4. Blythe
— ? —
Blythe
Reid’s kitchen was too clean. That was the thing I kept noticing while he made coffee, the counters were spotless, the appliances looked unused, the whole room had the sterile perfection of a model home.
Like no one actually lived here. Like he’d bought the house and filled it with expensive things and then stood in the middle of it wondering what he was supposed to do next.
I understood the feeling.
“Stay,” he said.
He was facing the coffee maker, not me. His shoulders were tight under his T-shirt, still damp from last night. He hadn’t changed. He’d sat on that couch for hours with me sleeping on his shoulder, and he hadn’t moved, and now he was making coffee like nothing had happened.
“I can’t.”
“You can.” He turned around, and his eyes met mine for half a second before sliding away to the wall behind my head. “There’s room. Bayes likes you. You don’t have to-”
“If I stay here, he writes the story.” I wrapped my hands around the mug he’d set in front of me. The warmth helped, a little. “He’s out there right now crying on television, and if I hide, that’s all anyone will ever know. Poor Stan. His crazy wife fell off a boat and blamed him for it.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“I know that. You know that. The police don’t believe it, and Newport won’t either.” I took a sip of the coffee. It was too strong, almost bitter, but I drank it anyway. “I have to go home. I have to look him in the face and make him say it out loud, or I’ll never-”
“He’ll try again.”
The words sat between us. Reid was looking at the floor now, his jaw tight, his hands clenched at his sides like he wanted to hit something.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Not maybe.”
“Then I’ll be careful.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had any humor in it. “Careful. You’ll be careful. In a house with a man who watched you drown and told the captain to drive away.”
“It’s my house too.”
“Is it?” He looked up then, and his eyes were dark and steady and impossible to read. “Is your name on the deed? On the mortgage? On anything?”
I didn’t answer. He already knew.
“Stay,” he said again. “One day. Two. Until you have a plan.”
“My plan is to go home and not let him win.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s spite.”
“Spite’s worked pretty well for me so far.”
He stared at me for a long moment, something working behind his eyes. Then he nodded once, turned back to the counter, and pulled a set of car keys from a drawer.
“I’ll follow you,” he said.
“You don’t have to-”
“I’ll follow you.” He tossed me the keys. “Gray Audi in the garage. You can return it whenever.”
“Reid-”
“I’m not going to argue with you about this.
” He finally looked at me, really looked at me, and the plain worry on his face made my chest hurt.
“You want to walk into that house alone, fine. But I’m going to be parked at the curb, and if you need me, you come outside. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking.”
I should have said no. Every rule I had said no, don’t owe anyone, don’t lean on anyone, never let a stranger watch you bleed. But the truth was simpler and more humiliating than any of it: I did not want to walk into that house without knowing somebody was at the curb.
“Okay,” I said.
He didn’t make me say anything else. He went for the garage, and a minute later I heard the door come up.
I drove the Audi through Newport with Reid’s black SUV in my rearview mirror the whole way. He didn’t try to hide it. He stayed two car lengths back, steady and visible, and every time I glanced in the mirror he was there.
It should have felt suffocating. It didn’t.
***
The Anchorage was a circus.
I saw the news vans from two blocks away, three of them, parked along the street with their satellite dishes pointed at the sky.
Reporters clustered on the sidewalk, cameras ready, microphones bristling.
And on the lawn itself, a handful of photographers who’d somehow gotten past the gate, trampling the hydrangeas Sandrine had spent twenty years cultivating.
I pulled into the driveway and sat there for a moment, hands on the wheel, waiting for them to feel like my hands again.
Reid’s SUV pulled up to the curb. He didn’t get out. He just sat there, engine running, watching.
I got out of the car.
The reporters surged forward like a wave. Voices overlapping, cameras flashing, microphones thrust toward my face-
“Mrs. Chadwick! Mrs. Chadwick, can you tell us-”
“Blythe! Is it true you were rescued by-”
“Mrs. Chadwick, is it true your husband tried to kill you?”
I stopped walking.
The question hung in the air, sharp and ugly. The reporter who’d asked it was young, hungry, leaning forward with his microphone like he was trying to catch my reaction in a jar. His eyes were bright with anticipation.
I looked at him. I looked at all of them, the cameras, the lights, the greedy faces waiting for me to break.
And said nothing.
I kept my face blank and walked toward the front door, and they parted around me like water, still shouting questions I didn’t answer. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
The door opened before I reached it.
Stan was standing there in a blue sweater I’d bought him, his face arranged in an expression of desperate relief. But for a quarter of a second, just a flicker, just a heartbeat, his features slipped.
Disappointment.
He was disappointed that I was alive.
Then the grief arrived, flooding his face like a mask sliding into place, and he crossed the drive in three long strides and pulled me into his arms. The cameras went wild behind us, shutters clicking, voices rising.
Stan buried his face in my hair and sobbed, his whole body shaking, and with his mouth pressed against my ear, quiet enough that only I could hear, he whispered:
“You should have stayed down.”
I went cold.
Not afraid. I’d been afraid last night, in the water, when I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see and the yacht was pulling away.
This was different. This was ice in my veins, spreading outward from my chest until I couldn’t feel my hands, couldn’t feel my face, couldn’t feel anything but the frozen certainty that I had just walked into my own house alone with a man who had already tried once.
Stan pulled back, holding me at arm’s length, his face wet with tears. “Thank God,” he said, loud enough for the cameras. “Thank God you’re alive. I was so scared, baby. I thought I’d lost you.”
And underneath the ice, arriving all at once, was the rest of the arithmetic: there were cameras on the lawn and witnesses on the grass and none of it would matter the moment that door closed, because nobody in this town had believed me at nine o’clock this morning and nobody was going to believe me at noon.
I was stupid. I was so stupid.
Reid’s car was at the curb. I knew exactly where it was, I’d tracked it the whole way here without letting myself look at it directly, and I couldn’t look at it now, because if I looked at it I would run, and if I ran, Stan would write the story alone.
I smiled for the cameras. It was the only thing I knew how to do.
He took my hand and led me inside, and the door closed behind us, and suddenly it was quiet.
The foyer was empty except for two people: Sandrine, sitting in the good chair by the window like she was posing for a portrait, and Ivy, perched on the stairs with her phone out, filming.
That was who was here. No parents. No police. No one who might have been on my side.
Just my mother-in-law, magnificent in cream silk, and my sister-in-law, documenting everything.
“Blythe.” Sandrine’s voice was cool, controlled. “You’ve caused quite a scene.”
“Where is everyone?” I heard myself ask. My voice sounded strange, too calm, too flat. “The staff? The-”
“Sent home.” Sandrine set down her teacup with a delicate click. “This is a family matter.”
I looked at Stan. He was leaning against the door, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read.
Then I looked at Ivy. She was still filming, a small smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.
I looked at Sandrine. The woman who’d called me “my clever girl” for seven years. Who’d sent me flowers after every failed pregnancy test. Who’d held my hand at her husband’s funeral and told me I was the daughter she’d always wanted.
“He threw me off the boat,” I said.
Nobody moved.
“He threw me off the boat and left me in the water.” My voice got stronger as I said it, louder, filling the empty foyer. “He knows I can’t swim. He watched me go under and then he told the captain to drive away.”
Silence.
And that was the horror, not the silence itself, but what was underneath it.
Because nobody in that room was surprised.
Nobody gasped or cried or demanded an explanation.
Ivy kept filming. Stan kept leaning against the door.
And Sandrine just sat there, perfectly still, her face as calm as if I’d told her it might rain later.
They knew. They all knew. And none of them cared.
“I was in the water for-” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard and kept going. “I almost died. I would have died if someone hadn’t-”
Sandrine stood up.
She was sixty-one years old and still beautiful, a woman who’d never once had to work for anything, and she crossed the foyer toward me with slow, measured steps, her heels clicking on the marble, her face utterly expressionless.
“Sandrine,” I said. “You have to listen to me. Your son-”
She slapped me.
The sound echoed off the marble like a gunshot. My head snapped to the side, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything except the hot bloom of pain spreading across my cheek.
When my vision cleared, Sandrine was standing right in front of me, close enough that I could smell her perfume, something expensive and floral that I’d always associated with comfort.
“That,” she said quietly, “is for embarrassing this family.”