10. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
The light coming through Celia’s guest room curtains is thin and gray.
I’ve been staring at it for what feels like hours, watching it shift across the ceiling, too exhausted to sleep and too hollowed out to move. My body feels like it belongs to someone else - heavy, distant, wrong.
The door creaks open.
“You’re awake.” Celia’s voice is careful, the way people talk to patients in the ER when they’re not sure how bad the damage is. She’s holding a mug of coffee and her tablet, and there’s something in her expression I can’t read.
“I’m not sure I ever slept.”
“You need to see something.”
“I don’t want to see anything.” I pull the blanket higher, as if that could protect me from whatever fresh disaster she’s about to deliver. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“Trust me.” She crosses the room, sits on the edge of the bed. “You want to see this.”
She hands me the tablet.
The screen glows with The Crow’s Nest’s familiar masthead - Newport’s premier gossip rag, the same one that ran my photo with the word CHEATS splashed across my face. But the headline is different now.
RETRACTION: Sinclair Story Unfounded
The recent story regarding Beatrice Sinclair has been determined to contain significant inaccuracies and unverified claims. The Crow’s Nest formally retracts all allegations and apologizes for any damage to Mrs. Sinclair’s reputation.
The photographs published were taken out of context, and the communications referenced were not authenticated. We regret the error.
I read it twice. Three times. The words blur and sharpen and blur again.
“He paid them.” Celia’s voice is flat, matter-of-fact. “Posy Wetherell doesn’t print retractions unless there’s enough zeros involved to choke on. Whatever Kenneth offered her, it was substantial.”
Setting the tablet down on the bedspread, I stare at the ceiling again.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a little.”
“Everyone already read the first story.” My voice comes out hollow, scraped clean of feeling. “Everyone already believes it. Mrs. Martinez pulled Sofia from my care. Dr. Patterson put me on leave. A retraction doesn’t unring the bell.”
“Maybe not.” Celia takes the tablet back, sets it on the nightstand. “But at least the record is corrected. At least anyone who bothers to look will see the truth.”
I close my eyes.
There should be something to feel. Relief, maybe. Vindication. Some small spark of satisfaction that the lie has been publicly acknowledged.
All I feel is tired.
“He sat outside all night,” Celia says quietly. “On the curb. I checked at three AM and again at five. He was still there.”
I don’t respond.
“I’m not saying that changes anything. I’m not saying you should forgive him or talk to him or even acknowledge his existence.” She pauses. “But I thought you should know.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.”
She squeezes my shoulder and leaves me alone with the thin gray light and the knowledge that Kenneth Sinclair bought me a retraction and sat on a curb until dawn, and none of it - none of it - undoes what he said across that dinner table.
Days pass.
I’m not sure how many. Time has gone strange and slippery, measured in cups of tea Celia brings me and meals I barely touch and the growing pressure low in my belly that reminds me, constantly, that I’m not alone in this body.
I shower. I eat when Celia insists. I stare at walls and ceilings and the inside of my own eyelids, replaying every moment of that dinner, every word Kenneth said, every way I should have seen this coming.
On what might be the fourth day or the fifth, Celia appears in my doorway with her coat on and her keys in hand.
“You’re getting dressed.”
“No.”
“You’re getting dressed, you’re leaving this apartment, and you’re breathing air that isn’t recycled through my HVAC system.” She pulls open my closet, starts rifling through the few items I brought. “I’m not negotiating.”
“Celia, I can’t face-”
“You can and you will.” She throws a sweater at me, then a pair of jeans. “You’re growing a whole human being, Bea. That human being needs its mother to remember what sunlight looks like.”
“People will stare.”
“People always stare. That’s what people do.” She crosses her arms, fixes me with the look she’s been perfecting since we were children. “Fifteen minutes. Dressed. Downstairs. Or I’m carrying you out in your pajamas.”
She would, too. That’s the thing about Celia. She’s five foot four and weighs maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, and she would absolutely try to carry me down three flights of stairs if she thought it was necessary.
I get dressed.
Downtown Newport looks exactly the same as it always has.
Cobblestone streets. Historic storefronts. Tourists wandering with ice cream cones and shopping bags, oblivious to the fact that my entire life has collapsed. The normalcy of it feels obscene, somehow - how dare the world keep spinning when I’m barely holding myself together?
Celia links her arm through mine, steering me down Thames Street like I’m a flight risk. Which, to be fair, I probably am.
“We’re going to walk to the waterfront,” she says. “We’re going to look at some boats. We’re going to pretend to be normal people having a normal day. And then we’re going to get lunch, and you’re going to eat something that isn’t toast.”
“I eat things that aren’t toast.”
“Name one thing you’ve eaten this week that isn’t toast or soup.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“That’s what I thought.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes. The salt air fills my lungs, and I have to admit - reluctantly, resentfully - that it feels better than the stale air of Celia’s guest room. I press my hand against my stomach without thinking.
“Bea.”
Something in Celia’s voice makes me stop.
She’s stopped walking. She’s staring at something ahead of us, her face frozen in an expression I can’t quite parse.
“What? What is it?”
She doesn’t answer. Just points.
I turn.
And I see it.
A billboard.
Massive. Impossible to miss. Towering over Thames Street like a declaration of war.
IF YOU EVER SEE THIS, PLEASE FORGIVE ME SOMEDAY.
Below that, in letters that must be ten feet tall:
YOU FIXED ME ONCE. LET ME FIX THIS.
I stop breathing.
The world narrows to those words, black on white, screaming across the Newport skyline. People are walking past, glancing up, murmuring to each other. Someone takes a photo. Someone else laughs.
You fixed me.
The hospital. Five years ago. His hand bleeding, my needle steady, and the way he looked at me afterward like I’d done something miraculous instead of routine.
You fixed me, he said. And I smiled and thought he meant the stitches.
He didn’t mean the stitches.
He never meant the stitches.
And now those words - our words, private words, words that no one else in Newport could possibly understand - are plastered across a billboard for the whole world to see.
“Oh my God.” Celia’s voice sounds very far away. “Bea. Did you know about this?”
“No.” The word comes out strangled. “I had no idea.”
“When did he even have time to arrange this?” I hear myself ask.
“Billboards take days to set up.” Celia is still staring at it. “He must have started the process right after you showed him the proof. Right after he realized what he’d done.”
Days. He’s spent days arranging this while I was hiding at her apartment. While I was crying myself to sleep. While I thought he’d simply moved on to damage control.
Instead, he’s been doing this.
People are looking at us now. Looking at the sign. Looking at me, standing frozen in the middle of the sidewalk like I’ve turned to stone.
Do they know? Can they tell? Is it obvious, somehow, that I’m the one the message is for?
You fixed me once.
My chest is too tight. My heart is beating too fast. A sob catches in my throat, and I gasp.
“Bea?” Celia’s hand is on my arm. “Bea, breathe. You need to breathe.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t stand here with the whole town watching, trying to decode a message meant only for me. I can’t look at those words and feel what I’m feeling and pretend I’m fine.
I turn. I walk away.
Fast. Faster.
“Bea, wait-”
I don’t wait. I can’t wait. My feet carry me down an alley, away from the main street, away from the billboard, away from the stares and the whispers and the crushing weight of Kenneth’s public declaration.
I make it maybe thirty feet before my legs give out.
I slide down the brick wall, hands over my face, breath coming in ragged gasps that aren’t quite sobs but aren’t quite anything else either. The ground is cold and dirty and I don’t care. I can’t care. I can barely think.
“Bea.” Celia is beside me, crouching down, her hand on my back. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“I can’t.” The words tear out of me. “I can’t do this. I can’t let him back in just because he’s sorry.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But he-” I gesture vaguely toward the street, toward the billboard, toward the gesture that probably cost more than most people make in a year. “He put up a billboard, Celia. In the middle of downtown. With words that only I would understand.”
“I know.”
“He paid for a retraction. He sat outside your building all night. He-” My voice breaks. “He’s doing everything right and I still can’t forgive him.”
Celia settles onto the ground beside me, heedless of her expensive jeans, and takes my hand.
“Listen to me.” Her voice is steady, certain. “He put up a billboard. He paid for a retraction. Those are things you can do when you’re a billionaire. They’re easy. They cost money, not effort. Not change.”
“But-”
“Grand gestures are easy for someone like Kenneth.” She squeezes my hand. “Actual change? That’s hard. That’s showing up every day. That’s doing the work even when no one’s watching. That’s being different, not just looking different.”
I stare at the brick wall opposite us. A dumpster. A fire escape. The back of someone’s restaurant, steam rising from a vent.
“I loved him so much.”
“I know you did.”
“I wanted us to work so badly. I wanted to believe that all the absences and the broken promises and the loneliness were just temporary. That eventually he’d come home and stay. That we’d be partners instead of strangers who shared a house.”
“I know.”
“But every time I close my eyes, I see his face at that dinner table.” My voice drops to a whisper. “The way he looked at me. Like I was garbage. Like everything we built together meant nothing. Like I was exactly what his mother always said I was.”
Celia doesn’t say anything. Just holds my hand and lets me shake apart.
“He didn’t even ask me,” I continue. “He didn’t pull me aside. Didn’t give me a chance to explain. He just - announced it. In front of everyone. In front of my parents.”
“He was wrong.”
“He was cruel.” I finally look at her. “And now he’s sorry, and he’s doing all these big dramatic things, and I’m supposed to - what? Forget? Forgive? Fall back into his arms because he bought a billboard?”
“You’re not supposed to do anything.” Celia’s voice is firm. “You’re supposed to take care of yourself and that baby. That’s it. That’s the only obligation you have right now.”
“And Kenneth?”
“Kenneth can buy all the billboards he wants. He can pay for retractions in every newspaper on the Eastern Seaboard. He can sit on curbs until he freezes solid.” She shrugs. “None of that means you owe him anything. None of that earns him your forgiveness.”
“What if I never forgive him?”
“Then he learns to live with that.” Her eyes meet mine, steady and sure. “Just like you learned to live with everything he did to you.”
Celia helps me up.
We walk back to her car by a different route, avoiding Thames Street, avoiding the billboard, avoiding the curious stares of people who probably have no idea why some woman was hyperventilating in an alley.
I don’t look back.
In the car, engine idling, I pull out my phone.
I don’t know why. Habit, maybe. Or some masochistic need to see the evidence of his desperation.
Forty-seven missed calls from Kenneth.
One hundred and six text messages.
The notifications scroll across my screen like an accusation. Or a plea. I’m not sure which.
Please let me explain. I was wrong. I was so wrong. I know you need space. I’ll give you space. I just need you to know I’m not giving up. I love you. I never stopped loving you. Please, Bea. Please.
The messages blur. My thumb hovers over the screen.
I don’t read all of them.
I don’t respond to any of them.
But I don’t delete them either.