3. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
Saturday Night
The call comes at four in the afternoon, and Priya’s voice is pitched somewhere between hysteria and dark comedy.
“The pipes burst. My entire living room is flooded. I’m standing in two inches of water right now.”
I press the phone harder against my ear, as if that will change what I’m hearing. “Oh no. Priya-”
“The party. We have to cancel.”
“We can’t cancel.” I’m already pacing my bedroom, bare feet tracking across the carpet Josephine criticized three days ago.
The late afternoon light slants through windows that feel too large for one person, and I catch myself in the mirror - still in the scrubs I wore for my morning shift, hair escaping its braid, dark circles I’ve stopped trying to conceal.
“Ralphie’s already told his mom he’s busy.
Morgan drove up from Providence. Everyone’s counting on this. ”
“Then we need a new location. In three hours.” Priya exhales sharply, and I hear splashing in the background. “God, this carpet is ruined. It’s absolutely - Bea, are you still there?”
“I’m here. I’m thinking.”
I look around my beautiful, empty house. The guest room Josephine rearranged without asking. The kitchen where a hired cleaner scrubbed counters I’d already cleaned myself. The living room with its art I didn’t choose and furniture that still feels borrowed.
Kenneth is still in Hong Kong. His last text came six hours ago: Deal’s taking longer than expected. Miss you. Three words that are supposed to mean something but feel like placeholder text, the kind of message you send when you remember you’re supposed to send one.
And Josephine left this morning to visit a friend in Boston. Won’t be back until Monday, she’d said, in that tone that implied I should be grateful for the information.
The house stretches around me, room after room of space I don’t fill.
“I’ll host,” I hear myself say.
“Are you sure?” Priya’s splashing stops. “I thought Kenneth-”
“Kenneth’s not here.” The words come out steadier than I feel. “And it’s just a few friends, right? What’s the worst that could happen?”
They arrive together at seven, tumbling through the front door in a chaos of wine bottles and overlapping voices and the kind of energy that makes the foyer chandelier seem less oppressive and more like something out of a movie about people who actually live interesting lives.
Priya comes first with two bottles of red, her dark hair still damp from what I assume was an afternoon of emergency plumbing.
Morgan follows with a cheese board balanced precariously on one arm, already craning her neck to stare at the ceiling.
Jenna brings up the rear with a portable speaker that’s somehow already blasting something with too much bass, and in the middle of all of it is Ralphie, being pulled in four directions at once.
“This house is insane,” Morgan says, still staring upward. The chandelier throws prismatic light across her face, and she looks genuinely stunned. “Like, obscenely beautiful. I feel underdressed.”
“You’re fine.” I take the wine from Priya, grateful for something to do with my hands. “It’s just a house.”
“It’s a mansion, Bea.” Morgan finally drags her gaze down to meet mine. “You live in a mansion.”
“I live in three rooms of a mansion.” The words slip out before I can catch them, more honest than I intended. “The rest is for show.”
Priya and Jenna exchange a look I pretend not to see. But Ralphie catches my eye across the room, over Morgan’s shoulder, and raises an eyebrow in that way he’s had since med school. The way that means: You okay?
I nod. Better now.
And it’s true. Something in my chest loosens at the sight of them, all of them, crowding into this entryway that’s felt like a museum exhibit for months.
Jenna’s already moved past the chandelier inspection and is hunting for outlets to plug in her speaker.
Priya is critiquing the wine glasses I’ve pulled from the cabinet.
Morgan has discovered the cheese board is missing crackers and is loudly blaming Jenna for distracting her during packing.
Normal. They’re so gloriously, chaotically normal.
“Through here,” I say, leading them toward the living room. “And yes, there are crackers in the kitchen, Morgan, don’t panic.”
The evening unfolds the way I’ve been craving without admitting it to myself, in laughter and wine and stories from the years we’ve spent apart.
We end up on the floor of the living room because Jenna declares the sofas “too fancy to sit on properly” and Ralphie immediately proves her wrong by sprawling across one with his shoes dangling off the armrest. The cheese board gets demolished within the first hour.
Priya opens the second bottle of wine before we’ve finished the first, claiming she needs it for “stress relief from the plumbing trauma.”
“So then,” Priya says, gesturing with her glass in a way that threatens the cream-colored rug, “he shows up to the restaurant twenty minutes early, which I thought was a good sign-”
“Fatal error,” Jenna interjects.
“-and he’s already ordered for me. An appetizer. That I’m allergic to.”
“How did he not know you’re allergic to shellfish?” Morgan asks. “Wasn’t that on your profile?”
“It was literally the second line. ‘Deathly allergic to shellfish, please keep your shrimp away from me.’ Direct quote.” Priya takes a long sip. “He said, and I quote, ‘I thought you were being metaphorical.’”
“About shellfish?” Ralphie props himself up on one elbow. “What would that even mean metaphorically?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t stay long enough to find out!”
We dissolve into laughter, and I feel something warm bloom in my chest that has nothing to do with the wine.
I’m sitting on the floor with my back against the sofa Ralphie’s claimed, my legs tucked under me, and for the first time in weeks I don’t feel like I’m performing a role.
I’m just Bea. Not Mrs. Sinclair, not the doctor, not the wife waiting for a husband who’s always somewhere else.
Just Bea, surrounded by people who knew me before all of that.
“Your turn, Morgan,” Jenna demands. “What’s happening with the Providence architecture scene? Any dramatic building collapses? Heated debates about load-bearing walls?”
“The firm promoted me, actually.” Morgan says it casually, but her smile gives her away. “Senior associate. I have my own projects now.”
The chorus of congratulations is immediate and overlapping. Priya raises her glass. Jenna wolf-whistles. Ralphie reaches down to squeeze Morgan’s shoulder.
“That’s amazing,” I say, and mean it. “You’ve wanted this since - what, junior year?”
“Sophomore year,” Morgan corrects. “When Professor Hendricks told me I didn’t have the ‘spatial intuition’ for architecture and I should consider interior design instead.”
“And now you’re his boss?”
“He retired three years ago. But I sent him a card when I made associate.” Her grin turns wicked. “With a very detailed description of my spatial intuition.”
“That’s the pettiest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jenna says admiringly. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Speaking of petty,” Morgan pivots, turning to look at Jenna, “what’s happening with the HOA? Last I heard, they were trying to fine you for your garden gnomes.”
“Oh, we’re at war now.” Jenna settles back against the chair she’s claimed. “They sent me a formal letter about the gnomes being ‘inconsistent with the neighborhood aesthetic.’ So I bought twelve more gnomes. And a flamingo.”
“A flamingo?”
“A lawn flamingo. Pink. Three feet tall. I named him Gerard.”
Priya nearly chokes on her wine. “You’re going to get evicted.”
“I own my house. They can’t evict me. They can only send me strongly worded letters, which I use as kindling for my fire pit.” Jenna shrugs. “Also against HOA regulations, by the way. The fire pit. Not the letter-burning.”
The conversation rolls on, easy and warm, and I realize I’ve stopped tracking time.
I don’t know if it’s been one hour or three.
I don’t care. Morgan tells us about the brownstone renovation that almost bankrupted her client.
Jenna describes Gerard the flamingo’s growing extended family.
Priya shares increasingly unhinged Tinder horror stories until we’re all gasping for breath between laughs.
And then it’s Ralphie’s turn.
“Seattle was good,” he says, settling back against the sofa cushions. “The fellowship was everything I wanted professionally. Great attendings, interesting cases. And the coffee is objectively better there - don’t argue with me, Priya, you know it’s true.”
“I will argue with you until I die,” Priya says serenely.
“But the people.” Ralphie shakes his head, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “The people. Especially in the hospital. There was this one attending, Dr. Morrison - cardiology, very serious, very intense - who decided I needed to have a social life.”
“Uh oh,” Morgan says.
“He kept inviting me to family dinners. Which was nice, actually, his wife makes incredible salmon. But then he started…” Ralphie pauses for effect. “Mentioning his daughter.”
I feel my own smile widening. I know this story - Ralphie told me a version of it during our cafeteria reunion - but watching the others lean in, watching him build the tension, I don’t mind hearing it again.
“She’s lovely, Ralphie. She’s an artist. She’d love to meet someone in medicine.
She thinks doctors are so stable.” Ralphie pitches his voice into an exaggerated impression of a concerned father.
“And I’m sitting there eating salmon, trying to figure out how to explain that his daughter is not exactly my type. ”
“How did you get out of it?” Jenna asks.