7. Beatrice #3
I hold the phone out until he takes it, until his hands close around it and he scrolls through the evidence of my innocence with fingers that aren’t quite steady.
Silence fills the study. The clock on his desk ticks. Outside, a car passes, oblivious to the wreckage inside these walls.
“I didn’t know,” Kenneth says finally. His voice is barely a whisper. “I didn’t - she showed me - I thought-”
“You didn’t ask.” I take the phone back. Step away. Put distance between us that feels like miles even though it’s only feet. “You saw what your mother showed you and you believed it. You didn’t come to me. You didn’t talk to me. You just decided. Just like your father always did.”
His head snaps up. “Don’t compare me to him.”
“Why not?” The words come out cold, colder than I knew I could be. “You’re acting just like him. Assuming the worst. Believing everyone betrays. Destroying things before they can destroy you.”
“That’s not fair-”
“Nothing about this is fair.” I wrap my arms around my stomach, around the baby he doesn’t believe is his. “I’m carrying YOUR child, Kenneth. I announced the best news of my life at that table, and you looked at me like I was garbage. You told me to get out.”
“Beatrice-”
“I have to go get my things.” I turn toward the door, toward the hallway, toward whatever is left of my belongings in this house that was never really mine. “I assume you haven’t-”
I stop.
The boxes are stacked neatly in the hallway. A dozen of them at least, cardboard and packing tape, labeled in handwriting I don’t recognize. BEDROOM. BATHROOM. OFFICE. MISC.
I walk toward them slowly, like approaching a wounded animal that might still bite.
The first box is open. My clothes, folded neatly. The sweater I wore on our first date. The scrubs I keep in the closet for emergencies. The yellow onesie I bought for the baby, hidden in my drawer, secret and precious and now exposed.
The second box holds books. My medical texts, my novels, the copy of Jane Eyre my mother gave me when I left for college.
The third box holds the photo of my parents from my nightstand. The alarm clock I’ve had since residency.
I turn back to Kenneth.
He’s standing in the study doorway now, and his face tells me everything I need to know.
“When did you do this?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Before or after I told you the truth?”
“Before.” His voice is hoarse, wrecked, barely recognizable. “I called the service yesterday. Before the dinner. I thought-”
“You thought you’d make it easy for me to leave.” I laugh, and it sounds nothing like myself, nothing like anyone I’ve ever been. “Well. Thank you for that, at least. Thank you for making it so clear exactly how much I meant to you.”
“That’s not what I - Beatrice, please-”
“You packed my things before I even had a chance to defend myself.” I’m not crying. I’m past crying. I’m somewhere beyond tears, somewhere cold and clear and final. “You decided I was guilty and you started erasing me from this house before you even looked me in the eye.”
“I was wrong.” He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back. “Beatrice, I was wrong. I see that now. The footage - my mother - I should have-”
“No, wait, don’t go.” He reaches for me, and I flinch away so hard I nearly trip over one of the boxes. “Please. We can fix this. We can-”
“Fix what?” I stare at him, this man I married, this stranger in my husband’s body. “Fix the fact that you believed your mother over me? Fix the fact that you leaked our private life to the press? Fix the fact that I lost my job today because of a story you let happen?”
“You lost your-”
“Administrative leave.” The words taste like ash. “Because the Martinez family doesn’t want a cheating doctor treating their daughter. Because the hospital board is ‘asking questions.’ Because you and your mother destroyed everything I’ve worked for with a lie.”
Kenneth’s face crumples. For a moment he looks like the man I fell in love with, vulnerable and lost and desperate for someone to show him the way.
But I’m not that person anymore. I can’t be.
I pick up the first box. It’s heavier than I expected - my whole life, packed into cardboard.
“Beatrice.” His voice breaks on my name. “Please don’t go.”
I look at him one last time. Really look, past the guilt and the grief and the dawning horror of what he’s done. I try to find the man who held my hand in the emergency room, who looked at me like I was the answer to every question he’d ever asked, who promised me forever.
I can’t find him.
Maybe he was never really there.
“Goodbye, Kenneth.”
I walk out of the study, down the hallway, past the boxes of my dismantled life. I carry the first one to my car, load it in the trunk, come back for the second.
He stands in the doorway watching. Doesn’t try to stop me again. Doesn’t offer to help.
Box after box. Trip after trip. My arms ache, my back screams, but I don’t stop until every piece of me is loaded into my car and there’s nothing left in that house but the ghost of who I used to be.
I get in the driver’s seat. Start the engine.
In the rearview mirror, I can see him still standing in the doorway. Still watching. Still frozen.
I pull out of the driveway.
I don’t look back.