17. Sabrina
— ? —
Sabrina
The morning after the auction, I woke to find a text from Killian waiting on my phone.
I have to leave for a few days. Work emergency I can’t get out of. But I left something for you at the house. Mom, Dad, Tessa, and Sully all know about it. They’ll help you find it. Please go look. It’s important.
I read the message four or five times over.
The events of the previous night felt distant and dreamlike, a thing that happened to other people in movies, not to me.
Had I really dragged my husband into a library and had sex with him against a bookshelf while the entire island gossiped about us in the next room?
Had he really tattooed my name across his chest in front of everyone we knew?
The soreness between my legs confirmed that yes, all of that had actually happened.
I dropped Ivy off at Bridget and Alistair’s house, where she was immediately swept up in grandmother energy involving cookies and crafts and promises of a trip to the beach later. Bridget caught my eye as I was leaving and gave me a knowing smile.
“Go find your surprise,” she said. “Take your time. We’ve got Ivy for as long as you need.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“I do. And I’m not telling you. Go see for yourself.”
The drive to our house felt longer than usual.
The summer traffic was picking up, tourists clogging the narrow streets, but even accounting for that, time seemed to stretch and distort.
I kept thinking about the text, and the tattoo, and the way he’d looked at me in the library afterward with an expression that said he’d give me anything I asked for.
The house looked the same as always from the outside. Gray shingles, white trim, hydrangeas blooming along the front path. But when I walked around to the back of the property, I saw it.
The old outbuilding, the one that had been used for storage since before we bought the place, had been completely transformed.
New windows, a fresh coat of paint, a small deck with two chairs facing the garden.
I approached slowly, my heart pounding for reasons I couldn’t explain. The door was unlocked, and when I pushed it open, I stopped breathing.
It was a lab, a studio, a space designed specifically for research and creation, with a beautiful wooden bench along one wall and equipment I recognized from my graduate school days.
There were bookshelves filled with journals and textbooks, many of which I’d written my name in years ago when I’d still thought of myself as a scientist first and everything else second.
And on the walls, framed and displayed with obvious care, were my papers.
Every paper I’d ever published, from my undergraduate thesis to my last professional work before I’d quit to become a full-time mother. Each one was mounted in a simple black frame, arranged chronologically, a visual timeline of the career I’d walked away from.
In the center of the bench was an envelope.
I picked it up with shaking hands and pulled out the letter inside.
Sabrina,
I’ve been thinking about what you gave up when you agreed to stay home with Ivy. At the time, it had seemed the practical choice, and I was too focused on my own work to understand what it cost you. But I understand now.
You were brilliant. You ARE brilliant. The way your mind works has always been my favorite thing about you, the way you see patterns where other people see chaos, the way you can take complex data and find the signal in the noise.
Watching you step away from that work felt wrong, even then, but I was too much of a coward to say anything.
This space is yours. It’s not a gift with strings attached, and it doesn’t come with any expectations.
It’s just a room where you can think, where you can work, where you can remember who you were before you became a mother and a wife.
Those things are important, but they’re not everything.
You’re allowed to be more than what you do for other people.
I put your old equipment in the storage closet.
I’ve arranged for access to the databases you used to use.
Everything you need to pick up where you left off is here, if you want it.
And if you don’t want it, if this isn’t what you need, then we’ll gut it and start again.
A yoga studio or a craft room or an indoor garden, whatever you want.
I just needed you to know that I see you. I’ve always seen you. And I’m sorry it took me so long to show it.
Yours,
Killian
I sat down on the floor of the studio and cried.
I cried for the career I’d abandoned and the person I’d been before motherhood consumed me, for the years of feeling invisible while I poured everything into Ivy and the house and the endless logistics of daily life and my own work gathered dust, and for a marriage that had started with so much promise and gone quiet on both of us.
And I cried because he’d remembered. He’d remembered every paper, every project, every casual comment I’d made about missing my work. He’d built me a room to find myself again, and he’d done it without asking for anything in return.
I was still crying when the door opened.
Tessa and Bridget stood in the doorway, their faces soft with understanding.
“We wanted to give you time,” Tessa said. “But we also wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m okay.” I scrubbed the heels of my hands under my eyes. “I’m just… overwhelmed.”
“He’s been working on this for weeks.” Bridget crossed the room and sat down on the floor beside me, heedless of her expensive linen pants.
“Calling contractors in the middle of the night, researching what equipment you’d need, tracking down your old papers from the university archives.
It’s the most focused I’ve seen him on anything that wasn’t work in years. ”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He wanted it to be a surprise. He wanted you to walk in here and understand, without him having to explain, that he sees who you really are.”
Tessa sat down on my other side. “He screwed up a lot of things, Sabrina. We all know that. But this? This is him trying to fix it the only way he knows how. By building something.”
I looked around the studio, at the framed papers that each stood for months of work and thought and discovery, at equipment that had probably cost more than I wanted to know, at the color of the walls and the angle of the light through the windows and every other detail he’d clearly sat down and considered.
“I feel like I’ve been erased,” I said quietly. “For two years, I’ve felt like the person I used to be just… disappeared. And everyone expected me to be okay with that because I was doing work more important, more meaningful. But I wasn’t okay. I was drowning, and nobody noticed.”
“He noticed.” Bridget’s voice was gentle.
“He noticed, and he didn’t know how to help, so he did what Kerrington men always do when they’re overwhelmed.
He worked harder. Stayed away longer. Convinced himself that if he could just achieve enough, earn enough, build enough, it would somehow make up for not being present. ”
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
“No. It doesn’t. But it explains it.”
I hugged my knees. The tears had stopped, but my chest still felt tight with emotion.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” I said.
Tessa and Bridget exchanged a glance.
“You can tell us anything,” Tessa said. “Whatever it is.”
“I’m pregnant.”
The silence that followed was absolute. I couldn’t look at either of them, couldn’t bear to see their reactions, so I stared at the floor and waited.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Bridget’s arm came around my shoulders. “How long have you been carrying this by yourself?”
“Since just after we arrived. Tessa took me to Dr. Patterson.”
“Does Killian know?”
“No.” My voice cracked. “I couldn’t tell him. I was so angry, and then so scared, and every time I thought about saying the words, I imagined his face, and I couldn’t do it.”
“Why scared?” Tessa asked softly.
“Because of the last time.” The tears were coming again, and I couldn’t stop them.
“We lost a baby a year and a half ago. I never really talked about it with anyone but Killian, and then Tessa, that afternoon in Dr. Patterson’s office.
It ended before I ever heard a heartbeat, and the marriage barely survived what came after.
And now I’m pregnant again, and it’s high-risk, and I’m terrified that I’m going to lose this baby too, and if I do, I don’t think my marriage will make it. ”
Bridget pulled me into a proper hug, holding me tight while I sobbed against her shoulder. Tessa moved closer and put her hand on my back, rubbing small circles.
“I love him,” I managed between sobs. “I love him so much, and I’m so angry at him, and I’m terrified. I’m terrified of losing the baby and terrified of losing him and terrified of hoping for anything because every time I hope, something terrible happens.”
“Hope isn’t the enemy,” Bridget said. “Fear is. Fear makes us close off and push away the people who could help us carry the weight.”
“He wants to carry it. He’s been showing me over and over that he wants to be present, that he wants to fight for us.
But I’m so scared to let him in again. What if I let him in and he disappears back into work?
What if I tell him about the baby and he handles it the same way he handled the miscarriage, by working more and being present less? ”
“Then you’ll deal with that if it happens,” Tessa said.
“But you can’t make decisions based on what might happen.
You have to make them based on what is. And what is, right now, is a man who built you a studio to help you find yourself again.
A man who tattooed your name on his chest in front of everyone on this island.
A man who’s trying, imperfectly and sometimes foolishly, to be the husband you deserve. ”
I pulled back from Bridget’s embrace and wiped my face. They were both crying too, I realized. Both of them had tears running down their cheeks.
“You have to tell him,” Bridget said. “About the pregnancy. He deserves to know, and you deserve to share this with someone who loves you.”
“I know. I’m just not ready yet.”
“That’s okay. Take the time you need. But don’t wait too long. Secrets have a way of festering when they’re kept too long.”
I looked around the studio again, at this room that represented everything I’d lost and everything I could still become. He’d built it for me. He’d remembered who I was before I became someone’s mother and someone’s wife, and he’d given me a space to find that person again.
It didn’t erase two years of hurt and distance.
But it was a start.