Chapter 29
Elena
The rain starts just after noon. I watch it from the window in the upstairs office of the cottage, sheets of water streaking over the glass.
It’s not a soft, gentle drizzle that softens the world and makes you want to curl up with a book or in someone's lap — it’s relentless, cold, and loud.
It batters the roof like it has a point to make.
I stare down at my phone, my brain running a million miles an hour. The rain’s too heavy to distract me. I need something else.
Sarah answers on the second ring, her voice bright and chirpy despite the weather. “Hey, El! Did you fall off the face of the Earth or just into one of those massive piles of money your husband keeps around?”
I snort. “He doesn’t have massive piles of money.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she says, and I can hear the grin in it. “I swear you’re getting one of those old-money accents. Has to be the piles of money influencing you.”
I smile despite myself. “I do not.”
“I do not,” she taunts. “Have you forgotten you’re allowed to say ‘don’t’?”
“Okay, okay—”
“Your baby’s going to come out knowing Latin and judging cheese plates.”
“Christ, Sarah.”
She laughs again, but it softens as it lingers. “Sorry, sorry. So what’s the call for? Finally remembered I exist?”
I roll my eyes. “In my defense, things have been a little chaotic lately. But… I have news.”
“Oh no.”
“No, not bad news,” I clarify. “Two bits of good news.”
“Oh, yay!”
I chuckle, turning over one of the little images from my appointment with Mary in my hand. “I’m having a girl—”
“A GIRL?” The words are practically shrieked. I have to pull my phone from my ear, my face distorting from the brief shock of pain to my eardrum. “ELENA.”
“Okay, ow, calm down—”
“Oh my god,” she squeals, her voice rising on random words the way it does when she’s excited. “I get to buy dresses?! I’m going to be an aunt?!”
My brows knit as I laugh. “Sarah, you would have been an aunt either way. You know that, right? I need to know that you know that.”
“Right, right, sorry, my brain is just — it’s a girl! Sorry, she’s a girl!”
I bite the tip of my thumb, my smile full as she audibly freaks out on the other end. “Are you going to let me get to the other thing?”
“Is it anywhere near as exciting?”
“No, probably not.”
“Okay, fine, tell me so we can go back to being excited about your daughter.”
“Harry offered me a job,” I say, sitting back in my chair. I keep my voice low — something about saying it out loud makes it feel like the offer will vanish. “I mean, not just a job. A massive promotion. A position with Highcourt Hotels. He wants me to run the global events division.”
There’s a long pause, and I’m not entirely sure if she’s switching gears, confused, or if the call has dropped.
“Sarah—?”
“That’s incredible,” she breathes. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s, like, Forbes front cover level of incredible. Holy shit.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Are you gonna take it?”
“I… I think so,” I say. “I mean, I want to. It’s huge. A massive career move. Not just family wine promotions and fundraisers and weddings, but grand openings and conventions and… god, I don’t even know what else. It would be stupid to turn it down.”
“You’d absolutely kill it,” she grins. “I know you don’t need the money, but I’m sure it would be a significant pay rise too.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She’s quiet for a second before her tone turns more serious. “Why aren’t you sure?”
I sigh. “The idea of taking on a new job while also having a newborn sounds insane, for one,” I say, accidentally breaking off a piece of nail against my tooth. “And for two, I think he only offered it because he feels guilty.”
“Why would he feel guilty?”
“He had to go away for work and missed the scan yesterday,” I say. “I wasn’t exactly happy with him. I’m still annoyed, if I’m being honest. And he offered it right after he got home and realized I was upset.”
“Elena.”
“I’m not saying I don’t appreciate it,” I add. “I just… don’t know where we stand. Half the time we act like a married couple, and half the time I can feel the circumstances around us and remember that we haven’t actually clarified anything.”
“Elena.”
“I haven’t told him how I feel. And we didn’t get together because of love, you know? I practically begged him for it. Then the baby, and the shit with George—”
“Is that really how you see the whole thing?”
I sigh. “No. And I know he… he said he was falling for me, but then days like yesterday happen, and it makes me question if I know how he sees it at all.”
Sarah exhales audibly. “Then ask him. For once in your life, just ask instead of assuming. Force him to talk about it. You’re not seventeen anymore and he’s not a boarding school crush. You’re a grown-ass woman having his baby. You guys have to talk.”
“I know.”
“You’ll just keep spiraling otherwise.”
“I know, I know, I know,” I repeat, leaning forward again and resting my elbow on the desk.
I bury my face in my free hand, groaning from the stress of just imagining having this conversation with Harry.
“But then there’s the whole other thing I need to talk to him about and that just makes a pile of shit that we have to sit down and discuss, and that feels overwhelming. ”
“What other thing?”
I hesitate. “Do you remember hearing anything about his wife? When she passed?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Geraldine?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I remember there being rumors a long time ago,” she says, her tone dropping, sounding almost uncomfortable.
“That she overdosed. That he drugged her. That she was going to leave him, or that she was cheating, or that he was. People love a tragedy with rich people at the center, you know how it is.”
“I know,” I murmur. “But people keep… bringing it up.”
“Do you believe the rumors?”
“I…” The words get stuck in my throat, and I push my palm against my forehead, trying to force the words out. Instead, I end up dancing around it. “I don’t want to.”
“But you think there might be something to it?”
“I’m just scared that maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought.”
She sighs, long and loudly, almost like she’s exasperated. “You realize this is another reason for the two of you to actually talk about everything.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t feel like I can. ‘Cause this needs to be added, and I can’t exactly say, ‘Hey, we need to talk about your dead wife.’”
“You can try.”
“No. Not when I still need to tell him about Ross.”
“He doesn’t know about Ross?!”
“Can we just talk about you instead?” I ask, lifting my head enough to stare back out the window. The rain seems to be calming, slowing to a drizzle, but I’ve no idea if it’s going to pour again. “How are you? I miss you.”
“Elena.”
“I really, really don’t want to talk about it.”
She groans at the shift in conversation. “Fine. I mean, I wasn’t going to say anything…”
“Oh god,” I say, straightening, my eyes blowing wide. “You’re pregnant too.”
“What? No! El,” she laughs. “That’s not it. But I am seeing someone.”
My smile blooms fast. “You are?”
“Maybe…”
“And?”
“And she’s amazing,” she gushes. The pronoun doesn’t surprise me — it never would have.
Sarah’s been out to me as bisexual for at least ten years.
Mom and Dad, though… “Her name is Tamsin, she’s terrifying in a hot way, she has a full sleeve tattoo of Victorian poisonous plants, and she owns a bookstore that doubles as a bar. ”
“Of course she does,” I laugh.
“I know. I think I’m completely in love with her.”
I narrow my eyes at the window. “How long have you been seeing her?”
“Two weeks.”
“Of course you have,” I laugh. “I take it you haven’t told Mom and Dad, then.”
“Fuck, no. Not yet, at least. I’ll wait for that disappointment.”
————
Long after the sun has set and the rain has calmed, I wander into the main house. I tell myself that I’m going to raid his cupboard and fridge for something for dinner, but it only serves to get me out of the door of the cottage and into Highcourt Hall. I know damn well that’s not why I’m here.
The house is dim and quiet. The only clue that he’s even home is the fact that he hasn’t texted me to tell me he was leaving, and I find myself wandering past the kitchen and up the stairs.
But it’s so quiet.
There’s no sound of a television playing in the distance or the quiet clack of a keyboard. There’s no voice trailing from a phone call or a video meeting, no sound of a shower or elliptical running.
But the door on the end is ajar, just enough to show a crack of light.
He’d mentioned that room to me months ago. He’d pointed it out when he’d walked me through the upstairs area of the east wing.
“That one was Geraldine’s private room. I’ve pretty much left it as it was.”
I hesitate, but step forward, just enough to look through the crack.
By the window, a familiar head of silvered hair is visible over the back of the wingback chair, a glass of something amber in his hand.
There’s a photo on the small side table next to him, and although I can’t see it very well, I can tell there’s white in it. A lot of it. A wedding portrait, maybe.
Shit.
I watch him a moment too long. The slope of his shoulders, the way he stares at the same point in space like it holds answers or like he’s replaying things in his mind — it makes my stomach turn.
There’s grief in his stillness, and I’m sitting here staring at him, trying to muster up the courage to talk to him about her. It’s twisted. It feels wrong.
The courage I’d mustered dissolves. This isn’t the moment. Not here, not when I already feel like a ghost pressing into someone else’s life—
“I can hear you breathing.”