18. Elizabeth
— ? —
Elizabeth
Two months since I left.
I’m driving back to the Fairweather estate for one reason only: to collect the last of my things.
My paints. My supplies. The jewelry my mother left me - the string of pearls she wore on her wedding day, the garnet earrings my father gave her for their tenth anniversary.
Small things, precious things, the only inheritance I have beyond grief.
I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. Didn’t want a welcome committee. Didn’t want advance warning to reach the staff, to reach Esther, to reach him. I just want to slip in, gather what’s mine, and slip out again before the house can sink its teeth back into me.
But when I pull into the drive, I see cars.
Expensive cars, lined up along the circular approach like a parade of wealth. Lights blaze from the dining room windows. Movement inside - figures passing back and forth, the choreography of a social gathering.
A family dinner. Of course.
Because the universe has a cruel sense of humor, and I have apparently not yet suffered enough.
I almost turn around. Almost put the car in reverse and drive back to the cottage, back to the safety of my small life and my paints and my carefully constructed peace. I can come back tomorrow, when the house is empty. When there’s no chance of-
But my mother’s pearls are in that house.
I will be damned if I leave them behind.
I park at the far edge of the drive, away from the other cars. I enter through the service entrance, the one the caterers use, and for a moment I’m just another person moving through the margins of the Fairweather world, invisible and unremarkable.
The hallway is quiet. I can hear voices from the dining room - the clink of crystal, the murmur of conversation, Victoria’s distinctive laugh cutting through the ambient noise like a blade.
Victoria is here. Of course she is. Where else would she be, now that I’ve vacated the position she never stopped believing was rightfully hers?
I move toward the back stairs, the ones that lead up to the bedroom I used to occupy. If I’m careful, if I’m quick, I can be in and out before anyone knows I was here.
Victoria’s voice carries again, clearer now as I pass the dining room entrance.
“-simply too painful to watch. The girl clearly doesn’t belong here. Better for everyone that she’s gone.”
I freeze.
The words hit me like a slap - not because they’re cruel, but because they’re so casually, confidently cruel. As if my absence is a relief to be celebrated. As if I was always just a problem to be solved.
“Quite right.” Esther’s voice, satisfied and sharp. “The marriage was a mistake from the beginning. A debt to a dying man, nothing more.”
“That is enough.”
Jarec’s voice - low, hard, nothing like the controlled cool I remember. “I’ve been telling you for the past hour, Mother. I came home tonight to a dining room full of your guests and her sitting at my table as if I’d invited her. I didn’t. I want her gone. I want all of you gone-”
“Sit down, darling.” Esther, smooth as poured cream. “You’re embarrassing yourself in front of half the coast.”
I should leave.
I should turn around and come back tomorrow, when I don’t have to hear my own irrelevance discussed over expensive wine and imported cheeses.
I should preserve whatever dignity I’ve rebuilt over the past two months and refuse to let these people see how much their words still have the power to wound.
Instead, I walk into the dining room.
***
The table falls silent.
The faces around the table turn toward me - Esther at the head, Victoria positioned strategically at Jarec’s right hand, assorted relatives and society figures filling out the rest of the seats.
Crystal gleams. Silver shines. The centerpiece is an elaborate arrangement of white roses that probably cost more than my monthly expenses at the cottage.
And at the center of it all, already on his feet at the far end of the table - whatever argument I interrupted still burning across his face - is Jarec.
He sees me the moment I appear in the doorway. His face goes through something I can’t quite read - shock, then something that might be hope, then a careful blankness that I recognize from months of studying him across dinner tables just like this one.
“Elizabeth.” Victoria’s voice drips false sweetness, recovering first from the surprise of my appearance. “What a lovely surprise. It’s so brave, starting over after such a short marriage. I’m sure you’ll find someone… appropriate.”
Every head turns. Esther sips her wine, unbothered. The other guests exchange glances that carry volumes of gossip already composing itself.
I feel the weight of their attention like a physical force. The returning wife. The abandoned woman. The girl who didn’t belong, coming back to collect the pieces of a life she couldn’t hold onto.
Jarec’s knuckles whiten where his hand is braced against the table. His jaw tightens. Something shifts in his expression - something I haven’t seen before. Something that looks almost like anger, directed not at me but at the room.
“Enough.”
***
The single word silences the table more effectively than a shout.
Jarec’s chair is shoved back behind him, his entire body radiating a tension I’ve never seen from him. The cold, controlled man I married has vanished. In his place stands someone rawer, more exposed, vibrating with something that might be fury or might be desperation.
“She is my wife.” His voice carries to every corner of the room, clear and unwavering. “The only woman I want. The only one I’ve ever wanted.”
The silence that follows is absolute.
“And I didn’t plan this dinner,” he says, to the room and to me at once. “I came home two hours ago to find it assembled in my own house - my mother’s guests, my mother’s seating chart, my mother’s guest of honor.” A cutting glance at Victoria. “I was throwing them out when you walked in.”
He turns to me, and his voice cracks for the first time:
“I was a coward. I let them-” his gaze flicks to Victoria, then to Esther “-both of them make you feel like you were nothing. Because I was terrified of how much you already meant to me.” He takes a breath, steadies himself. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m asking you to let me earn it.”
The words hang in the air between us. I can feel the room holding its breath, the whole table witnessing something they never expected to see: Jarec Fairweather, stripped of armor, begging.
I don’t soften.
I’ve spent two months rebuilding myself. Two months learning to stand in my own light. I didn’t drive back here to crumble at the first pretty speech.
“Earn it?” My voice comes out steady, but raw.
“You left with her, Jarec, that night. The night the hospital called. I found her scarf in your room. And the photographs.” I see Victoria’s face go carefully blank at the mention.
“Victoria showed me photographs of you two in bed. She told me you called me a ‘convenient virgin.’ A placeholder. So don’t stand there and tell me I meant something when you were-”
“What photographs?”
The confusion in his voice stops me.
His expression is genuine. I’ve learned to read him well enough to know when he’s hiding something, and he’s not hiding this. He looks honestly, completely blindsided.
“What scarf?” he continues. “Elizabeth, I don’t-”
Victoria shifts in her seat, almost imperceptibly. Esther’s wine glass pauses halfway to her lips.
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
Jarec turns to Victoria, and his voice drops dangerously low: “What did you show her?”
Victoria says nothing. Her jaw is tight, her expression locked in careful neutrality, but I can see something beneath it now - something that might be fear.
“Answer me.” His voice hardens. “What the fuck did you show her?”
Still nothing.
Jarec turns back to me. When he speaks again, his voice is different - urgent, almost desperate to be believed.
“The night I canceled our dinner on you - that’s when she called crying. She said her father had a heart attack and she needed a ride to the hospital. I wasn’t going to let her drive like that, not when she was that upset. So I drove her.”
I stare at him.
“When we got there, there was no emergency. Her father was fine - she admitted she’d made it up because she wanted to talk. She tried to kiss me in the car. I pushed her away. I told her we were done, that I was married, that I didn’t want her.”
His eyes hold mine with an intensity that feels like being seen for the first time.
“I never touched her. Not once since I signed that contract. The photographs she showed you - I don’t know what they are, but they’re not from this year.
They’re not from this marriage. And I never-” His voice breaks.
“I never called you a placeholder. I never called you convenient. I told her you were ‘not what I expected.’ Because you weren’t.
You were so much more. And it terrified me. ”
The room is deathly still.
I feel something shifting inside me - not forgiveness, not yet, but something else. The possibility that the story I’ve been telling myself for two months might not be the whole truth.
I turn slowly to Victoria.
“You told me those photographs were from last month. You said he came back to you that night. You said-”
Victoria’s composure cracks.
“I said what I needed to say. I showed you pictures from years ago and you believed me.” Her voice is ugly now, stripped of its practiced sweetness.
“He was supposed to be mine. We had an understanding. Our families expected us to marry, and then you showed up - some nobody cashing in on a dying man’s favor, a debt his family owed your father - and suddenly I’m supposed to just disappear? ”
Jarec’s voice is cold and final: “Yes. You were. Because I chose her the moment I signed that contract. I just didn’t have the courage to act like it.”