4. Meredith
MEREDITH
June went to bed early, but the low murmur of whatever video she was watching only cut out about an hour ago. The clock on my phone now reads just after eleven.
I have no idea how long she’ll sleep. I can only hope she manages a few more hours, if only so I can kick Mark out before she wakes up.
She’s barely holding the pieces of herself together these days, and the only thing worse than watching her unravel would be letting her hear the late-night strategy talks we keep circling back to.
Mark is sitting across from me, tie discarded at some point during our last review of Ashton’s most recent court date.
Half-slouched in the leather armchair, as if he owns the place.
Which I suppose, in a sense, he does. But he’s been staring at the wall for so long that I’m starting to wonder if he’s just disassociating.
I close the binder I’ve been pretending to read. “Okay. Cards on the table.”
His eyes flick to me. Suddenly, very much back in the room.
“I don’t like this.” I point at the transcripts. There’s not much there, at least not about my sister. But it’s the reading between the lines, in all the things his lawyers aren’t saying, that makes my skin crawl.
“What are you asking me?”
“Do you think Ashton set her up?”
He freezes.
And that’s how I know the answer.
Despite the horrendous implications of this response, it’s oddly comforting that we’re on the same page. That my mind isn’t just jumping to conclusions because it’s so desperate for an answer. Remaining objective about a case when my sister’s life is on the line has been predictably difficult.
But I need him to say it out loud. “Mark.”
He stares at me, mouth tightening the way it does when he’s trying not to say something honest. “I don’t like the odds, Mer.”
It’s a non-answer, answer. But that’s good enough. Good enough that he’s being cautious with his personal opinion, because even now, both our eyes dart intermittently to June’s door.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I don’t either.”
We both go quiet, as if waiting for something terrible to happen in the aftermath of this small confession. The hum of the mini-fridge becomes the loudest thing in the world. But the minutes tick by, and June remains in bed, while her husband remains the mysterious antagonist haunting our lives.
“I hate it,” I say softly. “I hate that she’s clinging to hope. I wish he would just come out and admit it. That way, she could at least get some closure.”
“You say that like she could handle that truth,” he murmurs.
“You don’t know anything about her.” My voice cracks, embarrassing me. “You have no idea what she’s been through, what she’s survived in Nantucket. Without me.”
His stare sharpens with something like sympathy. “You’re doing everything you can.”
His words cut through it all, straight to the core of my distress as if he sees me. As if he knows me. Like he’s been doing for the better part of a decade.
I look away, suddenly too warm. “Don’t start.”
“Start what?”
“Consoling me when it’s not my name being dragged through the mud,” I say instead of something stupid like “pretending to care.”
Tonight is not the night for that kind of conversation. It’s late, and we’ve been working hard enough that my brain keeps checking out entirely. It’s not a night for rash conversations about the past.
He shifts forward, forearms braced on his knees, gaze leveling with mine. “I think someone ought to. You look exhausted.”
I’m never prepared for his gentleness.
I exhale, long and shaky. “Of course I’m exhausted. My sister’s being eaten alive by the federal government, and I’m living in a hotel room, trying to reverse-engineer a miracle while pretending I’m completely fine. And—” I catch myself. “Never mind.”
“What?” he presses.
“No.”
“Mer.” His voice is low, annoyingly warm. “Tell me.”
I shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t. But he’ll keep asking and asking.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t know how competent you are, or how terrifyingly good you are at this. Because it would be so much easier to hate you if you were a mediocre lawyer.”
A breath of laughter escapes him. “I don’t need to be bad at my job for you to hate me.”
“It would help,” I snap. But it’s while I’m wrapped up in the sound of his breathy laugh that my brain checks out again. “You broke my heart.”
That silences him, and the absence of laughter leaves something thick and horrible that shouldn’t be touched this late at night.
When he speaks, his voice is almost a whisper. “I know.”
And the worst part is, I think he does. It’s there in the way his charming mask drops to the floor, in the sag of his shoulders.
A proud man beginning to understand the meaning of the word “regret”, and it hurts.
It hurts more than the act of betrayal itself, because why did it take him this long to figure that out?
“I can’t ever forgive you,” I say quietly. “You shouldn’t want me to.”
Something slow and devastated flickers over his face before he’s smiling again. “I wouldn’t deserve it anyway.”
There’s not much I can say to that. It’s not like I would argue with him.
“I get it. You, making a new life for yourself in Nantucket.” His meaning is obvious.
I narrow my eyes. “Don’t bring Eddie into this.”
“Why not?” His tone is almost conversational. “You’re happy. You think I don’t want that for you?”
“You don’t get to pretend you’re the selfless one here.”
He lets out a soft, bitter laugh. “You think I’m trying to be selfless? Letting you go back to that place, letting you play happy families with your sisters, Mer. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”
“You haven’t let me do anything.”
“But you’re getting it out of your system, aren’t you?” he retaliates. “That little island fantasy of yours. You think I didn’t know about that?”
My skin prickles, heat sweeping up the back of my neck. “So you’re belittling me now.”
“The sooner you realize it’s not what you want, the sooner you’ll come home.”
And suddenly, everything in the room shifts.
The air changes. The way his gaze touches me changes.
My breath catches.
“Meredith.” His voice is rough, closer now as he kneels in front of the couch. The facsimile of a begging man. “Come home.”
It rings like a death toll.
“No,” I say immediately, even though my pulse kicks, even though part of me wants to lean into the familiarity of him. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”
“I’m not offering you an apology,” he says, grabbing my hand in his. “You deserve more than that. I’m offering you a life. Our life. Again.”
My stomach twists—nostalgia, grief, fury, longing, all colliding in a horrible, perfect wreck.
“Mark,” I whisper. “Don’t make this harder.”
He shakes his head once, eyes locked on mine, unbearably earnest. “Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me there’s nothing left.”
And there is nothing left. At least, nothing worth fighting for.
And all these days and nights spent in proximity, all the familiarities of knowing someone deeply, their expressions, their turns of phrase, their cologne. It is nothing compared to the barely healed wound in my chest and the promise of something better and brighter on the horizon.
I steady myself, spine straightening, palms pressed to my knees. “I’m with Eddie. I’m with my family. I’m happy. And you should be happy for me.”
“I could be,” he murmurs. “If you weren’t looking at me like that.”
I inhale sharply, breaking the moment like a snapped thread as I get to my feet. “We’re not doing this. I’m going to bed.”
He doesn’t stop me. But his gaze follows me all the way to my bedroom door.
And God help me, I feel it long after I close the door behind me.
June 2026
I’m shaking when I reach the villa—an address obtained through such scorchingly monosyllabic texts that Mark hadn’t bothered to put up a fight.
The place is obscene. Massive walls, manicured hedges, outdoor lighting perfectly engineered to spill across the face so it looks like it’s smirking at me.
The view around back is probably one to write home about; close enough to the sea that a few more melted ice caps will probably tank the value to zero.
The door opens before I can knock, and Mark leans against the frame, barefoot, wearing a navy Henley and an expression that makes me want to throttle him. “Took you long enough.”
I shoulder past him. “You don’t get to joke with me tonight.”
“I’ve been here less than a day, and you’re already mad at me?” he says as he closes the door.
I ignore him in favor of storming further into the villa. It’s typically gauche and expensive, tasteful only to those with money who don’t know how to spend it. Impersonal to the point of being habitable only three months out of the year.
Behind me, I hear Mark’s muted footsteps, but I don’t stop until I reach the open-plan living space. I take a moment to consider the avant-garde couch before deciding that it looks too uncomfortable—and that I don’t want to be here any longer than I need to.
Standing in the middle of the room, I turn to him. “What are you doing in Nantucket?”
There’s a brief moment of hesitation as he surveys the scene from the corridor threshold before stepping toward me. At the last minute, he turns to settle on the couch, stretching out in a lazy, practiced sprawl. “The scenery. The beaches. The lobster rolls—those are excellent, by the way.”
“Try again.”
He smiles without any warmth. “I’m staying the summer.”
The blow lands straight to the gut. “No. Mark, no, you’re not. You can’t.”
“Sure I can.” He shrugs. “It’s a free island. People vacation here all the time.”
“You’re not people.”
“No, I’m not your people,” he corrects with slightly narrowed eyes. “Or did you forget that divorce means that you no longer have any influence on the way I live my life?”
There it is. The shift. The moment where the smugness drops and the cruelty sets in, because Mark never cuts me gently.
“We’re not doing this,” I say, even as my pulse hammers in my throat. “We’re not sliding backward just because you feel like stirring up old?—”