3. Beatrice #2
“I didn’t. He cornered me after a surgery one day.
‘So, Ralphie, what is your type? I’m sure my daughter can accommodate.
’” Ralphie grins. “And I said, ‘I’m flattered, Dr. Morrison, but she isn’t exactly my type.
’ And he said, ‘What’s your type?’ And I said, ‘Someone who doesn’t have a vagina,’ and I thought he was going to fire me on the spot. ”
The living room explodes. Morgan claps her hands over her mouth. Priya actually does spill wine this time, and doesn’t seem to notice. Jenna is laughing so hard no sound is coming out.
And I’m laughing too, that deep belly-laugh I’d almost forgotten I was capable of, the kind that makes your ribs ache and your eyes water. Ralphie catches my eye and winks, and I love him so fiercely in this moment - my friend, my person, my Ralphie who’s finally home.
“What did he do?” Morgan gasps.
“Stared at me for approximately thirty seconds.” Ralphie holds up his wine glass, examining it. “Then said, ‘Well, that would be a dealbreaker,’ and never mentioned his daughter again. Still invited me to salmon dinners, though. Very progressive, Dr. Morrison.”
The laughter takes longer to die down this time. Priya is blotting at the wine stain on her jeans. Jenna has recovered enough to demand details about Dr. Morrison’s reaction face. Morgan is already pulling out her phone to add Ralphie’s story to what she calls her “archive of iconic moments.”
I lean my head back against the sofa, feeling the warmth of the room settle into my bones.
This. I needed this. Friends who knew me before the Sinclair name, before the empty house, before I became a wife who waits.
Friends who see me, really see me, without the filter of money or status or the weight of a marriage I don’t know how to talk about.
The conversation drifts to other topics. Priya’s sister’s wedding planning disaster. Morgan’s upstairs neighbor who practices trombone at midnight. Jenna’s ongoing feud with a squirrel she’s named “The Nemesis.”
I don’t say much, just let their voices wash over me, filling the silence this house has held for too long.
Later, when the others have migrated to the living room to argue about whether a certain reality show is “trash television” or “anthropological research” (Jenna’s term), Ralphie finds me in the kitchen.
I’m rinsing wine glasses, not because they need it yet but because my hands want something to do.
“Hey.” He leans against the counter beside me. “You okay?”
“I’m good.” I set a glass in the drying rack. “Really good, actually. I needed this.”
“I know.” He’s watching me with that same diagnostic attention from the hospital cafeteria, the look that sees past the surface. “I missed you too, you know. Seattle had better coffee, but it didn’t have Bea.”
I feel my throat tighten unexpectedly. “I missed you. I missed this.” I reach for another glass, focus on the water running over my hands. “I missed being Bea instead of Mrs. Sinclair.”
“You’re always Bea to me.” He bumps my shoulder gently. “Even if you do live in a mansion now.”
“It’s not mine.” The words come out before I can stop them, too honest for the lightness of the evening. “None of it feels like mine.”
Ralphie is quiet for a moment. The sound of the others arguing floats in from the living room - something about voting someone off an island - but it feels very far away.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
The question lands in my chest like a stone. I turn off the water. Set down the glass. Stare at the sink for a long moment.
“I love Kenneth.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I don’t answer. I don’t know how to. The words I would need don’t exist in any combination I can find - not without unraveling something I’ve been holding together with both hands for longer than I want to admit.
Ralphie doesn’t push. That’s the thing about him, the thing I’ve always loved. He asks the hard questions and then gives you space to not answer them, to sit with the discomfort of your own silence and figure out what it means.
“Come on,” he says finally, squeezing my arm. “Let’s go settle this reality TV debate before Jenna convinces everyone that watching people eat bugs is ‘cultural enrichment.’”
I follow him back to the living room, grateful for the rescue. Grateful for all of it.
At midnight, they spill out the front door in a chaos of hugs and promises and the particular energy of people who’ve had exactly the right amount of wine.
“Same time next month,” Priya declares, wrapping me in a hug that smells like red wine and the perfume she’s worn since college. “Non-flooded venue.”
“My place,” Morgan offers. “Smaller, but the pipes work.”
“I’ll bring Gerard,” Jenna says solemnly. “He needs to meet you all properly.”
“Please don’t bring the lawn flamingo.” Priya releases me to hug Morgan. “I’m begging you.”
“Gerard goes where Gerard wants.”
They’re laughing as they pile into Priya’s car, still arguing about the flamingo and the reality show and whether Morgan’s firm will let her design a house specifically to spite an HOA.
Normal things. Friend things. Things that have nothing to do with absent husbands or intrusive mothers-in-law or the quiet weight of a house that doesn’t feel like home.
Ralphie hangs back, letting the others get settled. He turns to me on the front steps, the porch light casting his face in warm gold.
“Thank you for this,” he says. “For pulling it together when Priya’s pipes exploded.”
“Thank you for coming back.” I mean it more than he probably knows. “Thank you for being here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He pulls me into a hug, and I let myself lean into it, let myself feel held for just a moment. “You’re stuck with me now.”
His head bends close to mine as he speaks, and I laugh against his shoulder, a real laugh, the kind I’d almost forgotten.
“I can live with that,” I say.
He squeezes my hand once before letting go, and then he’s jogging down the steps to join the others. I watch from the doorway as they pull out of the driveway, as the taillights disappear around the curve of the road, as the sound of their voices fades into the quiet of the night.
The house goes silent behind me.
I stand there for a moment, breathing in the cool air. Then I turn and go back inside.
I clean up the wine glasses, put away what’s left of the cheese, gather the scattered napkins and the empty bottles. I turn off the lights in the living room, in the kitchen, in the foyer with its ridiculous chandelier that doesn’t seem quite so oppressive anymore.
Alone again.
But for the first time in weeks, I don’t mind.
What I don’t know, as I climb the stairs to my bedroom:
In the foyer, a small red light blinks in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. A security camera, part of the system Kenneth had installed when we moved in. A security camera that recorded everything tonight.
Ralphie arriving at the door. Me hugging him.
The two of us silhouetted in the entrance, my hand on his arm, his head bent close to mine.
My laugh. His whispered words. The intimacy of old friends who’ve known each other for over a decade, captured in footage that could look like something else entirely if you didn’t know.
If you chose not to know.
What I don’t know:
Josephine Sinclair has access to every camera in this house. She’s had it since the day she copied Kenneth’s security codes, the same day she made her own keys.
What I don’t know:
In Boston, in a guest room in a friend’s house, Josephine is already awake. Already watching. Already downloading the footage.
And already deciding what to do with it.