14. Will #2
“Then let me tell you what she said about you.” Trip’s voice dropped, and his expression changed.
The anger was still there, but underneath it was grief, plain and unguarded.
“Let me tell you what she told me, in private, when she had no reason to perform for anyone, when it was just her and me and the truth.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“She said you were the only person who ever made her feel seen. The real her. Not Blair Colby, the girl from nowhere who clawed her way into Newport society. Just Blair. That with you, for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to pretend.”
I felt the words land somewhere deep, somewhere I’d been protecting.
“Stop.”
“She said marrying you was the smartest thing she ever did. That she’d choose you again, every single time, knowing every way you could hurt her.” Trip didn’t waver. “She told me that a month before you stood in your own study and asked her if her baby was yours.”
“I said stop.”
“That’s why I opposed your marriage at the beginning.
” Trip met my eyes, and there was no performance left in his gaze, just raw honesty.
“Not because I wanted her for myself. Because I was terrified you’d hurt her.
Because I knew, even then, that she loved you more than she’d ever loved anyone in her entire life, and if you broke her heart, she might not recover from it. ”
The fight drained out of me. I stood there in the middle of my living room, surrounded by broken glass and spilled scotch and the wreckage of my own certainty, and felt a crack split open in my chest.
“She told you all that?”
“Over the years. In pieces. When she was happy, when she was worried, when she was scared you were working too hard or carrying too much weight on your shoulders or forgetting to take care of yourself.” Trip’s voice was quieter now, exhausted.
“She told me because I was her best friend. Because that’s what best friends do.
They listen. They keep secrets. They protect the people they love, even when it costs them everything. ”
“Trip.”
“She kept my secret while you built a case against her.” The coldness was back in his voice, but it was different now.
Sadder. “You had ten years of her, Will. Ten years of loyalty and love and a woman who would walk through fire for the people she cares about. And you trusted a rumor my father started over every single one of those years.”
“Your father?”
“My mother found out. Bunny. She never trusted him, not since she caught him in his own lies years ago, and she’s watched him more closely than he knows ever since. Last week she found the proof. He has been paying Posy Wetherell to plant every one of those stories, since the day I came home.”
The room tilted. I grabbed the back of the couch to steady myself.
“Charles has been paying the gossip columnist?”
“Every blind item. Every rumor. Every carefully planted piece of poison, all of it aimed at making you doubt your own wife.” Trip’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact.
“You want to know why he chose Blair? Because my father has known what I am for years. He just needed me to keep pretending, so he could keep pretending too. As long as I stayed quiet, stayed hidden, married some suitable girl eventually, he could tell himself it wasn’t real. ”
“And then you came home.”
“And then I came home braver. Because of her. Blair spent seven years on the phone with me at three in the morning, telling me I deserved to be loved out loud. She is the reason I finally stopped hiding.” Trip’s jaw tightened.
“My father knew that. He knew she was the one who made me brave. So he decided that if he couldn’t control me, he’d break her.
Wreck her marriage. Ruin her name. Make her so small and so alone that I’d lose my nerve and crawl back into the dark where he could pretend I belonged.
He tried to destroy your wife to get his son back. ”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because control is the only love he understands. Because he’d rather burn a good woman to the ground than let the world see me happy.” Trip moved toward the door, his footsteps crunching on broken glass. “My mother kept the proof. Every payment, every lie he paid Posy to print. Ask her.”
He crossed to the door, then stopped, and when he spoke again the fury had gone out of him. What was left underneath it was worse.
“I want to be angry at you and only you,” he said.
“It would be so much easier. But I’m the one who put her here.
I asked her to carry my secret. I made her choose between me and you, and I told myself it was fair because I was scared, because my father has spent thirty-four years teaching me that the truth gets people like me destroyed.
” He pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes.
“She should never have had to choose. That’s mine.
I’ll carry that one to my grave. But I handed her an impossible thing and then watched you punish her for holding it, and I could have ended it any day by walking in here and doing what I’m doing right now.
I waited too long. I let her bleed for me because I was afraid to bleed for myself. ”
He was quiet for a moment.
“So that’s my part. I know exactly what it cost her. What you do with yours is up to you.”
He stopped at the doorway, his hand on the frame, his back to me.
“She was telling the truth, Will. She was telling you the truth, and you laughed at her. You asked if your baby was yours. You did that. Not me. Not my father. You.”
He left.
The front door closed behind him, and I stood in my living room surrounded by broken glass, the silence pressing in around me, the smell of scotch sharp in my nose.
Blair was innocent.
I’d known it. Some part of me had always known that she couldn’t have been lying, that the woman I’d married wasn’t capable of the betrayal I’d accused her of.
But I’d let my fear override my faith. I’d let the ghost of my father’s mistakes, the shadow of my parents’ dead marriage, convince me that everyone eventually reveals themselves to be untrustworthy.
And Charles Vanderford had used that fear against me. Had fed me evidence that confirmed my worst suspicions. Had played me perfectly while I destroyed my own marriage with my own two hands.
I should call Blair. Right now. Tell her I finally understood, finally believed, finally saw the truth.
But what would I say?
***
At midnight, I drove to Nan’s cottage.
Rain was falling, soft at first, then harder.
The windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm as I turned onto Nan’s street, the sound hypnotic in the darkness.
The house was dark except for one window on the upper floor.
Blair’s room. I could see her shadow crossing back and forth behind the curtain, pacing the way she did when she couldn’t sleep.
I parked across the street and killed the engine.
I should knock. Should fall on my knees on her grandmother’s porch and beg forgiveness. Should tell her everything Trip had told me, everything I finally understood.
I rehearsed it in the dark.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I needed someone else to prove what you’d already told me. I’m sorry I asked if our baby was mine.”
The words were true. They were also insufficient. Nothing I could say tonight would be enough. Not when the wound was still so fresh.
She crossed in front of the window again. Hand pressed to her belly. Probably talking to the baby, the way she used to talk to Henry before he was born.
I ached so badly I thought my chest might crack open.
I sat in my car in the rain, watching my wife pace behind a lit window, and I didn’t knock.
I drove home at midnight, and the rain didn’t stop, and neither did the wanting.