26. Blair
— ? —
Blair
Seven weeks of bed rest had turned me into a tyrant with a bell.
I was installed on the good sofa in the Seacliff parlor, surrounded by pillows and blankets and a small table stacked with books I wasn’t reading.
Will had bought me the bell as a joke during week two, a brass thing with a wooden handle that made a cheerful tinkling sound when I rang it.
He’d stopped finding it funny somewhere around week four, when I started using it to summon him for increasingly ridiculous reasons.
“I need more water.”
“You have water. There’s a full glass right there.”
“That water is room temperature. I need cold water.”
“Blair.”
I rang the bell again. He sighed and went to get me cold water.
Thirty-six weeks pregnant and counting. The baby had dropped two days ago, settling lower in my pelvis, a sign that she was getting ready to make her appearance.
The doctor said it could be any time now, though first labors often went past their due dates.
I was choosing to believe she’d arrive early, mostly because I couldn’t stand the thought of more bed rest.
Trip had texted me that morning with a screenshot that made me laugh so hard I nearly went into early labor.
Trip: Have you seen it? Posy’s column. I’m framing this. I’m putting it in a gilded frame above my fireplace.
I found the column on my tablet. The same headshot in the corner, the same practiced smile. And beneath it, a headline I never thought I’d see.
Well, dear readers, it seems this columnist owes someone an apology.
The Beaumont marriage, which these pages declared doomed, appears stronger than ever.
The separated couple has reunited, reconciled, and is expecting their second child any day now.
As for the rumors that plagued Mrs. Beaumont?
Sources close to this column have confirmed they were planted by a certain patriarch with an agenda of his own.
One must be more careful about one’s sources. Consider this a lesson learned.
I read it three times, savoring every word.
Trip appeared in the parlor doorway an hour later, Luca at his side, both of them grinning like people bursting with news to share.
“Posy Wetherell, eating crow,” Trip announced, sweeping into the room. “In the Crow’s Nest column. Do you understand how perfect that is? The metaphorical resonance? The cosmic justice?”
“I saw it.”
“I’m having it printed on a cake. A very large cake. I’m going to eat Charles’s defeat frosted in buttercream.”
Luca rolled his eyes affectionately. “He’s been like this all morning.”
“I’m celebrating. I’m allowed to celebrate.” Trip settled into the armchair across from my sofa, crossing his legs with his usual dramatic flair. “Also, did you hear? He’s been dropped.”
“Dropped from what?”
“Everything that ever mattered to him. The yacht club. The hospital committee. That arts thing he loved lording over everyone at dinner parties.” Trip’s smile was sharp with satisfaction. “Turns out people don’t like finding out they were pawns in one man’s ugly little vendetta. Who knew?”
“How did they find out?”
“Will.” Trip glanced toward the doorway, where Will was hovering with my cold water. “He made sure the right people heard exactly what Charles had done.”
I looked at my husband. He shrugged, setting the water down on my side table.
“He tried to destroy our marriage. I returned the favor.”
“My mother’s been having the time of her life,” Trip continued. “She’s redecorating the entire house without consulting him. Last week she gave his study to Luca as an architecture studio. He came home to find his hunting trophies in boxes on the lawn.”
“That seems extreme.”
“She’s making up for thirty years of biting her tongue. I’m choosing to support her journey.” Trip reached for Luca’s hand. “Which brings us to the actual reason for our visit.”
Will settled onto the sofa beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. I leaned into him, feeling the warmth of his body, the solid reassurance of his presence. After everything, I still wasn’t tired of touching him. Still wasn’t tired of the simple pleasure of being close.
“We have a question,” Trip said. “For both of you.”
“If it involves yachts, I’m out,” Will said.
“It involves a wedding. Ours.” Trip looked at Luca, who nodded encouragingly. “We want you to stand up with us. Both of you. Together.”
I felt Will go still beside me.
“You want me?” he asked. “After everything?”
“I want you to be there when I marry the love of my life. I want Blair on one side and you on the other. I want to show everyone that this family is stronger than the forces that tried to tear it apart.”
“Trip.”
“Also, Luca thinks you have excellent taste in champagne, and we need a best man with a good cellar.”
Luca shrugged. “It’s true. Your collection is exceptional.”
Will looked at me. I raised my eyebrows, leaving the decision to him.
“I’d be honored,” he said finally.
Trip’s face broke into the widest smile I’d seen from him in months. Then he leaned forward, his expression shifting, turning serious.
“Also, I’m asking you first,” he said. “I want that on record. I asked Will Beaumont before I asked Blair.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because for fifteen years you’ve been convinced I wanted to steal your wife. I thought this might help clarify things.”
Will laughed. Actually laughed, the full sound that came from somewhere deep, the one I’d missed during all the months of tension and suspicion.
“Point taken,” he said.
“Good. Now that that’s settled.” Trip turned to me. “Blair, darling, will you be my person of honor?”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“I refuse to say maid of honor. It’s antiquated and heteronormative. Person of honor has a nice ring to it.”
“Then yes. Absolutely yes.”
Trip clapped his hands together. “Perfect. We’ll discuss details later. For now, I need to go gloat at my father’s expense some more. It’s a full-time job but someone has to do it.”
They left in a flurry of air kisses and promises to call, and Will and I were alone again in the parlor, the afternoon sun streaming through the windows.
“That was unexpected,” Will said.
“The wedding party thing?”
“Him asking me first. Deliberately. Making a point of it.”
“He’s trying to show you that he never saw you as a rival. That he never wanted what you had.”
“I know.” Will was quiet for a moment. “I wasted so many years being jealous of him. Being afraid of him. And the whole time, he was just trying to be your friend.”
“You know that now. That’s what matters.”
He pressed a kiss to my temple. “I do know it. Finally.”
The afternoon wasn’t done with me yet. I’d barely finished my cold water when the front door went again, and Nan swept into the parlor with her usual brisk energy. She was carrying a shopping bag that she deposited on the coffee table without ceremony.
“I come bearing fabric samples,” she announced. “For the nursery curtains. These are the ones I found that match your color scheme.”
“Nan, you didn’t have to.”
“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to.” She settled into the armchair Trip had vacated, smoothing her skirt with practiced movements. “I also wanted to deliver a message in person.”
“What message?”
She looked at Will. Then at me. Then back at Will.
“You broke my granddaughter’s heart,” she said. “You made her feel like she wasn’t enough. You asked a question that should never be asked, and you didn’t believe her when she told you the truth.”
“I know,” Will said quietly.
“And then you did the work to fix it. You went to therapy. You wrote letters to your unborn child. You gave away your house because you wanted her to feel safe.” Nan paused. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Neither did I.”
“Well. You proved us both wrong.” She nodded once, a sharp gesture that carried the weight of approval. “You have my blessing. For whatever that’s worth.”
“It’s worth a lot,” I said.
“Don’t get sentimental. I’m not finished.” Nan turned her sharp gaze to me. “The nursery. You’re painting it yourself, I understand.”
“I want to, yes. Once the baby comes, once bed rest is over.”
“You’ll paint it from a chair. Will told me about your plans, and I’m telling you now. You design it. You’re the artist. He does the climbing. Because if I catch you on a ladder again, I’ll finish the job that ladder started.”
“Nan.”
“I mean it, Blair. You scared me. You scared all of us. Don’t do it again.”
I reached for her hand. She let me take it, her fingers thin and strong in mine.
“I promise,” I said. “No more ladders.”
“Good.” She stood abruptly, clearly uncomfortable with the emotional moment. “I’ll leave the fabric samples. Let me know which one you choose. And for God’s sake, have that baby soon. I’m tired of waiting to meet my great-granddaughter.”
She left.
Will looked at me with an expression of mild amazement.
“Did Nan just give me her blessing?”
“Via a series of threats and insults, yes.”
“That might be the nicest thing she’s ever said to me.”
“It definitely is.”
By the time the house finally went quiet that night, Henry asleep and the visitors gone and the fabric samples fanned across the coffee table, I couldn’t sit still any longer. I made Will help me waddle down the hall to the nursery.
The room was half-finished. Over the past weeks, he’d done the prep work, priming the walls, setting up the scaffolding, preparing everything for the actual painting.
The crib was assembled in the corner, along with the changing table and the rocking chair I’d insisted on despite Will’s claims that no one actually used rocking chairs.
“I’m using it,” I said, settling into the chair. “Right now. See? It’s being used.”
“To paint from. Not to rock in.”
“Technicality.”
He handed me a brush and the palette we’d prepared earlier. The colors were perfect, soft blues and greens and whites, the palette of the ocean and the sky and the world outside our windows.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked. “The doctor said bed rest.”
“Sitting counts as bed rest. I’m sitting.”
I started on the first wave.
The mural took shape slowly, one brushstroke at a time.
I painted seated, reaching only as far as my arm could extend, while Will climbed the scaffolding and filled in the parts I couldn’t reach.
He followed my pencil lines with careful precision, only smudging one wave, which I made him fix three times before I was satisfied.
“This one?”
“Still wrong. The curve is too sharp.”
“Blair, it’s a wave. Waves don’t have to be perfect.”
“This wave does. Fix it.”
He fixed it.
By ten o’clock, the main wall was complete.
Ocean waves rolling across the surface, a sailboat in the distance, hydrangeas blooming along the bottom border.
The Cliff Walk stretched along one side, tiny figures walking the path, the view I’d looked at from our bedroom window for ten years translated into paint and color and love.
“It’s beautiful,” Will said, stepping back to look.
“It’s ours.”
My art on my family’s walls. Finally. After all these years of painting in secret, of hiding my work, of thinking my dreams didn’t matter as much as everyone else’s needs. Here was proof that I mattered. That what I created had value.
I pressed my hand to my belly, feeling the baby shift inside me.
“Your room, little one,” I said. “Do you like it?”
She kicked in response.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Will climbed down from the scaffolding and crossed to my chair, kneeling beside me. He pressed his hand next to mine on my belly, and we felt her move together.
“I can’t believe she’s almost here,” he said.
“I can’t believe we survived long enough to get here.”
“We more than survived.” He looked up at me. “We rebuilt everything. Better than before.”
“Is it better?”
“I think so. Don’t you?”
I thought about the past few months. The separation. The grief. The slow, painful work of learning to trust each other again. The moments of doubt and the moments of certainty. The therapy and the letters and the midnight conversations in hospital beds and hotels and our own bedroom.
“It’s different,” I said. “Stronger, maybe. We know what we’re fighting for now.”
“We do.”
I shifted in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position. The baby was pressing on my bladder again, a constant companion for the past few weeks.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I said. “Help me up?”
Will stood and offered his hands. I grabbed them and let him pull me to standing.
Warmth gushed between my legs.
I froze.
“Will.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think my water actually broke this time.”
He went white. “Blair, if you’re joking again.”
“I’m not. Look.”
He looked. At the puddle on the floor. At my soaked pajama pants. At my face, which I’m sure showed a combination of shock and terror and a flicker of excitement.
“Okay.” His voice went high. “Okay. Don’t move. Where are the keys? Henry. Henry’s asleep. We need someone to stay with Henry. Nan. I’ll call Nan. Where’s my phone? The hospital bag. Did we pack the hospital bag? We packed it. Where is it?”
“Will.”
“The nursery isn’t finished. The mural is still wet. What if she needs the nursery and it’s not finished?”
“Will.”
“I’m not ready. I thought we had more time. I thought.”
“Will.” I grabbed his face, forced him to look at me. “Breathe.”
“You’re the one in labor. You breathe.”
“I’m breathing. You’re hyperventilating.”
“I’m not hyperventilating. I’m preparing.”
“You’re panicking.”
“That too.”
I laughed, and somehow that broke the spell. He took a breath. Squared his shoulders. Became the man I needed him to be.
“Okay,” he said, calmer now. “Okay. Let me get you changed. I’ll call Nan. She can stay with Henry. The bag is in the closet. I’ll get the car started.”
“See? You’ve got this.”
“I don’t have this at all. I’m terrified.”
“That’s okay.” I kissed him. “I’m terrified too. Let’s be terrified together.”
He nodded. Took another breath.
“Let’s have a baby,” he said.