8. Blair
— ? —
Blair
Two lines.
I sat on the cold bathroom floor, still in my nightgown, staring at the test like it might change if I looked away and back again. The tile was freezing beneath me, the early morning light filtering through the window, and I was shaking in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
The first test had been a maybe. A faint shadow of a second line that could have been wishful thinking, could have been a trick of the light, could have been my desperate brain seeing what it wanted to see.
I’d convinced myself it was nothing. Stress.
Irregular cycles. The chaos of the past few weeks finally catching up to my body.
So I’d taken a second test.
The second test was definitive. Clear. Undeniable. Two pink lines, bold and unmistakable, announcing what should have been the happiest news of my life.
Pregnant.
Six weeks, if I was counting right. And I was, because I’d counted three times, lying on this bathroom floor, working backward through the calendar to the night of Trip’s homecoming.
The night Will had touched me with desperate hands, had held me with unusual urgency, had made love to me with an intensity I hadn’t understood at the time.
Six weeks. Our baby. Made on a night when he’d looked at me with an intensity I’d mistaken for passion but now recognized as fear.
The joy hit first, pure and bright and overwhelming.
Another child. A sibling for Henry. A family growing, expanding, becoming more than it was before.
I pressed my hand to my stomach, to the place where a small miracle was already happening, cells dividing and multiplying, becoming a person who would be half me and half Will and entirely themselves.
Tears slid down my cheeks. Happy tears. The kind I hadn’t cried in weeks.
Then reality crashed in.
Will. Will, who couldn’t look at me without suspicion. Will, who had locked the bathroom door between us. Will, who had interrogated our seven-year-old son about whether I smiled differently around Trip.
When I told him, he’d think…
No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Ten years of marriage. He knew my body, knew my cycles, knew exactly when we’d been together. He could count backward the same way I had and arrive at the same answer.
But could he? Could he trust the math when he didn’t trust me?
The question made my stomach turn. Or maybe that was the pregnancy. I’d forgotten how early the nausea started, how quickly the body announced its new purpose.
I sat on the cold tile and let myself cry.
Really cry, the kind of sobbing that comes from somewhere deep, the kind that leaves you hollow and exhausted.
I cried for the baby, for the way this announcement should have gone.
I cried for my marriage, for the wreckage we’d made of a marriage that used to be solid.
I cried for myself, for the woman who’d done nothing wrong and was being treated like a criminal.
When the tears finally stopped, I felt empty. Scraped clean.
I looked at the test again. Still positive. Still real.
Okay, I told myself. Okay. You can do this. You’ve faced harder things.
I couldn’t think of any harder things at the moment, but I was sure they existed.
The nursery shop on Thames Street was small and quiet, tucked between an art gallery and a bookstore.
I’d been here before, seven years ago, picking out supplies for Henry.
The same bell chimed when I walked in, the same smell of new fabric and baby powder filled the air.
Some things stayed constant, even when everything else was falling apart.
The owner recognized me, a woman with silver hair and kind eyes who had helped me choose Henry’s first crib sheets.
“Mrs. Beaumont! How lovely to see you. Shopping for a gift?”
“Something small,” I said. “For an announcement.”
“Oh, how wonderful. A friend expecting?”
“For my husband, actually.”
Her face lit up with understanding. “How exciting! Let me show you what we have. Are you looking for something practical or something sentimental?”
“Sentimental. Something that means something.”
She led me through the aisles, pointing out options. Blankets in soft colors. Onesies with clever sayings. A tiny stuffed whale that reminded me of Henry’s favorite, the one he still slept with even though he was supposedly too old for stuffed animals.
Nothing felt right until I saw them.
Tiny baby shoes. Impossibly small, white canvas with little anchors embroidered on the toes. A gift Will would love, one that connected to our life, to the boats and the harbor and the world we’d built together. I picked them up and felt tears prick my eyes again.
“These,” I said. “Can you wrap them in gold? A gold box, gold ribbon. I want it to feel special.”
“Of course. What a perfect choice.”
She took them to the register, and I watched her wrap them with careful hands, folding tissue paper, tucking the shoes inside, tying the ribbon into a perfect bow. Her movements were precise and practiced, the work of someone who had done this a thousand times.
“Is this your first?” she asked.
“Second.” The word came out cracked. Just a little. Just enough that she looked at me with concern.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Fine.” I forced a smile. “Just emotional. You know how it is.”
She nodded sympathetically. “Hormones are a beast. My daughter cried every time she saw a puppy during her first trimester.”
“Sounds about right.”
The gold box was perfect when she finished. Small and elegant, the ribbon catching the light. I tucked it into my purse and walked out into the afternoon sun, feeling the weight of it against my hip.
The anniversary party was in ten days. I’d tell him then. In front of everyone, with champagne in hand and our whole life spread out around us. A public announcement. A grand gesture. The reset button we desperately needed.
It had to work. It had to.
Will couldn’t look at that gold box, couldn’t see those tiny shoes, couldn’t hear me tell him we were having another baby, and still believe I’d been unfaithful.
The timeline was right. The math was clear.
And more than that, he knew me. He knew who I was, deep down, beneath all the fear and suspicion.
He had to know.
I made it home before the doubts started creeping in again. Before the voice in the back of my head reminded me that Will wasn’t operating on logic anymore. He was operating on fear, on the ghost of his father’s betrayals, on thirty years of learning that love couldn’t be trusted.
I hid the gold box in my closet, behind a stack of sweaters, where Will wouldn’t find it. Then I sat on the bed.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told the tiny cluster of cells inside me. “I’m going to fix this. I promise.”
The baby didn’t answer, of course. But I felt a shift, some determination taking root alongside the new life.
I’d fight for this. For us. For all of us.
***
The second blind item ran that evening.
I was sitting in the living room at Seacliff, Henry at his piano lesson with the tutor who came on Tuesdays, the house quiet around me. My phone buzzed with a text from a woman I vaguely knew from the club, someone I played tennis with occasionally.
Margot: Have you seen the column today? I’m so sorry. These gossip rags are vicious.
My stomach dropped. The pregnancy nausea surged, mixing with a new kind of sick feeling.
I pulled up the Newport Daily News website and scrolled to the Crow’s Nest. Posy Wetherell’s smug face smiled from the corner of the screen, and beneath it, words designed to wound.
The plot thickens at Seacliff! Sources close to our favorite Cliff Walk couple say the tension has been mounting since a certain best friend’s return.
Late nights, whispered calls, and one very public regatta disaster have tongues wagging from Bellevue to Bannister’s Wharf.
One must wonder: with a milestone anniversary approaching, is the devoted husband planning a surprise, or is his wife?
And which of them will be more shocked by what the other has been hiding?
My hands were shaking.
This had turned specific. Targeted. Well past idle gossip, past Posy’s usual invented filler. Someone was feeding her details about my marriage, my schedule, my life.
Someone who wanted to see me burn.
I thought about Charles Vanderford. His cold eyes at the last club event. The careful way he’d asked about Trip’s “European adventures” with a smile that meant trouble. Trip had told me his father was suspicious, was asking questions about whatever Trip was hiding overseas.
What if Charles had figured it out? What if he suspected that Trip was hiding someone, and he’d decided the easiest way to smoke out the truth was to set my marriage on fire?
If I was distracted defending myself, I couldn’t help Trip.
If Will believed the rumors, he might confront Trip directly.
And if that confrontation happened in public, if accusations flew and Trip was forced to choose between denial and truth, Charles would win.
Charles would get exactly what he wanted.
I screenshot the column and opened my texts.
Me: Is your father capable of planting this? Be honest.
The response came within minutes.
Trip: He’s capable of anything. Don’t engage. Don’t give him a reaction. I’ll handle my father.
I stared at those words. Handle him how? And when? The proposal was supposed to happen soon. The party was only ten days out. Everything was converging at once, and I was standing in the middle of it with a baby in my belly and a target on my back.
Me: What if he doesn’t stop?
Trip: He will. I know how to manage him. Just keep your head down and let me deal with this.
Keep my head down. Let someone else deal with it. Wait and hope and trust that everything would work out.
I’d been doing that for weeks. It wasn’t working.
I set down my phone and laid a hand flat over my belly. Six weeks. Barely anything yet. A flutter of potential, the beginning of a person who would be half me and half Will and completely dependent on us getting our act together.