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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,SHErepeats.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.
But she doesn’t say “see,” exactly. Thesslides, s-s-s-s-see, a hiss almost, and I notice one eyelid drooping.
I’ve made it… so easy for you.
Her words are slowing down, and she waves one hand lazily at her nightstand.
Not even sure what all I took. Think… think some pills still left from… from Duke, things they-they don’t… sell the-ese days-s-s. As soon as I s-a-saw your… your car. In the drive. Swallowed them down w-with a glass…
She smiles then, hazy.
A glass of the 1959 Dom.
My stomach lurches and I rise to my feet.
What have you done? What the fuck have you done?
You could let me… let me die and get all you ever wanted. B-but you won’t. Just like… like you never told th-them. About Dora Darnell.
Her smile widens, teeth glinting.About me. You wouldn’t… wouldn’t do that. And you’re not going to do that. Not going to dothis. You’re… you’re going to call… call the… ambulance, the siren…
Her eyes open and close, the lids heavy, then lifting quickly, her thick lashes blinking against her pale cheeks, chest heaving.
B-better than me,she says on a wheezing breath.I made you better th-than all of us… I made you…
She keeps smiling at me, and then her smile starts to change.
Camden.
Confusion on her face, then something that would be panic were the drugs not pulling her under. A jerky movement, a thin hand slapping at her nightstand, nails tapping the acrylic of the French phone by her bed, and suddenly I find my legs.
I don’t even think, I don’t let myself think.
I pick the phone up, unplugging the cord from the back, and clutching it to my chest, I begin to back away from the bed.
Ruby watches me, panting now, fighting to keep her eyes open, her mouth opening to scream, but all that comes out is a breathy sort of moan, and I keep backing up, backing up, backing up until my heels hit the wall, my head thumping back, my eyes never leaving her.
As Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore slowly dies in her bed, I sink down against the wall, holding on to the phone so tightly that later, I’ll find red grooves in my palms, a bruise making a purple line against the skin of my chest.
