8. Blair #2
I thought about telling Will tonight. Right now. Walking into his study, where I could hear him moving around, and saying the words. Watching his face transform the way it had when I’d told him about Henry.
But he’d locked the bathroom door. He’d questioned our son. He’d looked at me on that dock and asked, “Are you?”
Are you my wife?
If I told him now, while he was in this state, he’d do the math and arrive at the right answer. But would he trust the math? Or would he look at the timeline and wonder if he was raising another man’s child?
The thought made me physically ill.
I ran to the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet before I was sick. The nausea was worse now, mixing with the stress and the fear and the overwhelming feeling of being trapped.
When it passed, I sat on the cool tile floor and pressed my cheek against the porcelain. Not the most dignified position for a Cliff Walk wife, but dignity was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I couldn’t tell him now. Not while he was suspicious and angry and building a case against me.
I needed the party. I needed the grand gesture, the public moment, the champagne and the crowd and the inescapable evidence of our life together.
I needed to remind him what we had before I told him what we were about to have.
Ten days. I just needed to hold on for ten days.
The baby needed me to hold on for ten days.
I got up from the bathroom floor. Washed my face. Fixed my hair. Looked at myself in the mirror and made myself smile.
You can do this, I told my reflection. You’ve done harder things.
The reflection didn’t look convinced.
***
Two days later, it stopped being a rumor on a screen and walked up to me in person.
The Preservation Society luncheon was the kind of event I couldn’t skip without becoming the story myself, so I went, and I smiled, and I was halfway across the garden with a glass of sparkling water when I saw them.
Posy Wetherell had Trip backed against the boxwood hedge, notebook nowhere in sight, which was worse.
Posy without a notebook meant Posy fishing.
“Just between us,” she was saying, her head tilted, her voice syrup. “Off the record. You’ve been so happy since you got back. Glowing, really. And nobody glows like that over a friend. So who’s he, Trip? Or is it her? You can tell me. I’m practically family.”
Trip’s face had gone the specific gray of a man deciding whether the truth would cost more said or unsaid. His mouth opened.
I moved before I finished thinking.
“Posy.” I slid between them, all bright teeth, and looped my arm through Trip’s so tightly he had no choice but to be steered.
“You’ve got him monopolized and I’ve barely said hello.
You don’t mind, do you? Twenty years of gossip to catch up on.
None of it printable.” I was already walking, taking Trip with me, my heart slamming against my ribs.
“Love the column, by the way. So brave, publishing things you can’t source. ”
I didn’t stop until we were on the far side of the fountain, out of earshot, my hand still clamped on Trip’s arm.
“She almost had me,” he said quietly. “One more second and I don’t know what I’d have said.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
My whole body was still humming with adrenaline, my mouth dry, my pulse in my throat.
That was how close it lived now. One garden, one loaded question, one exhausted man, and the entire thing could go up before he was ready.
Charles didn’t need to prove anything. He just needed Trip cornered often enough that eventually he’d crack.
I couldn’t be in every garden.
***
That evening I drove to Nan’s cottage. I hadn’t planned to. My hands just pointed the car there, the way they do when you need the one person who has never once repeated a thing you told her.
Nan took one look at me on her porch and put the kettle on without asking. She set the tea down, sat across from me, and waited, because Nan understood that the fastest way to get the truth out of someone was to stop reaching for it.
“I can’t tell you why,” I finally said. “But Trip’s carrying something, and I’m the only one holding the other end of it, and if I let go it wrecks his whole life. And keeping it is wrecking mine.”
“Does Will know you’re keeping it?”
“He knows I’m keeping something. He thinks it’s the worst thing it could be.”
Nan was quiet a long moment. Then she reached across and put her dry, papery hand over mine.
“Then you tell me the something,” she said. “Not to fix it. Just so you’re not carrying it alone. I’ve kept worse secrets than a Vanderford’s, and I’ve never once had the urge to hand them to Catherine Beaumont over cocktails.”
So I told her. All of it. Trip, Luca, the ring, the proposal, Charles. And when I was done, the weight in my chest was still there, but I could breathe around it, which was more than I’d managed in weeks.
“You’re a good friend,” Nan said. “And a stubborn one. Those two things are going to cost you before they save you.” She refilled my cup. “Drink. You look like a ghost that skipped lunch.”
***
That night, I lay in bed next to Will, close enough to touch, and I thought about the life growing inside me. Our baby. His and mine. Made on a night when he’d held me with desperate hands, when he’d touched me with what looked like fear.
He was asleep now, or pretending to be. His breathing was too even, too controlled. He was lying on the far edge of the mattress, maintaining the distance that had become our new normal.
Under the covers, my hand found my stomach.
I need to tell Will about this baby before the whole world decides I’m carrying someone else’s child.
The thought kept me awake for hours. The baby, growing in secret. The rumors, spreading through Newport. The party, approaching with the inevitability of a deadline.
Eight days. Eight days to save my marriage, protect my friend, and bring a new life safely into the world.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the thoughts kept spiraling. Charles Vanderford feeding stories to Posy. Will cataloging my sins. Trip counting down to a proposal that might never happen if his father got his way.
And me, in the middle of all of it, with a gold box hidden in my closet and a husband who couldn’t look at me without pain.
My hand stayed on my stomach, protective and pleading.
Hold on, little one. I’m going to fix this. I promise.
The baby couldn’t hear me. Couldn’t understand. But somehow, making the promise helped.
Even if I had no idea how I was going to keep it.