11. Will
— ? —
Will
The house was too quiet.
I’d never noticed before how much sound Blair made just by existing.
The rustle of her moving through rooms, her footsteps on the stairs, the way she hummed to herself when she was turning over a thought she didn’t want to share.
The clatter of her coffee cup against the saucer in the morning, always too hard, always making me wince.
The sound of water running when she washed her face at night, the particular rhythm of it that I’d memorized without meaning to.
All the small noises of a life shared. The background music of a marriage I’d taken for granted.
Now Seacliff was a museum. Beautiful and cold and full of things that used to matter and now just gathered dust in the silence.
The caterers had finished packing up hours ago.
I’d watched them from the study window, loading trays and glasses into their vans, their movements efficient and professional.
They didn’t know what had happened. To them, this was just another Newport party that had ended, another successful event checked off their calendar.
They had no idea they were dismantling the wreckage of my life.
The last of the guests had departed not long after, some with sympathetic glances they thought I didn’t notice, others with the barely concealed glee of people who had just witnessed excellent gossip in the making.
I’d stood in the foyer and shaken hands and thanked people for coming, performing the role of gracious host while my wife was upstairs packing bags to leave me.
The ballroom was empty now, the flowers wilting on their pedestals, the champagne going flat in abandoned glasses that the caterers had missed.
The string quartet’s music stands were still arranged in the corner, their sheet music fluttering slightly in the draft from the open windows.
Someone had left a shawl draped over a chair, some society wife who would send her assistant to retrieve it tomorrow, probably with instructions to gather gossip while they were at it.
A hundred thousand dollars. That’s what this party had cost. A hundred thousand dollars to celebrate a marriage that had exploded before the cake was even cut.
I wandered through the rooms without purpose, touching things without seeing them.
The piano Blair played sometimes, when she thought no one was listening.
I’d caught her once, in the early morning, picking out a melody I didn’t recognize.
She’d stopped when she’d heard me, had laughed and said she was just messing around, but I’d seen a look on her face.
Wistful. A hint that there were parts of herself she’d set aside when she’d married me.
The painting she’d bought at an auction three years ago hung above the fireplace in the sitting room.
Abstract, all blues and greens, the kind of thing I’d never understood but had pretended to appreciate because it made her happy.
She’d spent an hour explaining why she loved it, the brushwork and the emotional resonance, and I’d nodded along while secretly thinking it looked like someone had spilled paint on a canvas and called it art.
Now I stood in front of it and wished I’d listened better. Wished I’d asked more questions. Wished I’d tried to understand instead of just pretending.
The photographs on the mantle were the hardest to look at.
Our wedding day, both of us so young, so certain of our future.
Henry’s birth, Blair exhausted and radiant, holding our son for the first time.
A vacation in Italy three years ago, where we’d wandered through vineyards and eaten too much pasta and made love in a villa with windows that looked out on olive groves.
We’d been so happy in Italy. I remembered thinking, standing on that balcony with a glass of wine in my hand, that nothing could ever go wrong. That we’d figured it out, cracked the code, built a marriage that would last forever.
I was such a fool.
The master bedroom was the worst. Her perfume still lingered in the air, that particular scent she’d worn for years, a scent of jasmine and vanilla that I’d never been able to identify precisely.
I’d bought her a dozen bottles of it over the years, always the wrong brand, always close but not quite right, and she’d wear them anyway because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
Her clothes were still in the closet. Dresses arranged by color, the way she liked them.
Shoes lined up on the floor, organized by heel height.
The silk robe I’d bought her for Christmas, the one she said was too fancy to actually wear but that I’d seen her put on sometimes when she thought I was asleep.
Her makeup was still scattered across the bathroom counter, brushes and compacts and tubes of things I couldn’t identify. The toothbrush she used, blue, standing in the holder next to my green one. All the evidence of a life that had been here just hours ago.
I slept on her side of the bed.
I didn’t mean to. The first night I’d stayed on my own side, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the front door to open and her footsteps on the stairs. She’d come back. She had to come back. This was our home, our life, our everything.
She didn’t come back.
The second night I’d rolled over in my sleep and woken with my face pressed into her pillow, breathing in the ghost of her shampoo.
The scent of her wrapped around me, familiar and devastating, and I’d stayed there for an hour, hating myself for needing this, hating myself for not being able to stop.
Now I didn’t even pretend. Her side of the bed was mine, and I lay there in the dark, trying to absorb what remained of her presence, trying to hold onto a presence that was already slipping away.
Pathetic. I was pathetic.
I’d sent twelve texts since she left. Twelve messages, composed and deleted and rewritten and finally sent, each one worse than the last.
The first had been angry. Demanding. A message about needing to talk, needing her to come home, needing her to stop being dramatic.
I’d deleted it before she could respond. Had rewritten it, softer this time, apologetic. Had sent that one instead.
The third text had been longer, a rambling explanation of my thought process, my fears, my reasons for asking what I’d asked. I’d read it back afterward and realized how pathetic it sounded. How much it read like a man trying to justify the unjustifiable.
By the eighth text, I’d stopped trying to explain. Had just written that I loved her, that I was sorry, that I’d do anything to fix this.
By the twelfth, I’d been begging.
She’d answered once.
Blair: You asked if our baby was yours. Talk to me when you believe I’ve only ever been yours.
I’d read those words so many times they’d burned themselves into my brain. I saw them when I closed my eyes. Heard them in her voice, flat and final, the sound of a door closing.
Our baby. She’d said our baby.
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe everything she’d told me, the whole story about Trip and Luca and the proposal. It made sense, in a way. It explained everything, answered every question, resolved every suspicion.
But…
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of watching Trip look at Blair.
Fifteen years of that particular intensity in his eyes whenever she walked into a room.
The way he’d fought our relationship at the beginning, telling her she could do better, telling her I wasn’t good enough.
The way he’d never brought anyone serious to any event, never talked about romantic relationships, never seemed interested in anyone except her.
Was I supposed to believe that all of it was wrong? That every instinct I’d had, every fear that had kept me up at night, was based on a complete misunderstanding?
Or was Blair lying? Was she covering for Trip, protecting him, giving me a story that would explain everything away while the truth stayed hidden?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. That was the hell of it. I was trapped in my own head with questions that had no answers, and the only person who could help me was the one I’d driven away.
The gold box was still on my desk.
I’d carried it from the study to the bedroom and back again, unable to decide where it belonged. It sat there now, catching the lamplight, the gold ribbon slightly askew from all the times I’d picked it up and put it down.
Every time I passed it, I stopped. Reached for it. Put it down.
Coward. I was a coward who couldn’t face what was inside.
Because opening that box meant knowing. It meant confirming that Blair had been planning to announce her pregnancy at our anniversary party, that she’d wrapped a gift for me with love and hope and faith in our future, and I’d responded by asking if the baby was mine.
I could still see her face when I’d said those words. The way her expression had shifted from hope to shock to grief. I’d watched a light break behind her eyes, a wound that might never heal, and I’d done it with three small words.
Is it mine?
My father had asked my mother a question like it once. I was twelve. Hiding on the stairs past my bedtime, the way I did when my parents fought. They thought I was asleep. They thought the walls of this house were thick enough to muffle their raised voices.
They were wrong.
The stairs were cold beneath me, the banister pressing into my back as I leaned against it, making myself small, making myself invisible. The study door was cracked open, and light spilled out onto the hallway carpet, along with their voices.
“It was a business meeting,” my father had said.
“At midnight? At a hotel in Providence?”
“Catherine, you’re being ridiculous.”
“The perfume, Gerald. You came home smelling like Chanel. I don’t wear Chanel.”
Silence. Long and terrible. I remember counting my heartbeats in that silence, wondering if they could hear me breathing.
“She’s my cousin.” My father’s voice, tired now, not even bothering to sound convincing. “She was visiting from Boston. I took her to dinner.”