Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Nathan did not sleep in the guest room. He did not sleep beside Annie either.
He spent the night in the armchair near the windows with his phone in his hand, calling Brooke once, twice, then a third time after the voicemail finished playing. She did not answer. After the third call, he sent a message Annie could not see because he angled the screen away from her.
Annie stayed on the bed with the covers pulled to her waist, her back against the headboard. The notebook remained beneath her pillow. She was acutely aware of it, the way she might have been aware of a weapon hidden under the mattress.
At one in the morning, Nathan called Dr. Beatrice Lane’s office.
The recorded voicemail answered in the same smooth, professional voice Annie had heard in the office.
You have reached Dr. Beatrice Lane. If this is a clinical emergency, please call?—
Nathan ended the call before the message finished.
At two fifteen, he said, “I swear to God, Annie, I didn’t know they knew each other.”
She looked at him. His shirt was wrinkled, his hair disordered from pushing his hands through it, his face drawn with the kind of exhaustion that came from fear instead of lack of sleep.
“I believe that,” she said.
His eyes lifted.
“I don’t know how much else I believe,” she added.
His expression closed around the sentence, but he nodded. He had earned it. He seemed to know that.
“I thought Brooke found her through one of those professional referral networks,” he said. “She said she’d asked around. She said Dr. Lane had experience with couples under stress, anxiety, conflict spirals.”
“Projection,” Annie said.
Nathan flinched.
The word had been sitting between them since Brooke’s voicemail. Projection. Fixation. Escalates. Disengage. The new grammar of Annie’s supposed instability, handed to her husband by his best friend, polished by a therapist Annie had met for fifty minutes.
“I should have asked more questions,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I wanted help.”
“You wanted someone to make me easier to manage.”
He looked down at his phone.
The cruel part was that she could see the answer in his silence.
He had not wanted to hurt her. He had wanted a translation of her pain that made fewer demands on him.
Brooke had offered him one. Dr. Lane had confirmed it.
Nathan had accepted the diagnosis because it let him be tired instead of guilty.
At three, Annie lay down and closed her eyes. She did not sleep. Across the room, Nathan’s phone lit up twice. Once with an email from work. Once with a text from Brooke that he did not open, though the preview flashed long enough for Annie to see the beginning.
Nate, I’m worried about how she’s twisting?—
He turned the phone face down.
By morning, the rain had stopped, leaving the windows streaked and the garden washed into color.
Annie showered first. She dressed for work in black trousers and a silk blouse because armor could be ordinary.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, Nathan was sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, phone loose in his hands.
“She says Bea is her cousin,” he said.
Annie went still.
“What?”
He looked up. “Second cousin. They’re apparently close enough that Brooke calls her Bea.”
Annie stared at him, waiting for the anger to come cleanly. It did not. It arrived mixed with disbelief, humiliation, and an awful, hollow laugh she swallowed before it escaped.
“Your best friend referred your wife to her cousin for therapy and didn’t disclose it.”
“I know.”
“Your best friend discussed my first session with her cousin.”
Nathan’s face tightened. “Brooke says Bea didn’t tell her anything specific.”
“Brooke left you a voicemail about my projection.”
“She says that was based on what I told her.”
“Convenient.”
“I know.”
“She called me defensive before I even got home.”
“I know.”
Annie crossed to the dresser and put on her earrings with hands that looked calmer than she felt. “What are you going to do?”
Nathan stood. “I’m going to talk to Brooke.”
“No.”
He blinked. “No?”
“No. You’re going to listen to Brooke.”
“Annie—”
“You are. You’ll go in angry, and she’ll cry, and you’ll come home confused.
She’ll say she was worried. She’ll say she didn’t think it mattered because Dr. Lane is objective.
She’ll say I’m using this to isolate you.
She’ll make the problem my reaction to her behavior, which is what she always does. ”
His mouth opened, then closed.
Annie turned from the mirror. “Am I wrong?”
Nathan did not answer quickly enough.
“I need to go to work,” she said.
“I’ll come home early.”
“Don’t do anything on my behalf unless you’re prepared to finish it.”
That landed. He looked at her for a long moment, then gave a small nod.
Downstairs, the takeout bag from the night before still sat unopened on the counter. The wineglass had left a faint red ring on the marble. Annie placed the bag in the trash, rinsed the glass, and stood at the sink longer than necessary with the water running over her fingers.
Nathan came up behind her but did not touch her.
“I am sorry,” he said.
She shut off the faucet.
Those words should have loosened something in her. They did not. She had wanted them so much for so long that hearing them now felt less like comfort than proof of how much damage had been required before he could say them.
“I know,” she said, and left for work.
Annie was the director of donor relations for the Whitman Arts Foundation, a job that sounded genteel until people realized rich patrons could be more volatile than toddlers, and with far less supervision.
Her office overlooked Copley Square, and on a clear day she could see the church spire rising against the glass towers beyond it.
Today the sky was low and pewter-gray. Every building looked less permanent than usual.
By ten, she had answered twenty-six emails, approved a revised invitation suite for the spring gala, and moved three seating assignments because no one with a net worth above eight figures could be trusted to sit beside an ex-spouse without written consent.
At ten, her assistant, Maggie, appeared in the doorway holding a compostable coffee cup. “You have a Brooke Halpert in reception.”
Annie looked up.
Maggie’s expression was carefully blank, which meant she had recognized the name and knew better than to react. Maggie was twenty-six, terrifyingly competent, and possessed of the kind of emotional intelligence that made Annie occasionally feel ancient.
“I don’t have a meeting with Brooke.”
“She says she was in the neighborhood.”
“Of course she was.”
Maggie waited.
Annie capped her pen. “Give me five minutes, then come get me for an urgent call.”
“There is no urgent call.”
“There will be.”
Maggie’s mouth twitched. “Understood.”
Brooke was standing near the reception windows when Annie came out, looking like a woman attending a board luncheon. Cream coat. Camel trousers. Honey-blonde hair swept into a low knot. She held a paper bag from a bakery in one hand and a coffee in the other.
“Annie,” she said, with a softness that made the receptionist glance over.
“Brooke.”
“I brought walnut and almond croissants from Bellecour. I know you like them.”
“I’m allergic.”
Brooke’s face shifted into apology so graceful it seemed rehearsed. “Walnuts. God, I’m sorry. I always mix up nuts.”
“No, you don’t.”
The receptionist found something urgent to do at her computer.
Brooke lowered her voice. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
“No.”
A flicker then. Irritation behind the kindness.
“Annie, I’m trying to handle this respectfully.”
“You came to my workplace uninvited.”
“I was worried.”
“About me?”
“About both of you.”
“There is no both of us in your concern.”
Brooke’s eyes shone suddenly. Not with tears. Preparation. Annie could see it now, the small tightening around the mouth, the softened gaze, the slight tilt of her head. Brooke did not enter conversations. She staged them.
“I know how this looks,” Brooke said.
“Do you?”
“Yes. And I know you’re angry. You have every right to be upset that Bea and I are related. I should have said something.”
“Dr. Lane should have said something.”
“I agree.”
“Then why didn’t she?”
Brooke looked pained. “Because I asked her to help. Because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Annie almost admired the efficiency of it. In two sentences, Brooke had turned a conflict of interest into an act of desperate compassion.
“You asked your cousin to treat me without disclosing your relationship.”
“I asked her if she knew someone good. She offered to see you herself because she had an opening.”
“And then discussed me with you.”
“No,” Brooke said, firm now. “She did not discuss your session. She told me generally that first appointments can bring up defensiveness. That’s all.”
“You called it projection.”
“Because Nate told me what was happening.”
“Nate.”
The nickname landed between them with deliberate intimacy.
Brooke’s mouth tightened. “He’s my oldest friend.”
“He’s my husband.”
“I know that, Annie.”
“No, Brooke. You know the word. You don’t respect the fact.”
Brooke looked away toward the windows, as if composing herself. “This is exactly what worries me. You hear possession where there is history.”
“I hear possession where there is possession.”
“I’m not trying to take Nathan from you.”
Annie laughed softly. “You came to my office to say that with pastries I can’t eat.”
Brooke’s eyes came back to hers, sharper now. “He is exhausted.”
There it was. The shift. Honey to blade.
“Then stop exhausting him,” Annie said.
“He is exhausted by being punished for loving people who were there before you.”
“No one is punishing him.”
“You are. Every time you make him prove he isn’t betraying you because he won’t cut me off like a diseased limb.”
Annie felt heat rise in her face but kept her voice low. “You need to leave.”
“I will. But before I do, you should understand something. Nathan is loyal until loyalty becomes impossible. You are pushing him toward the impossible.”
The sentence moved through Annie like cold water.