8. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
The car smells like leather and failure.
I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles ache, watching the Sinclair mansion shrink in my rearview mirror. The porch light glows amber against the darkening sky, and Kenneth is still standing in the doorway, a silhouette frozen in the frame of everything we built and everything he destroyed.
I don’t stop.
The road blurs ahead of me, not from tears - I’m past tears - but from exhaustion so deep it feels like drowning.
My body wants to collapse. My mind wants to shut down.
But there’s something burning in my chest that won’t let me rest, a fire that’s been smoldering for two years and finally found oxygen.
I make it three blocks before I pull over.
My hands are shaking. My breath comes in short, sharp bursts. I press my palm against my stomach - over our baby, though he doesn’t believe that - as if I can protect it from everything that just happened.
The boxes are still in my car. My clothes. My books. The medical equipment I kept meaning to organize. The photo of my parents from their anniversary, the one I hung in the hallway because it reminded me what marriage was supposed to look like.
He packed it all. Had someone pack it. Before I even told him the truth about Ralphie.
I turn the car around.
Celia’s voice on the phone is sharp with worry. “Bea, where are you? You’ve been gone for-”
“I’m going back.”
“What? No. Absolutely not. You need to rest, you need to eat something, you need to-”
“I need him to hear me.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Steady. Cold. “I need to say everything I should have said months ago.”
“He doesn’t deserve-”
“This isn’t about what he deserves.” I’m already turning onto the main road, headlights cutting through the early evening gloom. “It’s about what I need.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. This is something I have to do alone.”
“Bea-”
“I love you. I’ll call when I’m done.”
I hang up before she can argue.
The drive back takes seven minutes. Seven minutes to rehearse everything I want to say. Seven minutes to feel my heart hammer against my ribs. Seven minutes to remind myself that I’m not going back to fix anything. I’m going back to burn it down properly.
The house looms ahead, all warm light and cold stone. I park in the driveway - not the garage, not anymore, not like I belong here - and walk to the front door.
My key still works.
That feels like a cruel joke.
Kenneth is exactly where I left him. The study. His computer still open, photos of the party still glowing on the screen. Proof of the party he thought was an affair. Proof of the lie his mother built and he swallowed whole.
He stands when he sees me. His face is a disaster - eyes red, jaw tight, hands trembling at his sides.
“Beatrice.” My name sounds like a prayer in his mouth. “I was going to call-”
“Don’t.”
He stops.
I stand in the doorway. I don’t let myself enter. This room used to feel like sanctuary - Kenneth’s books, Kenneth’s whiskey, Kenneth’s leather chair where I’d curl up and read while he worked. Now it feels like a courtroom, and I’m finally taking the stand.
“I came back to tell you something.” My voice is steadier than I expected. “And then I’m leaving. And you’re going to listen without interrupting. Can you do that?”
He nods. A small, desperate motion.
“Good.”
I take a breath. Fill my lungs with air that smells like his cologne and old paper and the ghost of every evening I spent alone in this house, waiting.
“When we got married, I thought I was getting a partner. Someone who would be there. Who would talk to me. Who would see me as more than a wife in a big house.”
“I do see you-”
“You said you wouldn’t interrupt.”
His mouth closes. His hands clench at his sides.
“For the past two years, I’ve been alone.
” The words come easier now, spilling out of the place I’ve kept them locked.
“Alone in this house. Alone in this marriage. Alone with your mother criticizing everything I do and you never here to see it. Our phone calls lasted minutes, Kenneth. Minutes. You missed anniversaries for deals. You missed my mother’s surgery for a conference. ”
“That surgery wasn’t-”
“Supposed to be serious?” I cut him off, and the sharpness in my voice surprises us both. “No. It wasn’t. But I needed you. And you weren’t there.”
His face crumples slightly. He’s trying so hard to hold himself together.
“You’re never there,” I continue. “Do you know why I took the night shifts? Not because I’m dedicated. Not because I love my job - though I do. I took them because they made me feel useful. Because at least at the hospital, people needed me. At least there, I mattered to someone.”
“You matter to me-”
“Do I?” The laugh that escapes my throat sounds nothing like me. Bitter. Hollow. “Because from where I’m standing, I’ve been a placeholder. A wife for your mother to criticize and your board to admire. A body in a big house, waiting for you to remember I exist.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” I step into the room now, crossing the threshold I’d been guarding. “You know what’s not fair? Being accused of cheating at my own dinner table. Having my name dragged through the press. Losing my job because your mother fed you a lie and you swallowed it whole.”
“I didn’t know it was a lie-”
“You should have asked.” My voice breaks on the last word, and I hate it, hate that he can still make me crack. “You should have come to me first. Before you believed your mother. Before you humiliated me in front of my parents. Before you packed my things like I was already gone.”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Kenneth’s face is devastation incarnate. His perfect composure, the Sinclair mask he wears in boardrooms and ballrooms, has crumbled completely. He looks like a man watching his house burn down.
Good.
“But you didn’t.” I wrap my arms around myself, around the baby he doesn’t believe is his.
“You decided I was guilty and you executed sentence without a trial. You let your mother play judge and jury. You looked at me across that table, in front of my parents, and you told me you didn’t believe our child was yours. ”
“I was wrong.” His voice is raw, scraped clean of everything but desperation. “Beatrice, I’m sorry. I believe you.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“It’s not.” He takes a step toward me, then stops himself, like he’s afraid I’ll bolt. “We can work through this. I was wrong, I was so wrong, but if you just give me a chance-”
“A chance?” I stare at him, really look at him, this man I married, this man I loved, this man who shattered me. “You didn’t give me a chance. You gave me boxes by the door.”
He flinches.
“I was angry,” he says. “I was hurt. I thought-”
“You thought I was like the woman who betrayed your father.” The words land like blows, and I watch each one hit. “Like everyone else who’s ever let you down. Like every worst-case scenario you’ve been running in your head since before we even met.”
His jaw tightens. “My mother-”
“Your mother showed you what she wanted you to see. But you’re the one who believed it.” I take another step closer, close enough to see the tears gathering in his eyes. “You’re the one who chose her over me. You’re the one who became exactly what you always hated about your father.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. He actually staggers back, his hand finding the edge of his desk for support.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you the truth?” I’m shaking now, trembling with two years of loneliness and one night of devastation.
“Your father spent his whole life assuming the worst about everyone. Cheating because he was sure everyone else was cheating too. Pushing people away before they could hurt him. Building walls so high no one could climb them.”
“I’m not him-”
“You’re not?” My voice rises. “You accused your pregnant wife of cheating. You believed doctored evidence over the woman who’s spent two years waiting for you to come home.
You let your father’s paranoia poison everything good in your life.
” I meet his eyes, hold them, refuse to let him look away. “That sounds exactly like him to me.”
Kenneth’s face has gone pale. Ashen. Like I’ve reached into his chest and pulled out something vital.
“I used to think we were a team.” My voice drops now, the anger bleeding into something sadder.
“I used to think that even when you were busy, even when you were gone, we were building something together. That all the missed dinners and empty beds and broken promises were temporary. That eventually you’d come home and stay. ”
“I wanted to-”
“But I was wrong.” I don’t let him finish.
Can’t let him finish, because if I stop talking I might start crying, and I refuse to cry in front of him again.
“I was building alone. And you were letting your mother into the foundation while I wasn’t looking.
Letting her criticize and control and plant her poison.
And when she finally showed you her fabricated evidence, you didn’t even hesitate. ”
“I’ll fix it.” He’s crying now, tears streaming down his face unchecked. “Whatever it takes. I’ll do anything. Just tell me what you need.”
“You can’t fix this.” I look at him clearly, maybe for the first time since I walked in. See him for what he is: a broken man from a broken family, so terrified of becoming his father that he became him anyway. “Some things don’t stitch back together, Kenneth. Some wounds are too deep.”
The phrase hangs in the air between us.
I see him register it. The reference to how we met. My hands on his bleeding palm. The first time he looked at me like I was something precious.
You fixed me, he said that night in the ER.
But I can’t fix this.
“You already packed my stuff.” I pull my keys from my pocket. The ones to this house. The ones that used to make me feel like I belonged somewhere. I set them on his desk, next to his computer, next to the proof of his mother’s lies. “So thank you for that. It makes this easier.”
“Don’t do this.” His voice breaks completely. “Please. Beatrice, please.”
“I’m moving out of this house.” I step back. One step. Then another. “And I’m moving out of this marriage.”
“Beatrice-”
“Goodbye, Kenneth.”
I turn.
I walk out.
My footsteps echo on the hardwood floors, through the foyer where his mother stood that first morning, past the living room where I used to read alone, past the kitchen where I made dinners he never came home to eat.
The front door closes behind me with a sound like finality.
The evening air hits my face, cool and clean, and I breathe it in like I’ve been drowning. My car is waiting in the driveway. My boxes are in the back. My life - what’s left of it - is about to begin again.
I get in. Start the engine. Pull away.
In the rearview mirror, I see the house getting smaller. The porch light is still on, glowing amber against the darkening sky.
Kenneth is standing in the doorway. Watching me go.
I don’t stop.
I don’t look back.
I just drive.