5. Blair
— ? —
Blair
The vineyard terrace was perfect.
Rolling hills stretched out in every direction, striped with rows of grapevines arranged, apparently, by a cinematographer. The sunset would be spectacular from here. The kind of sunset that made people believe in love, in forever, in the possibility that happiness might actually last.
“Here,” I said, positioning Trip at the railing where the view was best. “This is where you’ll do it. The light will be behind you, all golden and dramatic. Very cinematic.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Luca’s going to melt.”
Trip gripped the railing, his knuckles going white. For a man who’d built his entire identity around unshakable confidence, he looked terrified.
“What if he says no?”
“He’s not going to say no.”
“But what if he does?”
“Trip.” I took his hands, forcing him to look at me. “He’s been waiting for you to do this for three years. He moved his entire life to be closer to you. He learned to make your mother’s biscotti recipe from YouTube because you mentioned once that you missed it. The man isn’t going to say no.”
“The biscotti was terrible.”
“The biscotti was a gesture of love. You ate three of them.”
“I ate four. They were terrible and I ate four.”
I laughed, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. This was why he needed me here. Not for the logistics, though I was handling those too. For the reassurance. For the steady hand when his own started shaking.
“Tell me again,” he said. “Tell me what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to tell him you love him. That he’s the only real thing you’ve ever had. That you’re done hiding, done being afraid, done letting your father’s expectations run your life.”
“And then?”
“And then you’re going to get down on one knee, because you’re a dramatic bastard and he deserves the full production.”
“And then?”
“And then he’s going to say yes, and you’re going to kiss him, and you’re going to spend the rest of your lives making each other disgustingly happy.”
Trip pulled me into a hug, his arms crushing around me, his face buried in my hair.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “For keeping this. For keeping me.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“I’d try. I’d probably fail spectacularly and make everything worse.”
“That’s why I’m the planner and you’re the talent.”
He laughed into my shoulder, a wet sound that told me he was closer to tears than he wanted to admit. I held him tighter. Let him have the moment.
Somewhere in the parking lot behind us, a car door closed.
I didn’t think anything of it.
***
The next morning, I woke to sunlight and the smell of coffee and the particular buzz of my phone that meant a text from someone who wasn’t Will.
Trip: Have you seen it?
I fumbled for the phone, squinting at the screen.
Me: Seen what?
Trip: The column. Posy Wetherell. I’m sending you a screenshot.
The image loaded slowly, and I sat up in bed to read it, the sheets pooling around my waist. Will’s side was empty. He’d been up before me again, a pattern that was becoming too familiar.
The Crow’s Nest column took up half the screen, Posy Wetherell’s smug headshot smiling from the corner.
Which Cliff Walk wife has been spotted glowing on the arm of a recently returned heir? Sources say the two have been inseparable since his arrival, touring romantic venues and canoodling at sunset. One wonders what her husband makes of the reunion.
Canoodling.
I read it three times, waiting for the outrage to hit. Instead, I just felt tired.
Me: Canoodling? Really?
Trip: I know. The audacity. I’ve never canoodled in my life.
Me: What would you call it?
Trip: I’ve caroused. I’ve gallivanted. I’ve been known to carouse AND gallivant simultaneously. But canoodling? Beneath me.
I laughed despite myself. This was Trip’s gift. Taking what should have been devastating and turning it into a joke, a shared absurdity we could mock together until it lost its power.
Me: We should sue for defamation.
Trip: On what grounds?
Me: Damage to your reputation as a serious gallivanter.
Trip: I’ll have my lawyers draft a strongly worded letter. “Dear Ms. Wetherell, my client does not canoodle. He is a professional. Please adjust your vocabulary accordingly.”
I was still smiling when Will walked into the bedroom.
He stopped in the doorway, coffee cup in hand, and I watched his eyes go to my phone, to the smile fading from my face, to the way I suddenly didn’t know what to do with my hands.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning.”
He crossed to the window and stood there with his back to me, looking out at the hydrangeas. The quiet spread out between us, filled with things neither of us was saying.
“Trip sent me something funny,” I offered. “Posy Wetherell’s column. Apparently we’re canoodling.”
“I saw it.”
“It’s ridiculous, obviously. She makes half of this stuff up.”
“So you keep telling me.”
The question was the same one he’d asked last night. The same flat tone. The same careful distance.
“Will.” I set down my phone and got out of bed, crossing to stand beside him at the window. “What’s going on? You’ve been strange for days, and I can’t fix it if you won’t talk to me.”
“Nothing to fix.”
“That’s not true.”
He turned to look at me, and his eyes had gone cold in a way I couldn’t read. A shutter came down behind them, careful and cold.
“I just need some space,” he said. “To think.”
“Space from what?”
“Everything.” He paused. “You.”
The word landed and left a mark.
“Me?”
“I don’t mean. I just…” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated with himself or with me or with both of us. “I need to figure some things out. That’s all.”
“What things?”
“Blair.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust myself to say it right.” His jaw tightened. “Because I don’t trust myself at all right now.”
I wanted to push. Wanted to force the conversation, drag whatever was festering inside him out into the light where we could deal with it together. But the look on his face stopped me. A warning. A wall.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Take your space. But Will? I’m here. Whenever you’re ready.”
He nodded once and walked out of the room.
I stood at the window for a long time after he left, watching the hydrangeas nod in the morning breeze, trying to remember the last time my husband had looked at me like someone he wanted to be near.
***
The Bellcliff Club was crowded that night.
Some charity event in the main hall had spilled over into the bar, and the terrace was packed with women in designer dresses and men in suits that cost more than my first car.
I smiled at people I recognized, made small talk with wives whose names I sometimes forgot, and all the while I was scanning the room for Will.
I found him at the bar. Same stool as last night. Same glass of scotch. Fritz was polishing glasses with the practiced indifference of a man who saw everything and said nothing.
“Hey.” I slid onto the stool beside him. “You disappeared after dinner.”
“Needed some air.”
“At the bar again?”
“Where else?”
He didn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on his drink, his fingers tracing patterns in the condensation on the glass.
“Will, talk to me. Please.”
“About what?”
“About whatever’s going on with you. With us.”
He laughed, a short, humorless sound. “You want to talk about us? Fine. Let’s talk about Posy Wetherell’s column.”
“We already talked about that.”
“Did we?”
“This morning. I told you it was ridiculous.”
“You told me she makes things up.” He finally turned to look at me, and his eyes were cold in a way I’d never seen. “But that implies the underlying facts are wrong. What if they’re right? What if you’ve been inseparable since Trip arrived? What if you’ve been touring romantic venues?”
“The vineyard was for… It wasn’t romantic. Not like that.”
“Then what was it?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Trip was proposing to Luca. We were scouting venues. It was innocent. Completely innocent.
And I couldn’t say any of it.
“It was just a vineyard,” I finally said. “Trip wanted to see it. I went with him.”
“At sunset.”
“The timing was-”
“Romantic?”
“Coincidental.”
Will picked up his scotch and drained it in one long swallow. His hand was steady, but his jaw was tight, like he was holding himself together through sheer force of will.
“You know what I think?” he said.
“What?”
“I think you’re lying to me.” He set down the empty glass with a careful click. “I think you’ve been lying to me since Trip came back. I think there’s something going on, and you’re choosing to hide it, and I’m supposed to just smile and pretend I don’t notice.”
“Will, that’s not.”
“Is it?”
The question hung between us. Two words. A whole world of accusation in them.
Fritz appeared with my usual, gin and tonic with extra lime, setting it down without meeting my eyes. I thanked him automatically, watching Will’s face, trying to find my husband in this stranger who looked at me like I was the enemy.
“No,” I said firmly. “It’s not. I’m not lying to you.”
“Then explain the vineyard.”
“I told you. Trip wanted to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because he…” I stopped. Started again. “Because he’s interested in the wine. The region. He’s thinking of investing.”
Even to my own ears, it sounded weak.
Will laughed again. That same hollow sound.
“Investing,” he repeated. “Right.”
“Will.”
“I need to settle up. Fritz?”
He pulled out his wallet, leaving cash on the bar without counting it. Too much. He always tipped too much when he was upset, like he could pay for the privilege of falling apart in public.
I reached across the bar and took his hand. Held it tight.
“I love you,” I said. “Whatever you think is happening, I love you. Only you. I’ve always loved only you.”
His fingers were limp in mine. He looked at our joined hands like he was seeing them from very far away, like he couldn’t quite remember what they were supposed to mean.
I squeezed.
He didn’t squeeze back.
“I’ll see you at home,” he said, and pulled his hand free, and walked away.
I sat at the bar alone, my drink sweating onto a napkin, and tried to understand how we’d gotten here. How the man who had held me like I was precious just days ago could look at me now like I was a stranger he didn’t trust.
This was the same bar where he’d found me the first time.
Nineteen years old, in a borrowed dress, hiding by the ice machine because I didn’t have the pedigree to talk to anyone in that room and I knew it.
Will Beaumont had crossed the whole floor to get to me, ignored every girl who’d been raised to marry him, and asked what I was drinking.
When I’d said I couldn’t afford anything here, he’d said good, neither can I, my father can, and grinned like we were about to rob the place together.
He’d spent the rest of the night making me laugh so hard I forgot to be terrified.
At the end of it he’d walked me to the door and said, dead serious under all that charm, you’re the most interesting person in Newport and everyone in there is too stupid to know it. I’m not that stupid.
For fifteen years I’d believed him. He’d made me believe it, every single day, in a thousand small unshowy ways, until I forgot I’d ever felt like the girl by the ice machine.
And now he was looking at me like she was all I’d ever been. A fraud who’d fooled him for a decade. I didn’t know which was harder to bear, losing the man at the bar or watching him decide he’d invented me.
Trip found me an hour later, still sitting there, still staring at nothing.
“Bad night?”
“You could say that.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
He sat down beside me anyway, signaling Fritz for whatever I was having. We drank in silence for a while, two old friends with too much history and not enough words.
“He read Posy’s column,” I finally said.
“And?”
“And he thinks.” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Trip’s hand found mine on the bar. Squeezed.
“I’m sorry, B. This is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is. If I’d just told him the truth from the start.”
“Then your father would find out. Then everything you’ve worked for would fall apart.”
“Maybe that’s worth it. If it means your marriage survives.”
I looked at him. At his face, lined with guilt and exhaustion and the weight of a secret he’d been carrying his whole life.
“No,” I said. “It’s not. Your happiness matters too. You deserve to do this on your own terms.”
“Even if it costs you everything?”
“It won’t.”
I said it with a confidence I didn’t feel.
Because Will had looked at me tonight like he didn’t know me anymore. Like everything we’d built together was a castle made of sand, and the tide was coming in, and there was nothing either of us could do to stop it.
I took my hand from Trip’s and picked up my drink.
Outside, the harbor was dark and still, and somewhere in that darkness, my husband was driving home without me, and I didn’t know how to reach him anymore.