15. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
The Newport Preservation Society ballroom is exactly the kind of place I swore I’d never set foot in again.
Crystal chandeliers dripping from the ceiling like frozen waterfalls. Women in designer gowns that cost more than my monthly salary used to be. Men in tuxedos, talking about stock portfolios and yacht maintenance and which private school is producing the best legacy admissions to Harvard this year.
I hate it here.
But Celia insisted.
“You’ve been hiding for months,” she said, standing in my bedroom with her arms crossed while I tried to find something that fit over my growing belly. “It’s time to show them you’re still standing.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m rebuilding my life. I opened a clinic, Celia. A nonprofit clinic for children who can’t afford healthcare. That’s not hiding, that’s working.”
“Exactly. And now you need to show those society vultures what you’ve accomplished while they were busy gossiping about you behind your back.”
So here I am. Squeezed into a navy blue dress that Celia found at the back of my closet, the only formal thing I own that still accommodates my changed body. My makeup is done for the first time in weeks. My hair is actually styled instead of just pulled back.
I look like I belong here.
I feel like a fraud.
The whispers start the moment I walk through the door.
Did you see? She actually showed up.
I heard she’s been volunteering at some charity clinic in Providence.
How the mighty have fallen.
I keep my chin up. Keep walking. Keep pretending I don’t hear every single word.
The bar is in the far corner, and I make my way toward it with single-minded determination. Sparkling water. Something to hold. A prop to make me look like I have a reason to be standing here alone.
I’m waiting for the bartender when I hear them.
Ivy Chadwick and her court. Three women with perfect hair and perfect jewelry and perfectly manicured cruelty, standing just close enough that I can hear every word.
“Can you believe she showed up? After everything?”
“I heard she’s running some sort of charity clinic now. Treating poor children, apparently.” A delicate sniff of disdain. “How fitting.”
“The girl from nowhere, going back to her roots. I suppose she never really belonged here in the first place.”
My hand tightens on the edge of the bar. The cool marble biting into my palm.
Don’t react. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
“Can you imagine? A Sinclair, running around treating uninsured patients? Richard must be rolling in his grave.”
My jaw aches from clenching it.
“I hear Kenneth finally came to his senses. Moved out of that house. Started seeing someone for his nerves.” Ivy’s laugh is a crystalline tinkle of practiced amusement. “I suppose even he couldn’t stand to be married to someone so-”
“That’s enough.”
The voice cuts through the room like a blade.
Kenneth.
He’s crossing the ballroom toward us, and he looks nothing like the man I married.
Gone is the polished smile, the careful diplomacy, the mask of pleasant neutrality he wore like armor to these events.
His face is hard. His jaw is set. There’s something dangerous in his eyes, something that makes the women around Ivy take an instinctive step back.
“Kenneth, darling.” Ivy recovers quickly, her society smile snapping back into place. “We were just discussing-”
“I heard what you were discussing.” His voice carries. Not shouting, just… carrying. The way a voice carries when it wants everyone in the room to hear. “And I heard what you called my wife.”
Heads are turning now. Conversations dying mid-sentence. The string quartet in the corner falters and goes silent.
“I didn’t mean-” Ivy starts.
“You meant every word.” Kenneth turns to face the room. Every eye in the ballroom is on him now. On us. “And since we’re all speaking so freely about my wife tonight, let me be clear about something.”
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
“I wronged her.” His voice rings through the silence. “The affair was a lie my mother built. Beatrice never cheated on me. Never even came close. The photos were doctored. The text messages were fabricated. And I was coward enough to believe it without even asking her for the truth.”
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Ivy’s face goes white.
“She didn’t disgrace the Sinclair name.” Kenneth’s eyes find mine across the room for just a moment before sweeping back to the assembled guests.
“I did. By believing a lie instead of trusting my wife. By humiliating her in front of her family. By destroying her reputation based on nothing but my mother’s manipulations and my own cowardice. ”
The silence is absolute. A room full of people holding their breath.
Then the doors at the far end of the ballroom swing open.
Josephine Sinclair walks in.
She’s immaculate, as always. Hair swept up in an elegant twist. Diamonds at her throat. The regal bearing of a woman who expects the world to bend around her like water around a stone.
She sees Kenneth. Sees the crowd watching. Starts toward him with that measured stride I remember from a hundred family dinners.
“Kenneth.” Her voice is perfectly controlled. “What on earth is going on? I could hear you from the foyer.”
“Perfect timing, Mother.” Kenneth’s voice is ice. “I was just telling everyone the truth.”
“The truth?” Josephine’s laugh is brittle, the sound of something cracking under pressure. “Kenneth, darling, this isn’t the place for-”
“You fabricated evidence.” Kenneth steps toward her.
“You edited footage to make it look like an innocent hug was something sordid. You created fake text messages. You manufactured an entire affair out of nothing but spite and jealousy because you never thought Beatrice was good enough for your precious family.”
“And the hotel receipt? The Chanler?” His voice hardens. “Let me guess. You booked that room yourself. Under her name.”
Something flickers across his mother’s face. Not guilt - she’s incapable of that. But recognition that she’s been caught.
“I did what was necessary.”
“You committed fraud. You forged evidence to destroy my marriage.”
The room is holding its breath.
“I did what I had to do to protect you.” Josephine’s composure is slipping. I can see it in the tightness around her eyes, the way her hands are trembling despite her best efforts to keep them still. “That woman was never-”
“That woman is my wife.” Kenneth’s voice breaks on the word. “The mother of my child. And she’s worth more than every person in this room combined.” He pauses. Takes a shuddering breath. “Including me.”
Josephine reaches for him. “Kenneth-”
He steps back. Out of her reach. Out of the orbit he’s lived in his entire life.
“My mother is no longer welcome at my home. At my table. Or anywhere near my wife and child.” He looks at her, and there’s nothing in his face but exhausted finality. “Don’t contact me. Don’t contact Beatrice. Don’t go near our child when it’s born.”
“You can’t mean that.” Josephine’s voice wavers. “Kenneth, I’m your mother. Everything I did, I did for you-”
“We’re done.”
Two words. Delivered without heat, without drama. Just the quiet closing of a door that will never open again.
Kenneth turns away from her. Walks through the crowd, which parts for him like the Red Sea, everyone too stunned to do anything but stare.
Behind him, Josephine stands alone in the center of the ballroom. Surrounded by the people she’s spent decades cultivating, the social network she’s built and maintained and wielded like a weapon.
Not one of them moves to comfort her.
Not one of them says a word.
Kenneth reaches me. Stops a few feet away, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to come any closer.
“I should have done that months ago,” he says quietly. Just for me. “I should have done that the moment I found out the truth. The moment I realized what she’d done to you.”
I can’t speak. My throat is closed. My eyes are burning.
“I know this doesn’t fix anything.” He runs a hand through his hair, that gesture I know so well, the one he makes when he’s overwhelmed. “I know a speech in a ballroom doesn’t undo what I did at our dinner table.”
I think about that night. The announcement I’d planned so carefully. The joy on my parents’ faces before it all fell apart.
I don’t believe the baby is mine.
The words that destroyed everything.
“But I needed them to know.” Kenneth’s voice cracks. “I needed everyone in this room to know that you were never the villain. That you never did anything wrong. That the only person who disgraced this family was me.”
I look at him.
This man who just severed his relationship with his mother in front of everyone who matters in Newport society. This man who stood in a room full of people who could destroy him professionally and personally and told them he was wrong and I was innocent.
This man who said I choose her.
I should say something. I should tell him how I feel, what I’m thinking, whether this changes anything between us.
But my mind is a hurricane of competing emotions, too tangled to sort through, too overwhelming to articulate.
I need air.
I need space.
I need to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to feel now.
“Beatrice-” Kenneth starts.
I turn and walk out of the ballroom.
The night air hits my face like a blessing. Cold and sharp and real. I lean against the stone railing of the veranda, breathing hard, trying to steady myself.
Behind me, through the windows, I can see the aftermath. People clustering together, whispering furiously. Josephine still standing alone, her carefully constructed world crumbling around her.
Kenneth, watching the door I just walked through.
I choose her.
The words echo in my head.
I don’t know if I’m ready to let him choose me.
But for the first time since that dinner, I think I might want to find out.