Chapter 20
Benedict
The low hum of the ultrasound machine fills the room. It’s steady, rhythmic, but my chest still feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice.
Was I this nervous the first time?
Meredith, the midwife, is speaking calmly as she guides the probe across Maddie’s stomach.
“Everything looks good for three months along,” she says, her voice practiced and serene.
“The heartbeat is strong. At sixteen to twenty weeks, we’ll schedule the anatomy scan—see growth, organs, sex if you want to know. ”
Her words float around me like pollen I can’t catch. I’m focused on the grainy image flickering across the monitor. A small form, shadow, and light, impossibly delicate. Our child.
A wave of fear and excitement crash through me. Our child. I’m going to be a father again.
It’s only now that I’m realizing, all these years—even before Georgiana passed away—I thought I was nearing a dead end. That there would be no new chapters for the life I’m living.
What else could I possibly achieve in life?
But this—Maddie, her big eyes glued to the screen, Stella tearing up, and our child only a breath away—this is more than I could have ever imagined.
Maddie squeezes my hand, smiling faintly through the glow of the screen. “See, Ben? They’re fine.”
I nod, though the knot in my chest doesn’t ease. Fine now. What about tomorrow? What about every day after? The responsibility presses against me with unbearable weight—because if something happens, it will be my failure. My blood has never brought joy without cost.
Meredith turns off the machine, removes her gloves. “All good signs. Keep eating, keep resting. I’ll check in again soon. And I’m happy to come out to the lodge,” her eyes catch mine meaningfully as Maddie starts to sit up, “if you two would prefer.”
Maddie pulls her cardigan around her shoulders, presses a paper towel to the cold gel on her belly. “Thanks, Meredith.”
“Of course.” The midwife gathers her things, polite smile in place. “I’ll see you next week.”
When she leaves the room, Maddie slips off the exam bed, cheeks flushed. “I’ll just run to the restroom—get cleaned up.” She looks to Stella, who has been perched in the chair like a hawk the whole time. “Don’t let him brood while I’m gone, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.” Stella grins, and Maddie disappears out the door.
The grin vanishes the second the latch clicks. Stella swivels toward me, crossing her arms. For a moment I’m almost amused—she’s twenty-two and somehow manages to look like she runs this entire resort. And she obviously has Maddie wrapped around her finger.
“You scare her sometimes,” she says flatly.
I arch a brow. “Excuse me?”
“You sit there like a storm cloud, saying nothing, and she wonders if you regret all of it—her, the baby, the marriage. But I know you don’t.” Her gaze sharpens. “Do you?”
“No,” I snap. Too quickly, too sharp.
Stella doesn’t flinch. “Then prove it. Protect her. Don’t use her up and toss her aside when you get bored. She deserves better than being another one of your business deals.”
The accusation lashes, and for once I don’t have the armor ready. I lean forward, jaw tight. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I haven’t considered what this means?”
Her eyes flicker. She wasn’t expecting me to rise to it.
“Would you keep her safe, Ben?” There’s a light, almost pleading edge to the words, giving me pause. “If something happened. if there was a threat. You’d keep her safe, right? Not throw her to the wolves?”
Throw her to the wolves.
The question gives me pause. What wolves could possibly be out there? Not the high society of Aspen, no, those morons are more like magpies; noisy, chattering, gossiping constantly.
“Of course.”
There’s no thought, just the response. The weight of it sitting in the room with us. Stella sits back, arms still crossed, eyes still troubled, but the edge of anxiety is gone now.
Has Madeline really been doubting me that much, that her little sister is ready to tear my throat out in an OBGYN office?
“I care for her,” I bite out, the words dragging like gravel from my throat. “More than I should. More than I ever thought I would again. I can’t… I won’t hurt her.”
The silence after is startling.
Her mouth opens, then closes. Finally, she smirks faintly, but there’s softness there. “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”
The door opens, and Maddie steps back inside, cardigan snug, cheeks pink. She stops when she sees our faces. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say too smoothly.
“Absolutely nothing,” Stella echoes, far too bright. She holds out the little prints that Meredith made for us, images of the future though we can’t see much in them now.
Maddie narrows her eyes, suspicious, but Stella just flashes her a sly smile. The tension dissolves under Maddie’s exasperated laugh.
That night, I watch Maddie cling to Stella in the foyer of the lodge. Her arms are wrapped tight, her eyes wet.
They don’t know I’m here, just in the shadows, come to say my own goodbye to the little spitfire who lights this place up. Maddie is a warm glow, but Stella has swooped in these last weeks, crackling and full of energy.
“I don’t want you to go,” my wife whispers.
“You’ll be fine without me,” Stella says, squeezing back just as fiercely. “You’ve got Ben now. He’ll take care of you.”
Maddie laughs through tears, shaking her head. “You sound like you believe it.”
It’s an arrow in an old wound, but I don’t let it bend me. It’s deserved. Still, despite the confrontation with Stella at the doctor’s office, I haven’t found a moment to sit down with Maddie and reassure her.
“I do.” Stella shoots me a look over Maddie’s shoulder. A warning, a promise. I haven’t fooled her by standing in the shadows, and now I step out of them, going to my wife.
She wipes her tears away, backs up into the shelter of my arm.
I’m surprised by how much Stella’s leaving affects me, and before I think too much about it, I murmur: “You’ll be missed.
Come back whenever you’d like; I’ll keep that suite for you, and any room you want at the resort, if you’d rather. ”
Her laugh is a vibrant, smokey sound, reminiscent of Maddie’s but brighter and louder. I tug my wife closer, happy to have her, happy to see her reflected in someone else. How did her parents, so cold and aloof, create these two?
“You’ll regret that offer,” Stella promises, a sweet smile on her lips as she gives me a hug.
When the driver takes her away, Maddie stays at the window long after the car lights vanish. Her shoulders sag, her body folding into itself.
Later, when I find her curled on the bed, she looks up at me with eyes that are too full. “Will you stay tonight? I just… I don’t want to be alone.”
The plea carves into me.
I strip off my jacket, loosen my tie, and climb in beside her.
She leans against me without hesitation, head on my chest, her breath warm through my shirt.
My hands find her back, kneading gently, the knots in her shoulders easing under my touch.
I can feel her stomach pressed against me—the little swell of it, the start of our secret coming to light.
“Better?” I murmur.
“Mhm.” Her voice is drowsy, small. “Feels good.”
I massage her slowly, carefully, tracing the tension down her spine. She melts against me, sighing, eyes fluttering closed. There’s no urgency, no hunger—just closeness, the fragile comfort of being needed.
At one point, she stirs, whispering, “Stella told me something sad today. About Montana.”
I pause. “Montana?”
“There’s this stretch of land—eighty acres near the foothills. I’ve always loved it. Used to say I’d buy it one day, build a house there. She said it’s being sold to developers now.” A soft, wistful sigh. “Breaks my heart a little. Feels like something beautiful is about to be erased.”
I smooth a hand over her hair. “The world does that. Erases what’s beautiful if you don’t hold onto it.”
She hums sleepily against me, and I press my lips to her forehead. “I knew you’d understand,” she half-yawns. “Of all the places you could settle, you chose here.”
So, she’s discovered that poorly-kept secret, then. No surprise: the lodge is remote, and I try several times a week to get out into the woods, to forget the chains that lock me to my business. Instead of the realization pushing me away from her, I only feel closer to Madeline.
For once, I don’t think about Georgiana. Or Derrick. Or the ghosts that stalk me.
I only think of Maddie, small and fierce in my arms, and the terrifying truth that I would do anything to keep her safe.
Anything.