Chapter 30
Harry
Idon’t come to this room often.
Not because I avoid it — or maybe not only for that reason. It’s more than the space exists in its own kind of emotional vacuum. It’s preserved. It’s too intact, too frozen in time to feel like it belongs in the present tense.
Geraldine’s perfume still lingers faintly in the wardrobe despite being untouched for years.
Her scarves hang in one corner like silk and cashmere ghosts.
The wingback chair I’m sitting in is where she used to read when the headaches or the nausea weren’t too bad.
Her book is still on the windowsill, sun-bleached and bookmark poking out halfway through a chapter she never got to finish.
I come here when I need to feel like she was real. Not just a headline or a rumor, but a person. The woman I married. The mother of my son. My greatest failure.
I’ve been in here for what feels like an hour when I notice something move in the reflection from the window. The doorway changes, the dim light on the other side of the cracked door turning darker, the reflection of the hallway’s wall blocked by something.
Then I hear it. Just barely. Just faint, like they’re trying to control it.
Breathing.
I slowly set down the glass of scotch on the side table. “I can hear you breathing,” I say, the words simple, a bit of bait.
For a few seconds, there’s nothing. But then the door pushes open just a little bit, just enough for me to see the reflection of her head poking in a little, her blonde curls tucked up in a neat bun. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
I look over my shoulder at her as she steps into the room like it might bite her.
Her shoulders are drawn back, but her face is soft, searching, careful, like she’s somewhere she thinks she isn’t allowed to go.
Her eyes scan the room briefly, taking in the bookshelves, the chaise lounge in the corner, the massive wardrobe, the photo on the table. Then to me.
I sit slightly forward and set my glass beside the image of Geraldine from nearly thirty years ago.
“You didn’t,” I say, but the words sound a little hollow, even to me. “I wasn’t expecting—”
“I know,” she murmurs, lingering by the door. “I wanted to talk, but I didn’t know you’d be… here. I’m sorry. I can go.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine,” I say, gesturing toward the open seat beside mine — my old seat. “You can sit, if you’d like.”
“I…”
“It doesn’t bother me, if you’re worried—”
“I just need to talk to you,” she interrupts, her cheeks heating slightly. “And I feel bad making you talk about it in here.”
My brows knit. “Why?”
“It’s about Geraldine.”
I blink, surprised, and sit back in my seat, letting the words settle. It’s odd hearing her say her name, almost jarring. Not because she doesn’t have a right to say it, of course she does, but because it feels like two worlds colliding, like a present I haven’t earned touching a past I failed.
“We can just talk tomorrow,” she says, taking a step back toward the door.
“No, no, it’s fine,” I insist. “Please. It’s fine. We can talk about her.”
Elena hesitates, her lower lip tucked between her teeth. “Are you sure?”
I take a deep breath, shoving my apprehension down into the depths of my mind. “Yes.”
She nods, once, and crosses the room with quiet, measured steps, her oversized pajama bottoms swishing about her legs, her tight t-shirt clinging to the swell of her stomach.
She sits slowly in the wingback chair, clinging to the armrests like the chair might shatter beneath her.
Her eyes are fixed on me, but something is brewing behind them, like a storm she’s trying to keep at bay.
She glances, just once, at the photo on the side table before looking back at me.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admits quietly. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring this up, and I just… nothing feels appropriate.”
“Then just say it. I’m fine.”
She takes a deep, audible breath, leaning forward slightly. “The… rumors.”
I stiffen instinctually.
“I never, uh, paid much attention to anything going on with the Highcourts when I was younger,” she continues, “but it’s been harder to ignore lately. With George bringing it up and Joseph and Ann, and… I don’t know. There’s talk. And I just… I wanted some clarity.”
I grit my teeth and lean forward again, resting my elbows on my knees. “Can you tell me what you’re concerned about specifically? What have you heard?”
She scrubs at her face awkwardly, then starts wringing her wrist, her nerves written all over her face. “I mean, I’m not dim, I can read between the lines when people are speaking about it. And I spoke to Mary about it, too. Clearly, a lot of people blame… you.”
I stare at her. She spoke to Mary about it — that… that’s better than her speaking to Dr. Frasier. “People blame me in a lot of different ways,” I say carefully. “Which ways are you referring to?”
She swallows, her throat working. “Mary said that people think you outright… killed her.”
The silence that falls is different from our usually charged or comfortable ones. It’s not tense, it’s not loud. It’s dead.
“Elena,” I say carefully, staring her down. “I hope you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t,” she breathes. “But Mary said some people think you were complicit in it or gave her the pills. She told me Geraldine had… uhm, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to upset you—”
“It’s fine. Just talk.”
“She told me Geraldine had cancer,” she blurts as if it’s a crime to say aloud. “That she didn’t want people knowing. I’m sorry, I-I feel bad that I know at all.”
I take another deep breath, willing myself not to mind the words leaving her mouth.
It doesn’t necessarily upset me that Mary spoke to her about this and told her so much, but the idea that she’s been worried about it and didn’t come to me is enough to feel like a blade in the heart.
“I don’t mind that you know. I don’t think Ger would have minded. ”
She stares at me, her lips parted, her brows knit in what looks like worry more than confusion.
“Okay,” she breathes. “Mary said some people think you helped her. So she didn’t have to go through the end.
Or that maybe you… forced them, I don’t know.
That’s — that’s the whole problem, that I don’t know.
And I know I don’t have a right to that, I know that’s a trigger point for you, but I also know that I’m pregnant and I’m scared and I’m not willing to raise her in a house built on secrets if those secrets are dangerous or if they could hurt her. Or me. Or… fuck, I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes, bringing my hands to my face, pushing the hair back. I don’t realize they’re trembling until I can see them, and god, I hate that she can see it.
“I was trying to ignore it,” she says, her voice breaking just a little. “I was. But I can’t keep ignoring it unless you tell me what happened. What really happened. Not the press version, not the family version. Yours.”
I try to swallow, but my throat has gone painfully dry.
“Mary’s right. She was dying,” I say, my voice hoarse.
I’ve never told anyone the full story, not even George, and I can’t remember a time I ever spoke it all out loud.
I’m not even sure if I have. I’ve sat with it in my head for years, letting it eat me alive, but I’ve never given it words.
The words come slowly. Each one feels like it’s being pulled from somewhere deeper than just my lungs.
“She kept it from me for months. Maybe… maybe longer, I don’t know, I have no idea how she managed it.
Appointments I never knew about, test results I never saw.
She was always private, always stubborn, but never with me, at least not until then,” I explain, glancing at the photo of her before letting my gaze drift back toward Elena.
I can’t fully look at her. “I thought the headaches were just migraines, stress, bad genetics. She said they were nothing. Then the vomiting started. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and she’d be in the bathroom, or I’d go out to see her in the cottage and find her clutching the toilet like it could save her. ”
A flicker of recognition hits her. I’d walked in on her in the same position. I’d hesitated.
“A month before she died,” I continue, “she sat me down and told me she had ovarian cancer. Stage four. It had spread… everywhere. There weren’t any good options.”
I pause, taking a deep, shuddering breath, and rub at my eyes. “She said it so fucking calmly. Like it was something I should’ve known already.”
I remember the feeling of that moment like it happened ten minutes ago.
The way the room tilted, the sick disbelief.
I had looked at her and felt the floor crumble beneath my goddamn feet, had felt the destruction, had felt the loss of her while she was still in front of me.
I’d felt the gaping hole she’d leave behind.
“She told me she wasn’t going to fight it,” I croak. “‘I don’t want to die vomiting into a hospice sink.’ That’s what she said. She didn’t want to lose her hair or sit there in pain in the hopes that some tiny percentage chance would save her. She said she wanted control.”
My eyes burn aggressively, and I push my palms hard against them.
“I told her we could figure something out, that there was time, that we could try. And she just looked at me like… like I didn’t understand what was happening.”
The next part is harder. It lives in a place in my mind I avoid like the plague.
“About a month later, after countless talks of how she didn’t want people knowing what she was going through, about how she didn’t want George to know, she started getting worse.
So much worse,” I rasp. I pull my hands from my eyes, watching with blurred vision as they shake.
“She came into the office while I was up late working. I had a meeting at four in the morning, so I was just going to stay up for it and work through the night. She… she said she was tired, she kissed me. She said goodnight.”
My voice breaks on the words, my heart pounding. Elena’s hand closes around mine, but I can’t bring myself to look at her.
“But it wasn’t ‘goodnight’. She said goodbye,” I choke.
“It took me a few minutes to realize, after she’d left the room and gone to the bedroom.
I knew something was wrong. I knew. I put the pieces together.
And I didn’t… I didn’t move. I just sat there, staring at my computer like it could stop the world from ending. ”
I take a deep, gasping, wet breath.
“I sat through the meeting and didn’t say a word. That didn’t… didn’t help the rumors later on when that came out. And I found her after, when I finally managed to get myself to get the fuck up out of my chair.”
“Harry—”
“She was in bed, on her side, slightly stiff, vomit on the sheets, this pinkish foam on her mouth—”
“Harry, stop—”
“She’d crushed her fucking pain meds, the opioids, and put them in her tea.” The words are broken, violent, almost wept. “Enough to stop a goddamn horse’s heart. And she was holding it when she came in. It was there, in front of my face.”
Elena squeezes my hands. “Stop,” she says again. “You don’t have to go into the worst of it.”
I nod and wipe my eyes on the side of my arm.
“Did you know she was going to do it?”
My breathing is shaky, ragged. “Yes,” I say. “I guessed she would at some point and realized pretty quickly when it was happening.”
“Did you help her?” she asks hesitantly.
“I don’t know,” I rasp. “I didn’t give them to her. I didn’t encourage her.”
“But you didn’t stop her.”
I lift my gaze to hers, seeing the glassiness of her eyes through the chaotic blur of my own. “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”
She nods, slowly, wiping her eyes with her free hand. “Then you didn’t kill her. She made a choice. You were grieving, too, Harry, even if it was prematurely.”
I shake my head. “I should have stopped her.”
“You were her husband,” she says pointedly, leaning forward a little more. “Not her jailer. I think a part of you didn’t want to force her to stay any longer than she was prepared to.”
The words land somewhere I knew was still open, but I desperately tried to tell myself had closed.
I slip my hands from hers, wiping at my eyes, breaking my gaze away from her.
“I’ve lived with the guilt of that for twelve fucking years,” I choke.
“It’s a part of everything I’ve done since. It’s tainted everything.”
“No,” she says softly. I nearly jump as I feel her hand sink into my hair, pushing it back from my face again for me. “Not everything. Not… not whatever this is.”
I shake my head. “It has, though,” I murmur. “Because you’re here, understandably asking me about it, because of course you’re nervous, of course you’re scared.”
Her hand moves down, beneath my chin, and lifts gently, forcing my gaze up to hers.
“Okay, yes,” she admits carefully. “But what I mean is that you’ve talked to me about it.
And I’m grateful for that, genuinely. I’m not going to leave you because of something you couldn’t stop.
It’s not… It’s not going to affect us moving forward, okay? ”
I swallow, nodding shakily. “Okay.”
She moves to the edge of her seat, bringing herself closer, and presses her forehead to mine. “Thank you,” she whispers, “for telling me. And I’m sorry that you had to go through that.”
I reach for her without thinking, one hand slipping behind her neck, my thumb stroking her skin.
“I don’t want you to think that I’m hung up on it,” I admit.
“I don’t want you to see me as someone still stuck in the past. I grieve her, I do, but I’ve moved past it in the ways that matter to this. Just maybe not the… the guilt.”
She nods, her forehead rubbing against mine. “I believe you.”
I don’t know how it happens. I don’t know who moves first. But her mouth is on mine, and it’s not distant now, it’s not cold. It’s warm and slow and more real than it’s ever felt.
When I pull her up out of the chair, she doesn’t resist.
When I walk her down the hall with my mouth on hers and my hands half under her shirt, she doesn’t stop me.
When I pull her onto the bed, into my lap, she exhales against my lips.
We don’t speak any further. We don’t need to. It’s not frantic or frenzied as my hands move to remove her clothes. It’s not pity, or it doesn’t feel like it is. It’s grounding, like we’re returning to some shred of normalcy.
It’s easy. The heaviness of everything else seems to lift, at least for a moment.