7. Beatrice #2
Ninety seconds. I give myself ninety seconds to fall apart.
I count the beats in my head, the way I count during CPR, the way I count when I’m stitching a wound and need to stay steady. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three.
At ninety, I stop.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. I stand up. I smooth down my coat and check my reflection in the small window of the stairwell door - red eyes, blotchy cheeks, but still standing.
Still standing.
I pull out my phone and text Celia: Leaving the hospital. Going to the house. Don’t argue.
Her response comes immediately: I’m arguing. But I’ll be here when you’re done.
Good enough.
I push through the stairwell door and walk toward the exit, past the nurses who won’t look at me, past the residents who pretend I don’t exist, past the life I built in this place that’s being taken away piece by piece.
There’s one more conversation I have to have today.
I still have my key.
The weight of it in my palm feels strange now, familiar and foreign at once. I’ve used this key a thousand times - coming home from late shifts, letting myself in while Kenneth was traveling, the ordinary motion of a wife entering her own house.
My own house. Is it still my house?
The door opens smoothly. The foyer looks the same - the chandelier, the flowers, the marble floors Josephine chose and I learned to tolerate. But everything feels different. Colder. Like walking into a museum exhibit of a life that used to be mine.
“Kenneth?”
My voice echoes. No response.
I move through the rooms I barely recognize anymore. The living room where my friends laughed and drank wine. The kitchen where I made coffee this morning before driving to work, before everything fell apart. The hallway toward the study.
The study door is open.
Kenneth is inside, slumped in his chair, staring at his computer with the blank intensity of a man who hasn’t slept.
He looks terrible - shirt wrinkled, hair disheveled, the shadow of stubble on his jaw that I’ve never seen before.
Kenneth Sinclair doesn’t do disheveled. Kenneth Sinclair doesn’t do anything that isn’t perfectly controlled.
Something in my chest twinges at the sight of him, some muscle memory of love or concern, and I hate myself for it.
“We need to talk.”
He looks up. Something flickers across his face - surprise, or pain, or guilt - before it disappears behind the mask he’s worn since Hong Kong.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There’s everything to talk about.” I step into the room, and he flinches. Actually flinches, like he’s afraid of me. Good. “You humiliated me in front of my parents. You dragged my name through the press. You accused me of something I didn’t do, and you didn’t even give me a chance to explain.”
“I saw the evidence-”
“The evidence is a lie.”
I’m shaking. My whole body is trembling with the effort of standing here, in this room, looking at the man I married and seeing a stranger.
“Your mother showed you doctored footage and fabricated messages and you believed her.” My voice is rising, and I can’t stop it. “You didn’t come to me. You didn’t ask. You just decided I was guilty and then you destroyed my life.”
“The photos-”
“Are of me hugging my friend.” I take another step forward, and he rolls his chair back. “Ralphie doesn’t like women, Kenneth. He never has. He’s been out since college. He’s never been interested in women, ever, and the fact that you didn’t know that - the fact that you never ASKED-”
I choke on the words. They’re too big, too important, too devastating.
Kenneth’s face goes blank.
“What?”
“He’s GAY.” The word explodes out of me.
“My friend from med school, the man you accused me of sleeping with, has never been with a woman in his life. He has a boyfriend in Seattle. They’ve been together for two years.
He came back to Newport because he got offered a position at Rhode Island Hospital, not because he was having an affair with your wife. ”
Silence.
Kenneth stares at me like I’m speaking a language he doesn’t understand.
“You never told me-”
“When was I supposed to tell you?” I laugh, the sound hollow and broken.
“You never met him, Kenneth. Five years together and you never once made time. He visited twice before he left for Seattle - once for my birthday, once for Christmas - and both times you were traveling. Too busy. Something more important came up.” I shake my head.
“You didn’t know he was gay because you didn’t know anything about my life. You never bothered to learn.”
“I TRIED.” I’m screaming now, I can hear myself screaming, but I can’t stop.
“I tried to tell you so many things, but you were never HERE. Our phone calls lasted five minutes. You were always in a meeting, always closing a deal, always somewhere that wasn’t with me.
When was I supposed to tell you about my friend’s sexuality?
In the thirty seconds between ‘how was your day’ and ‘I have to go’? ”
“I didn’t-”
“You didn’t know because you never asked.” I reach into my purse, pull out my phone, hands shaking so badly I almost drop it. “This is from the night of the party. Look. Look at this.”
I shove the phone toward him. The group chat, scrolled back to that Saturday. Photo after photo - Priya with her wine, Morgan with the cheese board, Jenna holding Gerard the lawn flamingo like a trophy. All of us together, laughing, happy, innocent.
“Priya, Morgan, Jenna.” I point at each face.
“They were all there. Your mother’s footage was doctored.
I don’t know how she did it, but she made it look like Ralphie came alone, like it was just the two of us.
But we were all there, Kenneth. It was a party.
A normal party with my friends because Priya’s pipes burst and I was trying to be a good host.”
Kenneth stares at the photos. His face is gray now, the color of old concrete, the color of a man watching his certainty crumble.
“And the hotel?” His voice comes out hoarse.
“I’ve never been to the Chanler.” I scroll to my calendar, to my work schedule, to the digital record of my life that proves I was exactly where I said I was.
“I was at the hospital those nights. Check my badge records. Check the patient logs. Check the security cameras in the ER if you want. I was WORKING, Kenneth. I was doing my job while you were in Hong Kong believing lies about me.”
I pull up the hospital app on my phone, turn it toward him.
“Badge swipes. Time-stamped. November 14th, clocked in at 6:47 PM, clocked out at 7:12 AM. November 15th, same thing. Your mother told you she checked the schedule? She lied. She never checked anything. She just said whatever would make you believe her.”
He stares at the screen. The evidence. The proof that’s been available all along if he’d only bothered to look.
“The messages-”
“Aren’t from my phone.” I scroll again, to my actual conversation with Ralphie. Show him the screen. “Look. Look at my real messages. We talk about hospital gossip. We talk about his boyfriend Theo. We make plans to get coffee. That’s IT. That’s all we’ve ever talked about.”
“But the screenshots my mother showed me - they had your name, your photo-”
“She created a fake contact, Kenneth. It takes five minutes. You screenshot any conversation, change the contact name and photo, and suddenly it looks like whoever you want. A child could do it.” I shake my head in disbelief. “And you didn’t even question it.”