18. Sabrina
— ? —
Sabrina
By that week the pregnancy had turned on me completely.
I’d left the cabin days ago for our house on the island, wanting Bridget and Tessa close while Killian was away on his work trip, and the timing had turned out to be a mercy: the nausea had sharpened, the dizziness came in waves that left me gripping countertops, and the exhaustion had gone bone-deep.
The doctor could wait until morning, I’d decided. One more night of managing on my own, and then I’d ask for help.
I got her into the bath at seven because the day had run out of other ideas.
She was in her serious phase about baths, which meant a lineup of plastic animals along the rim in an order she wouldn’t explain and got upset if you disturbed. I sat on the closed lid of the toilet with a towel over my knees and let the steam do what it could for my head.
“Mommy.”
“Mm.”
“When we go back to the city, is Daddy going to be in the house or the other house?”
My hands went very still on the towel.
“What other house, baby?”
“The one he’ll get.” She was working shampoo through her own hair now, badly, with tremendous confidence.
“When mommies and daddies stop living together, one of them gets another house. Poppy at school has two houses. She has two of everything. She has two beds and two scooters and she says it’s good, but she said it in the sad voice. ”
There is no preparation for the sad voice. There’s no book.
“Come here. Rinse first.”
She tipped her head back into my hands and shut her eyes, and I poured warm water over her hair, and she let me, and for a few seconds neither of us had to have a face.
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” I said, “because you asked a real question and you deserve a real answer. Is that all right?”
“Okay.”
“I haven’t worked it out yet.”
Her eyes came open.
“That’s not a proper answer.”
“It’s the true one, though. Grown-ups don’t know things all the time.
We just usually don’t say so out loud, and I’ve decided that’s worse.
” I worked the last of the suds out of her hair.
“Here’s what I do know. You’ll always have a bed wherever I am, and you’ll always have a bed wherever Daddy is, and whatever those two places turn out to be, neither of us is going anywhere away from you.
That part isn’t a maybe. That part is decided already and you can hold onto it. ”
She thought about that for a long time, the way she does, with her whole forehead involved.
“Can I have two scooters?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Poppy has two scooters.”
“Poppy’s parents are in a negotiating position and I am not.”
“What’s a negotiating position?”
“Ask your father. He’ll draw you a diagram and you’ll be sorry.”
She laughed at that, which was the first thing all day that had gone the way it was supposed to. Then she went quiet again while I wrapped her in the towel, and I felt the moment turn under my hands before she said it.
“Why does everybody stop talking when I come in the room?”
“Do they?”
“Grandma does it. Auntie Tessa does it worse.” She peered up from inside the towel, small and damp and entirely too observant. “They were talking in the kitchen and then they both looked at me and stopped, and Grandma did the face.”
“What face?”
Ivy performed the face. It was Bridget exactly, down to the eyebrows, and it took everything I had not to laugh in my daughter’s wet, earnest little face.
“They’re worried about me,” I said, and that much was true, so I let it stand there and do the work. “Grown-ups think that if they say the worrying out loud in front of you, it gets bigger. They’re wrong about that too.”
“That’s stupid.”
“It is stupid.”
“So you’ll tell me when it’s something?” She said it the way she asks for a second book at bedtime, negotiating from a position she believes is strong. “Not the whole thing. Just when it’s something.”
I sat down on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub, which put us at the same height, and pulled her into my lap towel and all.
“When it’s something,” I said, “you’ll hear it from me before you hear it from anybody’s face.”
“Deal.”
She put her head against my collarbone and left it there, and her hair soaked straight through my shirt, and I sat on a cold bathroom floor and held my daughter and understood exactly what I’d been doing to both of us all summer.
“Mommy.”
“Yes.”
“Is Professor Whiskers in heaven?”
“Where did that come from?”
“Grandpa said he went back to the sea. Sully said that’s what Grandpa says when a thing is dead.”
“I’m going to kill your uncle.”
“So he is dead.”
“He went back to the sea,” I said firmly, and got her into pajamas before she could open the case again.
She talked me into one movie before bed and I let her, because I had nothing left to enforce with.
Ivy was on the couch in her pajamas with her damp hair and her elephant blanket.
The house was quiet except for the sounds of animated characters on the screen, and I was in the kitchen trying to force down some crackers when the doorbell rang.
I frowned. It was late for visitors. Bridget and Alistair would have called first, and Tessa had plans with friends on the mainland.
The doorbell rang again, more insistent this time.
I walked to the door and looked through the peephole.
Cordelia was standing on the front porch.
She was wearing a tiny red dress that left very little to the imagination, and she was holding a bottle of champagne with a bow around the neck. Her hair was perfect, her makeup flawless, her smile sharp and predatory.
I felt my blood pressure spike.
I opened the door just far enough to block Ivy’s view from the living room.
“What do you want?”
“Sabrina! What a surprise.” Cordelia’s voice was sugar-sweet and completely insincere. “I was looking for Killian. Is he here? He knew I was coming.”
“He’s not here.”
“Really? That’s strange. He specifically asked me to stop by tonight. Said he had something important to discuss.” She tilted her head, her smile widening. “Maybe he got held up. Do you mind if I wait inside?”
“I do mind, actually. Because my husband didn’t ask you to come here, and we both know it.”
The smile flickered. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door mostly closed behind me, leaving just a crack so I could hear if Ivy called for me.
“You’ve been playing games since the moment you arrived on this island.
The smoothies, the coincidental appearances, the showing up at events where you knew Killian would be.
And now you’re on my doorstep in the middle of the evening with champagne, claiming my husband invited you. ”
“Maybe you don’t know your husband as well as you think you do.”
“I know him well enough to know he got my name tattooed on his chest in front of the entire island. I know him well enough to know he bid a million dollars to take me on a date. I know him well enough to know that when he looks at you, he sees a mistake from his past that he’s glad he got away from. ”
Cordelia’s composure cracked. The sweetness drained from her face, and a meaner expression took its place.
“You think you’re so special,” she said.
“You think because you trapped him with a baby and a marriage, he actually wants to be with you. But I know Killian. I knew him before you came along with your mousy hair and your boring little career. He was mine first, and we made sense. Do you understand that? The two of us, the company, the connections, the life we were building. I was going to be the woman standing next to him at every launch, every board dinner, every magazine feature. And then he threw all of it away for someone who files research papers nobody reads.”
“And then he left you. For me. That must sting.”
“He’ll leave you too. Eventually. When he realizes that you’re nothing special, that you’re just a placeholder, that the passion burned out years ago and all that’s left is obligation and routine.”
“You don’t know anything about my marriage.”
“I know more than you think. I know he works all the time because he can’t stand being around you.
I know he stays at the lab until midnight because the alternative is coming home to someone who bores him.
I know that every time he looks at you, he’s wondering what his life would have been like if he’d chosen differently. ”
The words hit harder than I wanted to admit. They echoed the fears I’d carried for years, the doubts that crept in during the long nights alone.
But they were her words, not his. And I was done letting her poison my mind.
“Here’s what I know,” I said, my voice steady despite the anger churning in my chest. “I know that you’ve been trying to break up my marriage since you got here.
I know that you’ve lied and manipulated and inserted yourself into situations where you had no business being.
I know that at the auction, my husband chose me in front of everyone, in the most public and permanent way possible, and you stood there with your mouth hanging open because you couldn’t believe it. ”
“That was theater. A performance for the crowd.”
“The tattoo wasn’t theater. There is permanent ink on his chest spelling out my name. And no matter how many red dresses you wear or how many times you show up on my doorstep with champagne, that’s not going to change.”
Cordelia stepped closer, her eyes blazing with fury.
“You’re pathetic,” she hissed. “Clinging to a man who doesn’t want you, pretending your marriage is anything more than a legal arrangement.
Men like Killian aren’t built for cozy little domestic lives.
They need a partner who understands the game, who can work a room, close a deal, be an asset instead of a liability.
That was always going to be me. It still can be. You’re just the detour.”
“I challenge him plenty. In ways you can’t imagine.”
“Oh, please. You probably haven’t had sex in months.”
“Actually, we had sex in the Driftway Club library two nights ago. Against the bookshelves. It was spectacular.”
The shock on Cordelia’s face was immensely satisfying.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Ask anyone who saw us leave together. Ask anyone who noticed that we were gone for quite a while. Ask anyone who saw my face when I walked back into that ballroom.”
Cordelia’s hands clenched at her sides. The champagne bottle shook slightly in her grip.
“This isn’t over,” she said. “You might think you’ve won, but you haven’t. Killian and I have history. We have connection. And sooner or later, he’s going to remember what he’s missing.”
“The only thing he’s missing is a woman who wanted him for his money and his status. That’s not worth remembering.” I stepped back toward the door. “Now get off my property. I warned you in a grocery store to stop. You came to my house instead, so we’re finished with warnings.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning the next time you tell somebody on this island a story about my marriage, I intend to be standing right behind you when you tell it.”
I opened the door behind me, ready to step inside and end this conversation.
“Stay the fuck away from my family,” I said, and I slammed the door in her face.
Through the wood, I heard her scream of rage. I heard her heels clicking down the porch steps and across the driveway. I heard a car door slam and an engine roar to life.
Then silence.
I leaned against the door and tried to catch my breath. My heart was pounding, adrenaline flooding my system, and my hands were shaking so badly I had to press them against my thighs to steady them.
“Mommy?” Ivy’s voice drifted from the living room. “Who was at the door?”
“Nobody, sweetheart. Just someone who had the wrong house.”
I pushed away from the door and took a step toward the living room.
The floor went soft under me.
The dizziness hit without warning, a wave of vertigo so intense that I couldn’t tell which way was up. I grabbed for the wall, but my hand missed, and my legs buckled beneath me.
I went down hard, my hip hitting the hardwood floor, my shoulder slamming against the wall. The impact jarred through my whole body, and I lay there gasping, staring at the ceiling, unable to make my limbs respond to my commands.
The edges of my vision were going dark.
“Mommy?” Ivy’s voice was closer now, higher with fear. “Mommy, what’s wrong? Mommy!”
I tried to answer. I tried to tell her I was okay, that she shouldn’t worry, that everything was fine.
But the darkness was closing in, and my mouth wouldn’t form the words.
The last thing I heard before everything went black was my daughter’s voice, screaming.
“MOMMY!”