Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Reed
The north service elevator jams between floors. Six crates of rented glassware inside, a florist about to lose it. I’m in the servants’ corridor, facilities binder in one hand, phone in the other, listening to three people try to convince me it’s not their problem.
"Stop," I say.
They do. That’s the one easy thing about being Reed Dillon at Stanhope House. People stop when I talk.
"Use the west freight lift for the glassware. Send maintenance to reset the north relay, but don't let anyone overload it again until Wayne signs off. The orchids can go through the orangery entrance. Not the front hall."
The florist blinks. "Mrs. Dillon said the front hall photographs better."
"My mother isn't carrying eight-foot arrangements through a doorway built in 1891."
The estate manager makes a note, the caterer exhales, and the florist stops crying.
By four-thirty, I’ve signed off on a restoration delay for the south balustrade, shot down Catherine’s plan to swap out perfectly good staff uniforms because the black is too ‘funereal,’ and shifted extra security to the lower drive, where the ground turns to soup after rain.
Stanhope looks easy from the lawn. It isn’t.
It’s stone, payroll, drainage, insurance, donors, termites, roof flashing, and marble that stains if you so much as breathe near a glass of red wine. It’s mine to keep standing.
I know which vendors pad the bill because of the name. I know when my mother says ‘historic integrity,’ she really means ‘I want everyone impressed.’ I sign the revised budget and hand it back.
Then my mind leaves the corridor and goes straight to Annie in that cramped workroom. Her thighs around my hips, fixer stinging my nose, that damned horror movie shrieking from the laptop. My wife in the dark. My favorite place.
Despite every hardship we’ve been through, there’s no question I’d marry her over and over again.
None of it matters. Every fight with Catherine.
Every raised eyebrow at every dinner table.
Every awkward introduction where people looked at Annie’s accent before her face.
The doctors, the procedures, the losses.
If someone dropped me back eight years with the whole ugly map in front of me, I’d still walk across campus to the girl with the camera and the sharp mouth. No hesitation.
Everyone knows that. My mother knows it, however much she dislikes the fact. Glen knows. Lexi knows. The staff knows. Annie knows. God, Annie has to know. I put my ring on her finger in front of half the state and never once wished it belonged anywhere else.
I know everyone expected Lexi Cavanaugh to be Mrs. Reed Dillon. We were lined up for each other before we could walk, but nobody knows better than me that it was never going to happen. I suspect Lexi knows it as well.
Most importantly, Annie knows. She knows Lexi is just fixture and furniture: predictable, familiar, and completely safe.
She knows I’d rather be in bed with her, eating greasy takeout and debating horror movies, than suffocating in a three-piece suit under chandeliers that look primed to drop and wipe out half the room.
She knows.
I tuck the signed papers under my arm and head for the back staircase.
Tonight. The conversation from earlier blooms in the back of my mind.
The app says tonight. The app, the temperatures, the little plastic tests lined up under the bathroom sink where no housekeeper will find them. I want my wife. That’s never been the problem. The problem is remembering when wanting her was enough.
Once, Annie could look at me across a crowded room, lift one eyebrow, and I’d find any excuse to leave. Once, she’d laugh against my mouth while I fumbled with keys. Once, we touched because not touching wasn’t an option.
Now it’s windows. Cycle days. Numbers. Doctors telling us when her body is theoretically most useful. Medication tucked into the small fridge, kept out of sight so nobody knocks into it while reaching for the oat milk.Tests bought in bulk and hidden like contraband.
I know words I never wanted to know. I know the exact shift in Annie’s face before she tells me a test is negative. And I know her face three months ago.
We came home from the appointment in silence.
Not a maybe. Not a late period. Not the cruelty of almost hoping.
We had the positive. We'd stood in our bathroom at dawn, staring at the stick like it was holy.
Annie had covered her mouth with both hands.
I'd laughed, then cried before I could stop myself.
For eleven days, we let ourselves be careful, terrified, and happy.
Then we came home, and she sat on the edge of our bed, hands folded in her lap, staring at nothing. Her face blank, as if she’d been scrubbed of all emotion.
I can hire doctors. Call specialists. Book flights. Pay for tests. Fix roofs, foundations, reputations, whole failing estates.
I can’t put the pregnancy back. I can’t make her body stop hurting. I can’t make her believe it wasn’t her fault. I can’t even stop grieving long enough to be useful.
Three nights later, I ended up in Glen’s kitchen, still wearing clothes I’d slept in twice.
Annie was home. She’d finally fallen asleep after days of moving through the house like it hurt to breathe. I stood in the doorway and watched her until shame crawled up my throat. Part of me was relieved she was unconscious. Relieved I didn’t have to keep my face steady for one more minute.
Glen opened the side door wearing sweatpants and an old college T-shirt, his hair flattened on one side.
"Jesus, Reed."
"I need a drink."
He stepped back.
Glen got the bourbon down without a word. I drank the first one too fast.
"What happened?" he asked.
I set the glass on the counter. My hand was shaking. "We lost the baby."
His face changed. He didn’t know Annie was pregnant. He only knew, like most, that there hadn't been a baby in the nearly six years we’d been married.
But those four words told the whole story without all the details.
"Reed," he said quietly.
I shook my head because if he used that voice, I'd come apart in pieces too small to gather. "We had it this time. We had the test. We had the bloodwork climbing. She let herself look at nursery wallpaper for ten minutes, Glen. Ten damn minutes."
He poured again. "I'm sorry."
I laughed once, hard and ugly. That’s the whole vocabulary, isn’t it? Sorry. Unexplained. Nonviable. Try again.
He didn't touch his drink. And then I talked.
I told him how long we'd really been trying.
I told him about specialists in Charlotte and Atlanta, about injections Annie learned to give herself while I stood beside her feeling useless.
I told him about IVF rounds, retrievals, and calls from nurses using gentle voices like they were talking to a child instead of grown adults.
I told him about the first miscarriage. Then the second. Now this one.
Glen stayed still, elbows braced on the island.
"She thinks something is wrong with her," I said, my throat closing around it. "She thinks I don't know, but I hear her. In the bathroom. Sometimes in bed when she thinks I'm asleep. She cries like she's trying not to wake me."
"Reed."
"What am I supposed to do with that? Tell me. Because I can find the best doctor in the country, and I have, and they still look at my wife and say, ' Unexplained.’ Like that helps anyone."
The bourbon burned less by the third glass. I should have stopped. I knew it. Instead, I leaned on my brother’s counter and said the thing I hadn’t said out loud. Saying it felt like stripping our marriage down to something sad and clinical.
"I miss her."
Glen frowned. "Annie?"
“Us.” I pressed my palms against my eyes. “I miss us. I miss touching her without both of us wondering if it’s supposed to become something. I miss wanting my wife and not having a phone tell us if wanting counts tonight.
“Nothing makes you feel like a man quite like your wife telling you you’ve got twenty-four hours.”
The joke drops dead between us.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. I heard it clearly. Then water ran through pipes somewhere above us. A bathroom sink, maybe. Tara was awake.
For half a second, the room gave me a chance.
I could lower my voice. Stop. Ask Glen if she could hear us.
My fingers tightened around the glass. Tara was family.
Glen would never repeat this. I wasn't gossiping at some luncheon table.
I was standing in my brother's kitchen because I couldn't breathe in my own house.
“I don’t think I have to tell you that this stays between us,” I said to Glen. The old saying “two can keep a secret if the other one is dead” rolled through my mind and then the excuse that this was my brother.
My phone vibrates, yanking me back to the present. Mother.
For a second, I think about letting it go. But I answer. I always do.
"Reed, darling, please tell me security has been handled for the lower drive."
"It has."
"And the Cavanaugh rooms?"
"Prepared."
A pause, delicate as a needle. "Lexi has been fragile lately. Her father's birthday was difficult this year. She appreciated you staying with her last week when she had that rough evening."
I glance toward the corridor that leads back to Annie. I’d been late that night. She’d already gone quiet by the time I got home.
"She's known you forever. She trusts you. At the masquerade, will you make sure she isn't left alone too much?"
”Of course."
"I knew I could count on you."
I pull out my phone and send Annie a message:
Considering having someone dress as a candlestick to serve dinner tonight.
Her reply comes almost immediately.
It's fine. I'll save you from the pitchfork mob after you declare your love for me.
I can’t stop my smile. That’s my girl.
I'm going home to her. To the library. To our quiet room, her cold feet tucked under my leg, and tonight, whatever tonight looks like.
What else could possibly matter?