8. Delphine
— ? —
Delphine
I packed my suitcase at three in the morning.
Blair had taken me back to Fairhaven so I could gather my things, waiting in the car with the engine running while I moved through the dark house like a ghost. I left the lights off.
There was light under the library door and I did not open it.
I didn’t want to see the rooms I had decorated, the furniture I had chosen, the life I had built in this place that had never really been mine.
My hands were steady as I folded clothes into my bag.
Sweaters and jeans and comfortable shoes.
Nothing fancy. Nothing that belonged to the woman I had been as Heath Fairchild’s wife.
I was done with that woman. I was done with the gowns and the galas and the careful smile I had worn for nine years while the people around me sharpened their knives.
I took off my wedding ring and left it on the dresser.
The sight of it there, small and gold against the dark wood, made my chest twist. I couldn’t wear it. It felt like a lie against my skin.
I got all the way to the bedroom door before I turned around, went back, and put it in the zip pocket of my suitcase. I told myself it was worth money. I told myself I would need money.
***
I spent the night at Blair’s house, in the guest room with the pale blue walls and the view of the garden. I didn’t sleep. I lay in the darkness and stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine what my life would look like now.
Single. Pregnant. Starting over at thirty-one with nothing but a suitcase and a broken heart.
I had been so afraid of this. For years, I had been afraid of exactly this moment, the moment when everything fell apart and I was left alone.
I had stayed quiet when I should have spoken up.
I had smiled when I should have screamed.
I had made myself smaller and smaller, trying to fit into a world that was never going to accept me.
And it hadn’t mattered. None of it had mattered. I had lost everything anyway.
***
At seven in the morning, I called the law firm.
Aldrich and Hale had been handling legal matters for Newport families for over a century. They were discreet and professional, and very expensive. I had the receptionist transfer me to the family law department, and within twenty minutes I had an appointment scheduled for nine o’clock.
Blair came with me. She sat in the waiting room while I went into the partner’s office, a wood-paneled room that smelled of leather and old money. The lawyer was a woman in her fifties with silver hair and kind eyes, and she didn’t flinch when I told her what I wanted.
“Divorce papers,” I said. “As quickly as possible.”
She nodded and pulled out a legal pad. “Tell me about the situation.”
I told her. The relevant parts, anyway. The estrangement. The suspected infidelity. The hostile mother-in-law and the ex who had moved into our home. I didn’t mention the pregnancy. That felt too raw, too private, too much mine to feed into the cold machinery of the law.
By ten o’clock, the paperwork was in motion. The lawyer promised to have them drawn and served within days. I signed what needed to be signed and walked out of the office feeling hollowed out and strangely light.
Choosing myself begins the way it always does for a woman like me.
The thought surfaced unbidden as I stood on the sidewalk outside the law firm, the winter sun weak and pale overhead. Alone. A suitcase in my hand and nothing else. No home. No husband. No certainty about anything except the life growing inside me and the determination to protect it.
Blair was waiting in the car. “Where to now?”
“Boston.” My voice was rough from crying and lack of sleep. “My parents’ place. I need to go home.”
She nodded and started the car.
The drive took three hours. Three hours of Rhode Island highways and Massachusetts turnpikes, of bare trees and gray skies and the endless ribbon of road unwinding ahead of us. Will sat in the backseat, quiet and solid, a reassuring presence that didn’t require conversation.
I watched the miles pass and thought about the life I was leaving behind.
Nine years. I had given nine years to Heath Fairchild and his family and their world of money and manners and cruelty dressed up as breeding. I had loved him so much. I had believed in us so completely. And now it was over, and I didn’t know who I was supposed to be without him.
I pressed my hand against my stomach, against the small cluster of cells that was growing into a person.
At least I wouldn’t be completely alone.
We reached Boston in the early afternoon. The city looked different in winter, grayer and harder than I remembered, but familiar in a way that made my chest ache. This was where I had grown up. Where I had learned who I was before I became someone else’s wife.
My parents’ house was in Southie, a narrow three-story building with a blue door and window boxes that would be full of flowers in spring.
I had spent the first twenty years of my life here.
I had climbed those front steps thousands of times, coming home from school and summer jobs and late nights with friends who had long since scattered across the country.
Blair pulled up to the curb and put the car in park.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to come in?” she asked. “We can stay for a bit, make sure you’re settled.”
I shook my head. “You’ve done enough. More than enough. I don’t know how I would have survived last night without you.”
“You would have survived.” Blair reached over and squeezed my hand. “You’re stronger than you know, Del. You always have been.”
I felt tears prick at my eyes and blinked them back. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Call me whenever you need to talk. Day or night. I mean it.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
Will got out and retrieved my suitcase from the trunk. He set it on the sidewalk and gave me a brief, awkward hug.
“Take care of yourself,” he said. “And the little one.”
I stared at him in surprise. Blair must have told him. Of course she had told him. He was her husband. They didn’t keep secrets from each other.
That was what marriage was supposed to be.
“I will,” I managed. “Thank you, Will.”
I stood on the sidewalk and watched them drive away, Blair’s hand raised in farewell through the window. Then I picked up my suitcase and walked up the front steps of my parents’ house.
The blue door opened before I could knock.
My mother stood in the doorway, her dark hair streaked with gray now, her face creased with worry and love and the particular kind of maternal radar that had always told her when one of her children was hurting.
“Delphine.” Her voice was soft, questioning. “Baby, what happened?”
I opened my mouth to answer, to explain, to tell her some calm and rational version of events that wouldn’t worry her too much.
What came out instead was a sob.
And then I was crying, really crying, the way I hadn’t let myself cry since the night I found the text message on Heath’s phone. The tears poured out of me in great heaving waves, all of me shaking with the force of them, and my mother stepped forward and pulled me into her arms.
“Okay,” she said, holding me tight. “Okay, baby. I’ve got you. Whatever it is, I’ve got you.”
She guided me into the house, her arm firm around my waist, and closed the door against the cold. The smell hit me immediately, coffee and cinnamon and the particular warmth of a home where people actually lived. Where people actually loved each other.
My father appeared in the hallway, his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, his brow furrowed with concern.
“Del?” Laurent Roux had never been a man of many words, but the way he said my name held a thousand questions.
“Heath,” I managed through my tears. “It’s over. It’s all over.”
My parents exchanged a look, the kind of silent communication that came from forty years of marriage. Then my father nodded and retreated to the kitchen, and I heard the sounds of him making tea.
My mother led me to the living room, to the old sofa with the faded floral upholstery that I had hated as a teenager and now found unbearably comforting.
She sat down and pulled me against her, my head on her shoulder, her hand stroking my hair the way she had when I was a child with a skinned knee or a broken heart.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
So I did. I told her about the three months of Heath’s distance. About Montana and Kendall arriving unannounced. About the text message and the overheard conversation and Montana’s cruelty in the kitchen. About the gala and the punch and Heath running after me in the parking lot.
I didn’t tell her about the pregnancy. Not yet. That was mine to hold close for a little while longer, mine alone before it became everyone’s news.
My mother listened without interrupting, her hand steady on my back, her breathing slow and calm. When I finally ran out of words, she was quiet for several seconds.
“Oh, Delphine,” she said softly. “My poor girl.”
“I tried so hard.” My voice was broken, barely recognizable. “I tried so hard to make it work. To be what they wanted. To fit into that world.”
“I know you did.”
“It wasn’t enough. I was never going to be enough.”
“No.” My mother’s voice was firm now, fierce. “You listen to me, Delphine Marie Roux. You were always enough. You were always more than enough. If Heath Fairchild couldn’t see that, if his family couldn’t accept the incredible woman you are, then they’re the ones who failed. Not you.”
I cried harder. I couldn’t help it. The grief was too big, too overwhelming, a tidal wave that I had been holding back for months and could no longer contain.
My mother held me through all of it. She held me while I sobbed and shook and fell apart completely. She held me while my father brought tea and pressed a warm cup into my hands. She held me while the afternoon light faded into evening and the house grew quiet around us.
Eventually, the tears stopped. Not because the pain was gone, but because I had simply run out of them. I lay against my mother’s shoulder, exhausted and empty, staring at the familiar walls of my childhood home.
“What do I do now?” I whispered. “I don’t know who I am without him.”
My mother was quiet for a moment. Then she tilted my chin up so she could look into my eyes.
“You figure it out,” she said gently. “One day at a time. One choice at a time. You remember who you were before you met him, and you figure out who you want to become now. It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. But you’ll get through this, Delphine. I know you will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re my daughter.” She smiled, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “And I raised you to be strong.”
I closed my eyes and let her hold me, let the warmth of her arms and the steadiness of her presence anchor me to solid ground. The grief was still there, a vast dark ocean inside my chest. But for the first time since Christmas morning, I felt like I might not drown in it.
This was home.
I was broken and lost and starting over from nothing.
But I was home.