8. Meredith
MEREDITH
Mark stands outside the courthouse café, hands in the pockets of his overcoat, shoulders stiff against the wind whipping down the sidewalk. Unnervingly still, jaw clenched, profile carved from stone.
I approach anyway.
His eyes flick to me, unreadable. “Meredith.”
“Mark.” I nod toward the café door. “Inside?”
He opens it without a word, and we take a small table in the corner, the same one we used to claim every Tuesday before work, back when two back-to-back divorces didn’t sully our marriage.
It’s also conveniently close to the courthouse, where we’ll be having our hearing this afternoon.
A long, brittle silence stretches as we remove our coats. His gaze skims me like he’s checking for some kind of visible change that might explain the fact that I asked him to meet me here.
The months away from him have done me good. They’ve cleared my head and hardened my resolve. Eddie had been so relieved that I was home that I’ve barely had a chance to imagine a situation where I couldn’t wake each morning in his arms.
“You look well,” he says finally.
“Thanks.” I don’t return the compliment.
He snorts. “We could’ve handled everything in the hearing.”
“I know.” I wrap my hands around my coffee to keep them warm. “This isn’t about the hearing.”
“Right.”
I breathe in, preparing myself. Because I made June a promise that I’ll do everything in my power to see it through, and asking Mark is a logical step—our best chance at success.
However, that doesn’t mean I like it. In fact, I hate it. The situation is increasingly reminiscent of the last time I approached him to ask for a favor—and look where that got us. Only this time, I have nothing left to offer him. I can only hope he doesn’t ask.
Then again, I almost want him to. I want him to prove to me that he hasn’t changed, that the second I need something, he’ll jump at the chance to get something in exchange. That he would never do something simply out of the goodness of his heart, a lingering fondness for nine years of marriage.
“It’s about June.”
His expression softens with understanding.
“She’s unraveling,” I say, trying not to remember how she cried on her birthday. “Not knowing whether Ashton lied to her or whether she’s mourning being kept away from her husband or his betrayal. She needs answers. And she can’t get them if the no-contact order stands.”
“And you want me to get it lifted,” he infers easily.
“You’re the best chance she has.”
He leans back, crossing his arms. Happy to let me squirm in his silence as he scans my face, curious. It’s almost ridiculous how clearly I can see the cogs turning in his head as he figures out how to spin this—win this.
Gone is the desperate, pleading mess who tried to reach for me in a hotel room. This is a man who rules courtrooms.
I humiliated him then. I suddenly know that he will humiliate me now.
“Say it,” he prompts. “Say what you want.”
“I need you to do this for her.” Whatever hope I harbored sinks in my stomach. “Please, Mark.”
His jaw tightens.
Disappointment is a tricky thing. It lingers so close to embarrassment.
And I am embarrassed by Mark. For believing in him, trusting him, and marrying him.
How could I not be? Almost everything I’ve done—the life I’ve lived since the moment I left Nantucket all those years ago—has been overshadowed by this man’s presence.
Every good memory, every personal win, every moment of serenity was tainted by the person I came home to at the end of the day.
My loyalty to him was a joke, the life I led a farce.
And more than anything else, it’s humiliating.
“I’ll get the no-contact order removed…if you withdraw the divorce petition,” he finally says with predictable mirth.
Of course.
It’s humiliating to think I expected something different.
“You would really bargain June’s sanity for this?” I ask, the question practically dead weight on my tongue.
“For us,” he corrects, leaning in. “We can fix this. You know we can.”
“No.”
His brows lift, surprised by how quickly, how easily, the word comes as if he doesn’t know me at all.
“No?” he echoes.
“I’m going through with the divorce, Mark.”
His grip on the edge of the table tightens as he straightens his back. Recalculating. “Look. I know I panicked. I was stupid and selfish. I thought… Heck, I don’t even know what I thought. But I’m still sitting here, trying to fight for this. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Of course it counts. It just doesn’t mean enough. Not when his version of fighting for us involves coercing me into doing something I don’t want to do.
“You know, it’s funny how much I wish you had fought for me like this then,” I say quietly. “Back when it still mattered.”
“It still matters.”
“Not to me.” I let the truth ring out with it. “I’m not playing these games with you anymore.”
He studies me, searching for a crack. There isn’t one. Finally, he says, “I always knew you were the cruel one.”
“And I always knew you weren’t as good a man as you pretended to be.”
We stand at the same time. He doesn’t stop me. And I don’t look back.
I walk to the courtroom with my spine steel-straight, the decision clean and final.
June 2026
Eddie’s name rips out of me as I chase his retreating figure. As if saying it with enough reverence will somehow claw the words back out of the air and make him forget what he just heard.
“Eddie, wait, please. Just please, Eddie!”
He stops walking, but only because he has to; the hallway is too narrow for him to barrel past the couple waiting outside the ICU wing. Clearly deciding he doesn’t want an audience, he turns back toward me slowly, as if bracing himself for impact.
The lights wash him out, making the hurt on his face painfully visible. Like a spotlight, my mistakes are taking center stage.
My ears are still ringing from June’s accusations, adrenaline pumping through my veins and threatening to crash at any moment. It was only a light jog, yet the couple of hundred feet to catch him felt like a marathon.
I hear myself talking before I can think. “I don’t know what you heard, but none of it’s true.”
He doesn’t answer right away. The light in his eyes is far away as he simply stares, looking at me like I’m a stranger. Like I’m someone he hasn’t known and loved for two decades.
“Meredith,” he says finally. The sound of my name on his lips makes everything inside me seize. “I heard a lot.”
“I know. I know, but she doesn’t know what she saw.
She completely misunderstood. And all that stuff about Richard.
I mean, come on, that was just…” I let out a deranged-sounding giggle and cringed internally.
“None of it was true. I mean, none of it was true in the way she seemed to think, and she wasn’t listening to me at all. ”
The words trip over each other, chaotic, jumbled, useless. Disconnecting somewhere between my brain and my mouth, muddled in all the panic, confusion, and fear.
He slowly begins to draw himself back to the present. “The thing is, Mer, you told me you and Mark were done. That there was nothing left between you.”
“There wasn’t. There isn’t.” I shake my head a little too aggressively. “Eddie, please, I swear. What happened wasn’t… June doesn’t know the context. She didn’t even ask me. She’s angry, scared, and lashing out, and she thinks?—”
But I can’t finish.
Now that I know what she believes, the reality of her accusations guts me. That she would believe me capable of them, that after everything we’ve been through together with Mom and Dad and Trent, she would think I’d even be willing to entertain the idea. And at her expense. When I tried so hard.
So, so hard.
I put everything, everything, on hold for her.
The tears begin streaming with almost shocking immediacy.
“Don’t do that.” Eddie’s face shifts again. Closing. Like he’s trying not to feel anything at all to survive this moment.
“I-I’m sorry.” I try to gulp it down. “I’m not trying to?—”
“Did you lie to me?” he asks, and the question lands with such quiet force. “When you came to the bar the other day. When you took my hand. When you said you hadn’t spoken to him.”
My breath snags.
“Because that’s the part… Meredith, you looked me in the eye. You swore it.”
“I-I didn’t.” The air gets thin, too thin. “I wasn’t lying. I told you the truth. I haven’t spoken to him since New York. I haven’t seen him. I don’t want him. I don’t?—”
“But you kissed him,” he says, voice low. Resigned. Defeated. Seven stages of grief uttered in one sentence. “Right? You kissed him.”
I can’t breathe.
It’s just one kiss, I tell myself as he comes far too close. It’s just an old bad habit, I tell myself as my lips part to meet his. It’s just rage, I tell myself as my mind goes blank.
It didn’t matter. The kiss didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d just told him as soon as I got back, if I’d explained what had happened. If I’d kissed him a hundred times over to make up for the one that was out of my control.
If I hadn’t been a coward.
If he hadn’t found out like this.
Would we have been okay? Would he have forgiven me?
Would I have forgiven myself?
“Eddie, it wasn’t… It didn’t mean?—”
My throat closes. The world blurs around the edges. My hands shake. My ribs feel too tight.
An intercom buzzes down the hall, and I suddenly realize we’re in a hospital. We’re here because of my mother. Because my mother is dying, and I’m standing here crying over a mess I got myself into. I’m not in that room with her, holding her hand and trying not to think about palliative care.
I can’t even have a breakdown right.
Suddenly, Eddie takes a step toward me. “Meredith.” It’s almost gentle.
I retreat without meaning to. Come on, Mer—one thing at a time.
“It wasn’t—” I try again. “It wasn’t an affair.
It wasn’t a relationship. I didn’t even—” I shake my head, as if doing so would organize my thoughts.
“Eddie, we had an agreement. He was supposed to stay away after. I didn’t want it, obviously.
But I had to. You don’t understand what he does, what he… How he…”
But the words tangle into knots.
“You know what the catch is. You’ve done your part already.”
“You’re happy. You think I don’t want that for you?”
“I’m not offering you an apology. You deserve more than that. I’m offering you a life. Our life. Again.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
I want to say he’s manipulative. He’s a gaslighter. He’s the worst person I’ve ever met.
He still loves me, in that twisted way of his. And it makes things complicated. But I’m not confused by it anymore.
All of this would be great if only my breathing would just. Settle. Down.
If I could just…
There are suddenly two, blissfully cool hands on my neck. It takes another second to get enough oxygen down to recognize Eddie’s face before mine. At some point, his expression shifted to something worried and alarmed.
“Meredith,” he says, softer now, dragging a thumb over the back of my neck. My eyes close involuntarily. “Hey. Hey, look at me.”
I can feel my mouth wobbling as I force myself to obey. “I didn’t cheat on you.”
They’re the only words I can manage. The only ones that matter.
His face twists in pain, frustration, and disbelief, all tangled together. But he doesn’t let go. Doesn’t walk away. Instead, he says, “You should be with your family,” quietly. Firmly. Like he’s deciding for both of us. “Your mom needs you.”
“I need you to believe me.” It slips out broken.
He closes his eyes like it physically hurts him.
When he opens them again, determination reigns there instead.
“I want to, Mer. But right now…with everything I just heard. With your mom… We can’t have a proper conversation.
Not with you this shaken up. I can’t drag you through an argument and an explanation when you can barely hold it together. It wouldn’t be fair.”
I blink hard, my vision swimming.
He doesn’t believe me. But he’s choosing not to punish me for it right now.
And somehow, that mercy hurts twice as much.
Because when did Mark ever not press an advantage like this?
He reaches out once more, hesitates, then steadily cups my chin. “I’m hurt that you lied to me. I’ll be hurting until we can speak again. But you need to be with your family.”
I choke. “Eddie.”
“I’m trusting you not to wait five months again.”
Again. A word that feels like a bruise waiting to form.
I nod into his touch because I can’t do anything else. Then he releases me slowly, as if wondering if I’ll crumble to my feet. It’s a near thing.
Then he steps back.
“Go.” He picks up his brown paper bag and places it in my arms. “Eat something. You’ll all be exhausted.”
And just like that, the best man in the world walks away from me.
I turn away before he can see the tears overwhelm me. My legs move before my brain does, carrying me back down the corridor, up some stairs, and vaguely recalling the way back from June’s earlier goose chase. Realizing, belatedly, that she might not have been trying to shake me off.
By the time I reach Mom’s room, my heartbeat is in my throat. The door is cracked open, so I push it with a trembling hand.
Sophie looks up first. Her face is blotchy, her eyes puffy from crying, but still somehow soft and steady. Her world is breaking in one place, not three. Eddie, June, Mom.
“Mer?” She calls my presence to the attention of Trent and Richard, all three rising immediately. “Did you find June? Are you okay?”
No. Everything is falling apart, and I can’t hold any of it.
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out.
Sophie doesn’t hesitate. She steps forward and catches me just as my knees buckle, her arms wrapping tightly around me, grounding me, anchoring me in that oh-so-loving way that reminds me of hands on my neck, a thumb rubbing up and down.
Her chin presses into my hair, and for the first time since this morning, I let myself collapse.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, holding me tighter. “I’ve got you.”
And I crumble into her.
Because right now, she’s the only thing keeping me from falling straight through the sterile hospital floor.