Chapter 2
Present Day
It wasn’t like Bethany had been gone very long. It certainly hadn’t been long enough for Nick to suggest she’d “abandoned her family.” The words still felt like a smack.
Bethany pulled into the driveway of their exquisite home—a mini mansion with startlingly old trees surrounding it, draped with Savannah moss. The columns along the front and back porches were reminiscent of plantations. However, Bethany knew their home had been built after the Civil War and had not been involved in anything sinister. Updates to the home allowed for a garage door, which pulled up now to allow her to park alongside her husband’s Porsche. They’d lived here for years. Bethany expected herself to grow warm with recognition, especially after the heinous and very long drive from Nantucket Island. But instead, her stomach cramped with dread.
Bethany entered the house through the garage and stood at the kitchen counter for a full minute, listening as the house creaked around her. Ordinarily, it was vibrant with laughter from her three children—the thirteen-year-old twins, Maddie and Tommy, and the ten-year-old, Phoebe. But the television was off. There weren’t half-made snacks strewn across the counter. They weren’t home.
“Nick? Hello?” Bethany called.
No answer.
Bethany opened the fridge to find a half-drank bottle of white wine. She poured herself a glass and sat in the living room, grateful for the air-conditioning, which churned against the July heat. She couldn’t shake a feeling of unreality. This had been her first trip back to Nantucket since the age of eighteen—her first reunion with her sisters, Rebecca and Valerie, her mother, Esme, and her father, Victor Sutton. And for reasons that felt beyond her, they’d all gotten along beautifully.
This year had been hard on the Suttons. Rebecca’s husband, Fred, had died in a car accident in Maine. Esme’s second husband, Larry, had died recently. And Victor and his second wife, the secretary he’d abandoned the family for, were getting divorced.
When Victor had learned of Larry’s death, he’d gone to Maine to recruit Rebecca. He wanted to bring the family back together again. He wanted to heal.
Rebecca had contacted Bethany when they’d arrived on Nantucket. Esme was nowhere to be found, and her beloved Nantucket Book Club was on the verge of monetary collapse.
Bethany had fled Savannah. She’d run from her surgical practice, alienating marriage, and the life she’d built for the past twenty-five years. She’d gone to Nantucket to help out and found tremendous love and hope in the arms of her first nuclear family. It had been surprising and heart-wrenching.
And now that she was back, she was reeling.
Her children didn’t know their grandparents. Her children probably couldn’t point to Nantucket Island on a map. She suddenly ached, wanting to load them up in her car and drive them back for the summer of a lifetime.
She heard a creak on the staircase. Nick appeared at the bottom a few seconds later, his face sallow and grim. He carried several coffee mugs as though he’d been locked up in his office for days, wallowing.
“Hey,” Bethany breathed.
Nick stopped short. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Bethany raised her shoulders. She’d texted him hours ago to tell him her estimated arrival time.
Nick shuffled toward the kitchen to drop the mugs in the kitchen sink. Bethany’s shoulders were suddenly heavy and tired. Despite many years of marriage, she’d still been unable to convince Nick to put things in the dishwasher. Even now, there was grime at the bottom of the sink, proof that a big pile had been there recently. Who had done them? Bethany was eighty percent sure it had been her eldest daughter, Maddie.
The tradition of women only in the kitchen would continue. She rubbed her temples.
“So? How did it go?” Nick asked. He didn’t smile but poured himself a glass of wine from the fridge.
“It was great,” Bethany said. “My father seems apologetic. And he helped out so much.”
Bethany explained briefly about the veterans’ dinner, the old books Victor had sold to save Doug and Ben’s house, her mother’s devastation after Larry’s death, and the fact that Esme and Victor had finally sat down together to discuss their young son’s death from so very long ago.
Nick listened quietly and palmed the back of his neck. Bethany couldn’t figure out whether he was tired, distracted, or uninterested. When was the last time her husband had looked at her and genuinely listened to her? When had that filtered out of their marriage?
“Where are the kids?” Bethany asked.
“All at friends’ places,” Nick said. “I needed them out so I could focus.”
“Oh? What’s up?”
Nick gestured vaguely toward his office. “Big surgery this week. I haven’t fully nailed down a plan.”
Bethany’s fingers tingled. She liked nothing more than diving into a medical problem. Every patient offered a unique set of difficulties. Early in their careers and relationships, Nick and Bethany helped one another with their strategies and supported one another on their quest to “save the world.”
But things had changed. After a few minor legal problems within the medical community—nothing Bethany could speak about publicly or even in private, Nick had been looked over for an enormous promotion he’d always assumed would be coming to him. (After all, his father was Dr. Bob Waterstone. Bob had supposedly cleared the way for him and told him he was the chosen one.)
Horribly for Nick, the promotion had been given to Bethany. She now oversaw the entire surgical department at their Savannah hospital. She took only the unique and special cases and was considered a “force of feminine power” in an otherwise male-dominated industry. Many female medical students had approached her to thank her for all she’d done. They said they wouldn’t have found the strength to embark on this career without her trailblazing attitude.
Bethany knew it had been a struggle for Nick and her father-in-law when she’d taken Bob’s old position. She’d sat through many strained family dinners. She’d felt a horrific distance open up between herself and Nick.
But she couldn”t say no when she’d been offered the position. It was all she’d been working for since her little brother’s death.
Plain and simple, Nick wasn’t good enough. And she, Nick, and Bob Waterstone knew that to be true.
“I’d be happy to talk through your procedure if you want,” Bethany said now, refilling her glass of wine. “Like old times.”
Nick’s face stiffened.
“Two heads are better than one,” Bethany offered. “And besides, I’ve missed you the past few weeks. I don’t want you to be cooped up alone in your office.”
It was true that she had missed him. In Nantucket, she’d confessed that her marriage was flailing, and she and Nick often fought in the garage so their children couldn’t hear. But she’d also made up her mind to fix everything. She was Bethany Sutton Waterstone, for crying out loud. She could do anything.
Eventually, Nick acquiesced and led her to his office upstairs, where he outlined the patient’s details and specific difficulties. Bethany listened intently, loving how heated he got when he encountered a complex problem. He waved his hands and tugged his thick head of hair. Over the years, he’d gotten even more handsome than when they’d been twenty-six. His arms were lined with muscles, and the wrinkles around his eyes and forehead gave him a rugged look. She had to keep herself from swooning when he wore suits and tuxedos.
When they argued, Bethany sometimes accused herself of having fallen for him due to his looks and looks alone. But then, she forced herself to remember how kind he’d been to her initially—when she hadn’t had two pennies to rub together or a single friend to call her own.
That was why she’d fallen in love. His looks had been the cherry on top.
It didn’t take long for Bethany to suggest a strategy for Nick’s difficult patient. She pointed out that the patient was iron deficient and prone to infection, which meant he had to operate on a “get-in, get-out” basis. More than that, she reminded him of a special surgery they’d watched on a medical streaming platform last summer, which outlined a different entry plan than what they’d previously learned in medical school. One that involved AI technology. “I think it’s finally time you try it out!” she said excitedly. “This is the perfect patient. And then, you can tell me how it went.”
Bethany hadn’t yet encountered patients with whom she could try out the new AI strategy. She beamed, eager to learn if this new path into the body was better and more beneficial for the patient’s health and recovery.
As Bethany outlined the plan, all the blood drained from Nick’s face. She recognized this expression. Annoyance sparkled in his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Bethany asked, her excitement dwindling.
Nick raised his shoulders and rolled his eyes.
“Well,” Nick said flippantly, “aren’t you just a genius?”
“We watched that video, Nick, because we wanted to learn to be better surgeons. Together.” She grimaced, realizing she’d made a grave error. In helping him, she reminded him again that she’d gotten the promotion he wanted. That she had the career he’d been meant to have. That he’d married the woman who’d bested him.
It didn’t take long for Nick to retire to bed. It was late, and the kids weren’t coming back till tomorrow. Bethany remained awake downstairs and clicked through her phone, looking at photos she’d taken in Nantucket—photos of her mother and her sisters, of the churning Nantucket Sound, even one of her father raising a single eyebrow in a way that made her chuckle sadly.
How she ached to see them again!
It was bizarre to be home, to feel the sinister black cloud of Nick’s mood awaiting her in bed. When she slid in beside him, she could tell he was awake and considered saying something. Maybe she should apologize for being a know-it-all? Perhaps she should tell him she loved him?
But instead, she remembered what Nick had said to her when he’d learned about her promotion. “You know it’s just because you’re a woman, right? The hospital’s woke culture is out of control.”
He’d apologized later, of course. But by then, the metaphorical knife of his words had been too deep to pull out.
He respected her, and she knew that. He respected her enough to have her carry his three children and name. But he didn’t respect her enough in the medical world—the space in which they’d met, studied alongside one another, and fought to make the world a better place. And perhaps he would resent her forever.
Was she willing to live like that? She didn’t know. All she knew was that in returning to Nantucket, she’d remembered a side of herself she thought she’d never return to. And that side of herself would never have allowed this kind of emotional abuse.