Chapter 14 Harry
Harry
It’s two minutes to noon when I realize something might be wrong.
The driveway is dusted with a handful of yellowed maple leaves, the early autumn sun catching in the tops of the trees.
The breeze curls softly through the oaks and maples surrounding the estate, but the passenger seat of my Bentley is empty.
The driveway is, too, save for me and one of my business managers, Paul.
I check my watch for the third time. Paul leans against the stone pillar beside his car, too polite to comment, but I can see the shift in his features.
“She’s usually prompt,” I say, glancing back at the front door of the house, then the side driveway that leads around the back. Both are empty. We’re meant to be going to lunch today to discuss public relations — she knows that. She’d told me last night she’d be ready by eleven-thirty.
It grates at me.
Not because of the schedule being thrown off, not because she might be flaking, but because something feels off. She’d looked a little pale last night, moved through the kitchen like everything was personally offending her and she’d walked a thousand miles. Ended up skipping dinner.
Michael says something about how he’s going to handle some emails while we wait, but I barely hear him. My gut twists from the uncertainty. This isn’t like her. Two months ago, she would’ve braved a hurricane to avoid disappointing anyone — she practically had by marrying me.
I pull my phone from my pocket and shoot a quick text to her.
Me:
You’re late. You okay?
I stare at the screen. A minute passes, then another, no typing bubbles and no reply.
Screw this.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, glancing back at Paul before stalking down the side driveway, rounding the estate.
I take the little path that leads through the garden to the front door of the ivy-covered cottage. Normally, I’d give her space, more than space, so I can limit the number of times I inevitably cave to her. But something about this claws at me in a way that doesn’t sit right.
It only makes it worse that the front door isn’t locked.
“Elena?”
Nothing but silence answers me.
My feet move on their own. I pass the kitchen, her tea left cold on the counter, a half-cut lemon starting to dry. The house smells of her rose shampoo, hints of vanilla beneath it, but there’s something else there — something acidic, something not quite right.
I climb the stairs two at a time.
Around the corner, the upstairs bathroom door is ajar, and before I can question the silence, it breaks.
Not a sound, not a scream, not quite a sob.
A retch.
I’m inside in an instant.
Elena sits on her knees, her calf-length flowery dress bunched around her thighs.
One hand is braced on the tile, the other shaking as she smears her lipstick, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist. Her breathing is too fast, her spine twitching her body forward in little jerks like it's trying to make her throw up again.
Geraldine used to—
I shut it down before it can form a full thought. “Elena,” I say warily.
She startles, just a little, but it's enough that her hand slips from under her. I lunge, one hand splaying out between her shoulder blades, taking the weight of her upper body before she can hit the floor.
“Christ,” I mutter, easing her into a seated position beside the toilet, her back against the tub. Her skin is clammy, a sheen of sweat coating her arms and chest and upper back, and I gently move the little bits of her dark blonde hair stuck to her face behind her ears instead. “Breathe, Elena.”
She twitches like she’s going to heave again, but she forces a shaky breath in, her eyes closing on the exhale.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
She shakes her head, gesturing weakly toward the bedroom.
“Left your phone in there?”
She nods.
“Okay,” I say softly, pushing down the rising discomfort of seeing her like this.
It’s too similar. Memories threaten to surface and flood my mind, images of Geraldine bent over a toilet bowl or broken on the shower floor, sweaty or soaked and clutching at her stomach like it was trying to eat her whole.
Stop. Stop. Stop. My thumb brushes against her pulse point instinctually, feeling the rapid fluttering beneath it. “You’re okay.”
Her eyes flutter open. “I’m—” she gasps, dragging in air, willing herself to calm the half-heaves. “It’s just a bug, I think. Or maybe something I ate.”
Her eyes are glassy, her pupils blown, but her voice is mostly steady from sheer stubbornness. But she looks like hell. Her skin is pale, her makeup smeared. I press the back of my hand to her forehead, and she flinches — but she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t bat at me.
That alone is enough to make me worried more than the lack of a fever.
“How long have you been throwing up?”
She shakes her head, forcing a swallow. “Don’t know,” she murmurs. “Felt nauseous all morning, but thought it would pass. Maybe started around eleven?”
My lips form a straight line. “Right, okay,” I sigh, stroking the side of her neck gently with my thumb. “What have you eaten?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I had some crackers last night, tea this morning,” she says. She winces, just slightly, as another heave threatens to come all the way up. “It’s all just… bile.”
I open my mouth to reply, but her eyes go wide, and then she’s scrambling again — back up on her knees, nearly slipping on the tile as she throws herself back over the toilet.
I turn my head, slamming my eyes shut, forcing myself not to watch, not to replace her with a head of dark curls and frail frame, not to compare.
Instead, I steady her, my hand dragging up and down her back.
“I’m calling Frasier,” I murmur, shoving my hand in my pocket as she spills her guts into the toilet again. She doesn’t ask me who that is, doesn’t fight me on anything — just clings to the bowl like her life depends on it.
I shoot a text to Paul first, telling him lunch is off the table and we’ll reschedule, before tucking my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I let her slump into my chest the moment she’s no longer spewing.
She speaks as the phone rings. “You don’t have to be here. I’m disgusting—”
“You’re not,” I cut in. “You’re sick. Massive difference.”
Dr. Frasier finally picks up, his tone more annoyed than anything, and promises to be here within the hour. I try not to let the next sixty minutes weigh on me like a stone.
————
“He’ll just say it’s stress,” she mutters from beneath the mound of blankets I wrapped her in on her bed. “I’ve had a lot on my plate, Harry. Like, a lot. My body’s been thrown all out of whack.”
“Maybe.” I shrug, staring down at my phone as the notification pops up that someone’s at the gate. I don’t check the video feed — just speak a quick, “We’re in the cottage,” into the microphone before pressing the button to open the gate. “I’m not taking chances, Elena.”
She hasn’t thrown up again since I called, but I’d grabbed a pot from the kitchen for her just in case.
She sips at the water I gave her, her gaze not quite meeting mine, but hovering near me like she wants to look but can’t quite bring herself to.
It churns something in me — guilt, maybe, over Geraldine, or fear, or something deeper I don’t want to quite drag out.
The knock at the door breaks the quiet.
Dr. Frasier lets himself in, walking into the room in his usual uniform — grey sports zip up, shoes too polished, eyes sharper than they have any right to be for a man pushing sixty. His gaze lands on Elena, then on me, narrowing slightly.
“Harald,” he says flatly. “Mrs. Highcourt.”
Elena flinches at the name. My jaw clenches. Dr. Frasier hasn’t exactly been my biggest fan since Geraldine’s death, but apparently, the payroll is too good to give up, and I need him so infrequently that it’s never really mattered much. But the way he’s looking at me says far too much.
“Symptoms?” he asks, brushing past me to her side.
I start to explain what I’ve observed and what she’s told me, but she cuts in with her own version — a little nauseous last night, dizzy earlier, a churning stomach all morning, just bile. He checks her pupils, her pulse, and her temperature, then sets his bag on the bed by her feet and opens it.
“When was the wedding?” he asks, pulling out a handful of items to search a little deeper.
My brows knit. “About a month and a half ago, almost two months,” I answer. “Why? I added her to the patient documents—”
“Have you had sex?”
I blink at him. “Yes.”
“Protection?”
Elena shifts to sit up. “I have the arm implant.”
Dr. Frasier eyes her. “When was your last period?”
“Six-ish weeks ago.” Her face goes pale again. “I’m not exactly regular, even with the implant. I—uh—stress usually makes it worse.”
My stomach twists.
Dr. Frasier pulls a small, flat cardboard box out of his bag and pops it open. He doesn’t ask for her hand — just picks it up from the bed and presses his thumb into her palm, keeping it locked in his grip.
“Fraiser—”
Elena’s yelp cuts me off, and I nearly lunge the moment he pulls the needle away from her finger and a little bead of blood forms. He collects it in a little plastic tube before putting a bandaid over the wound, then pulls out a little plastic test strip.
“We’ll know in ten,” he says.
————
Ten minutes feels like an hour.
Elena curls onto her side, a blanket pulled up to her chin, her hair falling across the pillow. She hasn’t said much. Neither have I.
I sit in the armchair across from her, watching the shadows crawl slowly across the wall. I used to sit with Geraldine like this — when her migraines would flatten her, when she was too proud to let me carry her to the doctor, when she didn’t want anyone to know she was sick.
The night she died still weighs heavily on me. That final kiss on my cheek. I should’ve known what would happen, should have chosen any other route than the one I’d gone with—
“You look like you’re spiraling,” Elena croaks.
“I’m not,” I say, offering her a half-truth. Because sure, I am, but it’s not over the possibility of a child growing in her.
That part doesn’t terrify me — I’ve done it once, I can do it again if that’s what we’re dealing with.
It’s strange to think about, though. Bringing another child into the world when the first one turned into a selfish, fleeting ghost I barely recognize feels like I’d be doing the world a disservice.
I raised George the best I could. I gave him everything. Maybe that was the mistake.
Maybe, for me, loving something only ever breeds ruin.
Frasier clears his throat in the doorway. “Test is done.”
Elena sits up, the blankets pooling at her waist. “Well?”
He tucks his tablet into the crook of his arm and tosses the little test onto the bed for her. “You’re pregnant,” he says, his voice dry. “Based on your last period, you’re technically somewhere around five weeks to six weeks.”
The world tips on its axis. Shit.
Elena goes very, very still as she stares down at the test.
“You’ll need to get that implant out,” he says casually. “It isn’t exactly harmful, but it’s not recommended to keep it in.”
She presses a shaking hand to her stomach, then the other. Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
I scrub at my chin, forcing my own shaking hand to calm as much as I can. “What do we—”
“I’ll order some prenatal vitamins and send Mary by later with some supplements,” Frasier says, cutting me off, his tone almost bored as if he either has no clue that this was not in the cards or simply doesn’t care enough about it.
“No skipping meals. No alcohol. Watch your hydration and temperature, and I’d suggest avoiding high stress, if possible. Though given who you’re married to—”
“I think that’s enough,” I say, forcing myself to my feet to step between them. “Let her process it before filling her head with nonsense.”
He hesitates, but takes a step back. “Of course.”
He grabs his bag from the bed, giving Elena a thin smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. I don’t look back before leading him out of her room, walking him down the stairs in stifling silence.
When he reaches the door to the cottage, he pauses, turning to me.
“Geraldine would be rolling in her grave.”
My jaw ticks, my teeth clenching hard enough that I worry I might crack one. “Get the fuck off my property.”
He leaves without another word. I wait by the door until I get the notification that the front gate has shut behind his car.
Then I go to her.
She hasn’t moved — her hands still cradle her stomach, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror, staring down at the blood test sitting on the bed. Her lower lip quivers as I step toward the bed.
“Elena,” I say gently, slowly lowering myself to sit in front of her.
A single tear slips free, and she shuts her eyes forcefully, her head bowing. “I didn’t know,” she whispers.
“I know.” My hand finds hers, carefully prying the test from her rigid grasp before depositing it on the nightstand instead. “I’m not angry.”
“I just—I thought I missed it because I was… you know,” she sniffles, waving her hand around as if to gesture to everything. “My whole life went off a cliff.”
“A completely fair assumption, given the circumstances,” I say.
She lifts her head again, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist, her hand trembling violently. Her eyes open, looking to the ceiling, still avoiding my gaze. “I don’t know what to do,” she murmurs, her voice cracking. “I didn’t plan for this.”
“Neither did I.” I wrap my fingers around her palm, trying to steady her.
A choked little sob breaks from her, and something in my chest lurches. I’ve seen her angry, seen her defiant — but god, I’ve never seen her broken.
She looks scared.
“This is real,” she says, the words so quiet I almost don’t catch them.
“Yeah.” I squeeze her hand. “It’s real.”
Finally, she looks at me.
I don’t make some sweeping gesture, I don’t make a promise I can’t keep.
Not when we’ve been tiptoeing around each other for two months, not when I avoid her as much as I can to keep myself from fucking her when temptation gets too much — not like that’s done any good, now.
I just hold her hand, lifting it to my chest so she can feel my heartbeat beneath her fingers.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, though I’m not sure if it’s a vow or a threat in her eyes.
She nods, just once, then leans forward. Not for a kiss, not for anything other than a hint of comfort. Her forehead slumps against my shoulder, and I let her, trying not to let the tide pull us both under.
Because I have no goddamn clue what to do about this, either.