn’t realize how naïve that was. For one thing, the car wasn’t mine, and a phone call from Ruby would’ve had it on the back of a tow truck within the hour. And if I couldn’t keep a job for more than two days, I couldn’t make enough money to buy hot dogs, much less a new car, and the more jobs I lost, the harder it would be to get new ones. Everywhere I turned, there was some new, Ruby-shaped roadblock in front of me. Every path of escape had slowly been cut off.
“I didn’t realize how hard it would be,” I tell Jules now, and when she blanches, I lift a hand, shaking my head.
“No. No, I don’t mean that… part. I mean, justleaving. I didn’t understand how every part of my life was tied to Ruby.To what she’d given me. To what she could take away. When I came up here that night, all I wanted to do was talk to her, to see if we could find some kind of compromise. I thought there had to be a way, you know? I thought…”
I thought I could find the right words to make her see reason, to let me go. What I didn’t get was that there was nothingreasonableabout any of this to Ruby.
That Ruby wouldneverlet me go.
I breathe in through my nose, knowing I have to finish this.
“It was raining that night. Ben was off at college and Libby was in town.” I laugh, but there’s no actual mirth in it. “So, yeah, she was lying at dinner, but she was also telling the truth in a fucked-up way. Howell was doing some guys’ fishing weekend down in Georgia. Nelle was upstairs watching TV—she got really obsessed withDownton Abbey. A rich family in England, that big house, World War One? Classic Nelle.”
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 fuckingkneesright 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 herhands on my face. They were cold. Almost… almost slimy. From the cream she used. She was smiling at me. I was crying, and she wassmiling. 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 actuallydo. 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. “Isaid no. In fact, I said, ‘It was a stupid fight, Ruby. You don’t ruin a guy’s life over that.’”
Youmight 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.”
