27 #2
Trevor sighed, the sound low and tired. "I am not here to rewrite everything tonight."
"You already have."
"I am here because the old pattern cannot continue."
The words landed like a door closing.
Vanessa's hands curled in the blanket. "Old pattern?"
"You call. I come. You cry. I comfort you. Dorothy becomes unreasonable if she is hurt by it. You and I pretend it is harmless because nothing is named clearly enough to be condemned."
Vanessa shook her head. "You make it sound ugly."
"It was ugly."
Her face crumpled, this time with something closer to genuine devastation. "Trevor."
He looked at her, and Vanessa saw the flicker of old guilt. It was there. Not gone entirely. Good. She needed something left to work with.
But he did not cross to her.
He did not take her hand.
He did not repair what his words had broken.
"It hurt her," he said.
Vanessa's eyes flashed. "And what about me?"
He looked genuinely tired then. "It hurt you too."
The answer was not what she expected.
"It made you wait for a choice I never had the courage to make honestly," Trevor said.
"It let you believe there was a future I never properly gave you. It let Dorothy believe she had to endure you to keep a marriage I was not protecting. I called it kindness because admitting the truth would have made me responsible."
Vanessa stared at him.
There were many things she could have said.
She could have accused him of cowardice, and she would have been right.
She could have accused Dorothy of winning, and that would have been too revealing.
She could have begged, threatened, collapsed again, but the doctor was too close and Trevor's eyes were too clear.
So she chose the old wound.
"She will not take you back," Vanessa said.
Trevor's face tightened.
There. That still hurt him.
"She will let Sebastian parade her around until the city forgets she was ever yours. She will enjoy watching you regret her. And when you have ruined everything trying to earn her forgiveness, she will choose herself, or him, or Perry Group, or anyone but you."
Trevor looked at her. "Perhaps."
The single word frightened her more than denial.
"Perhaps?" she repeated.
"Perhaps she will not take me back."
"And you will still chase her?"
"I do not know what I will do."
"But you know you are done coming when I call."
The question trembled despite her effort.
Trevor did not answer quickly.
Vanessa almost wished he would lie.
Finally, he said, "I know I cannot keep answering you at the cost of someone else."
Someone else.
Dorothy.
Always Dorothy now, even when unnamed.
Vanessa felt something inside her harden.
The panic did not disappear. It condensed, turning from loose fear into purpose.
Trevor was not lost completely, but he was slipping into a kind of guilt that made him unpredictable.
Dorothy's power had unsettled him. Dorothy's old love had pierced him.
Dorothy's hidden help had shamed him. Sebastian's presence had provoked him.
And the hospital receipt in Vanessa's handbag had not yet been used.
Obstetrics.
The word returned like a match struck in darkness.
There was a secret there. There had to be. Dorothy, the abandoned wife, the hidden heiress, the silent savior of Raymond Group. Too perfect. Too clean. Women like Dorothy did not remain silent without buried blood under the floorboards.
If Trevor wanted the truth, Vanessa would give him a truth sharp enough to cut Dorothy open.
Trevor glanced toward the door. "Rest tonight. Marcus will arrange the bill and your driver."
"You are leaving?"
"Yes."
She laughed softly. "Of course. Go find her."
He did not take the bait.
"Good night, Vanessa."
The finality of it made her chest tighten.
"Trevor."
He paused at the door.
For a moment, she almost said the thing she had never said plainly enough. I cannot lose you. Not the pretty version, not the tearful one, but the ugly truth beneath it. I built too much of myself around being the woman you came back to. I do not know what I am if you stop.
But pride held her mouth closed.
Trevor waited a second longer, then left.
The door clicked shut.
Vanessa sat perfectly still.
Only when his footsteps disappeared did she reach for her phone.
Her hand no longer trembled.
She scrolled past Trevor's name, past messages from society acquaintances pretending concern while fishing for gossip, past her father's unanswered calls. Then she opened a number she had not used in years, a contact saved without a name, only an initial.
The line rang twice.
A man answered. "Miss Werner."
Vanessa looked at the rain on the window.
"I need something," she said.
"That depends on what."
"A hospital record. Old. Quietly."
There was a pause. "Whose?"
Vanessa opened her handbag and removed the torn receipt she had found in Dorothy's old apartment. The paper was creased now from being unfolded too many times. The department name stared up at her in faded ink.
Obstetrics.
Her mouth curved slowly.
"Dorothy Raymond," she said. Then, after a brief pause, she corrected herself. "Dorothy Perry. Find everything."