Chapter 7
ISABELLE
Margaret lived in Cole Valley, in a Victorian she'd bought before the neighborhood turned over and renovated in stages with methodical patience. It was narrow and tall, a house that announced nothing from the street, its facade painted a deep slate blue that disappeared into the fog.
Inside was different. Inside was Margaret's money and Margaret's taste: wide-plank floors refinished to a warm honey, a kitchen with marble counters and copper hardware, bookshelves built into every alcove.
It was a house that had cost a great deal and looked like it cost a great deal, but it also looked lived in, which was the difference between Margaret and their mother.
The porch light was on when Isabelle pulled up. Margaret was standing in the doorway in scrubs and bare feet, her hair piled on top of her head. She didn't say anything when Isabelle got out of the car. She just opened the door wider and stepped aside.
Isabelle walked in. She set her bag on the floor. And then Margaret put her arms around her and held on, firmly, with both hands flat against Isabelle's back. Isabelle broke apart for the second time that night.
"Okay," Margaret said into her hair. "Okay, okay. I've got you."
"I couldn't stay at Mom and Dad's. Mom said I was being dramatic."
"Of course she did." Margaret's voice was calm, unsurprised and carried a fury that was all the more devastating for how quiet it was. "Come sit down. Jonathan’s in LA on business for the week, so the house is ours. I'll get you water. Or tea. Or something stronger if you want it."
"I'm pregnant."
"Water it is."
They sat on Margaret's sofa. There were a stack of medical journals on the coffee table, newspapers, worn paperbacks.
Margaret's house was nothing like Kara's museum.
It was nothing like Isabelle's Pacific Heights showpiece.
It was a home that had been furnished once, furnished well, and then surrendered to schedules and a loving marriage.
Isabelle sat on that sofa, pulled the blanket Margaret handed her over her lap. Margaret brought water and sat beside her.
"Tell me everything," she said.
So Isabelle told her everything. The pregnancy. The joy on Xavier's face when she'd said it. The question underneath the joy: why didn't you tell me right away. Douglas's name turned into an accusation. Xavier telling her she needed to leave.
Margaret listened without interrupting. She held her water glass with both hands, watched Isabelle's face. She didn't flinch, didn't look away and didn't, at any point, say the words men panic or marriages survive worse.
When Isabelle finished, Margaret was quiet for a long time.
"What do you need from me right now?" she said. "Do you need me to be your sister or your doctor?"
"My sister."
"Good. Because as your sister, I want to drive to Pacific Heights and break his jaw."
Isabelle laughed. It came out watery and raw, more sob than laugh, but it was real. Margaret's mouth curved.
"I'm serious," Margaret said. "The man kneels on the floor and cries when you tell him you're pregnant, and then he's running timelines and accusing you of sleeping with a friend he's met twice? That's not panic. That's a pathology."
Isabelle pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. She was exhausted. She was so tired her bones ached, and underneath the exhaustion was something worse: the slow, spreading recognition that the life she'd been living for the last decade might not have been what she'd thought it was.
"I keep thinking about what he said at Mom and Dad's dinner," she said. "When Dad called my work a hobby and Mom said it sounded fun. Xavier defended me. He said I had an extraordinary eye. Instincts."
"I remember."
"He meant it as a compliment. He genuinely meant it as the highest praise he could give me. And it was still wrong. It was still less than what I actually do. I sat there, smiled and said 'it landed fine' because I didn't have the energy to explain the difference."
Margaret set her water down. "What is the difference? For you. In your own words."
Isabelle was quiet for a moment. "Taste is something you're born with. Skill is something you build. He's never seen me as someone who builds things. He sees me as someone who has good instincts, makes beautiful choices and does it all effortlessly. Like it doesn't cost me anything."
"And tonight?"
"Tonight he looked at everything I've given him and decided it wasn't enough evidence that I'm telling the truth. Ten years together, eight years of marriage. Two miscarriages. Four rounds of IVF. Our entire life. But a calendar and an Instagram post from Douglas outweighed all of it."
Margaret reached over and took her hand. She held it firmly, doctor's grip, sure and steady.
"Stay here," she said. "Stay as long as you need. The guest room has clean sheets and a box of Jonathan's tax files in the corner, but we'll ignore that."
"Margaret...”
"What?"
"Thank you for not telling me I'm being dramatic."
"You're not being dramatic," Margaret said gently. "You're being clear. There's a difference. Mom's never been able to tell."
Isabelle slept. She hadn't expected to, but exhaustion won.
She fell asleep on Margaret's sofa under the blanket with her shoes still on.
Margaret must have taken them off at some point because when Isabelle woke up her feet were bare.
There was a glass of water on the coffee table and a note in Margaret's handwriting: Got called in.
Back by noon. Eat something. There's soup in the fridge.
Don't answer his calls until you're ready. Or never.
Don't answer his calls.
Isabelle sat up on the sofa and reached for her phone. The screen was empty. No missed calls. No texts. Nothing from Xavier.
She stared at the blank notification screen for a long time.
She checked her settings. She checked her signal.
She turned the phone off and on again, which she knew was pathetic, which she knew was the opposite of everything she should want right now, and when the screen loaded again it was still empty.
He hadn't contacted her.
She'd driven through the fog expecting his headlights. She'd lain on her sister's sofa expecting the phone to wake her. And he hadn't called. Not once. Not a single text. Not even the three words that would have cost him nothing and meant everything: are you safe?
She set the phone down on the coffee table. Something behind her ribs closed like a fist.
The morning light in Cole Valley was different from Pacific Heights.
Less filtered. Less elegant. It came through Margaret's windows and fell on surfaces that weren't curated for it, weren't designed to catch it at an angle.
Isabelle sat on the sofa, looked around the room and realized this was the first time in years she'd woken up in a space she hadn't built.
She made tea in Margaret's kitchen and ate a piece of toast. She stood at the window and watched the street below, trying to ignore the lingering ache in her heart.
Her phone buzzed at eleven.
She grabbed it so fast she knocked the water glass. Her heart was already in her throat before she saw the name on the screen, and when she saw it the disappointment was so violent it made her sit down.
Douglas.
Not Xavier. Douglas.
She almost didn't answer. Then she did, because it was Douglas. Douglas had never been a source of anything but truth, and right now truth was the only thing she trusted.
"Something's wrong," he said, as soon as she answered.
There was no point in hiding, and so she told him everything.
Douglas was silent when she finished. She could hear the quality of his silence, which was different from her mother's calculating quiet and different from Xavier's loaded stillness. Douglas's silence had room in it. Her friend was furious.
"He thinks you slept with me," Douglas said. Flat. Toneless.
"Yes."
"Iz. Does he know I'm gay?"
"No. Obviously not.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
"I could call him," Douglas said. "I could tell him."
"Don't."
"Iz."
"I don't want him to believe me because of that. I want him to believe me because I told him the truth and that should have been enough. There should never have been a question to begin with,” she said, her voice breaking.
Douglas exhaled. She could hear something close to admiration in it, mixed with grief.
"You're right," he said. "You're absolutely right. And I hate that you have to be."
"I'm at Margaret's."
"How is it?"
"There's a box of tax files in the guest room and the soap in the bathroom smells like a hospital. It's perfect."
He laughed. And despite everything, despite the wreckage of the last twelve hours, the fact that she was six weeks pregnant and sleeping on her sister's sofa, the sound of Douglas's laugh made something in her chest loosen. Just slightly. Just enough to breathe.
"I'm here," he said. "Whatever you need. Whenever you need it."
"I know."
"And Iz?"
"What?"
"You're going to be okay. I don't mean the marriage and I don't mean Xavier. I mean you. You, specifically, are going to be okay. You're the most capable person I've ever known and you've spent ten years pretending you're not, and I think that might be about to change."
She pressed her hand against her stomach. Six weeks. A secret that had been hers, briefly theirs and was now, somehow, hers again.
"I hope so," she said.
"I know so. I've always known."
They hung up.
At twelve-thirty, her phone buzzed again. Her hands were shaking before she turned it over.
Xavier.
One text. Five words.
Are you at your parents’?
She read it four times. She waited for the next one. The apology. The explanation. The plea. She watched the screen until it went dark, and nothing else came.
That was it. Fourteen hours of silence and then five words that weren't I'm sorry, weren't I was wrong, weren't even I love you.
Five words that asked something of her without offering anything back.
He wanted to know she was safe. He didn't say he wanted her home.
He didn't say he believed her. He'd had all night to call, all morning to come find her, and what he'd sent was a sentence that could have come from a colleague.
From an acquaintance. From anyone at all.
She put the phone down on the table. The silence before the text had been devastating. The text itself was somehow worse.
Margaret came back at one with takeout from a place on Carl Street and a bag from the drugstore containing prenatal vitamins and a box of herbal tea.
"The tea is supposed to help with nausea," she said, setting everything on the counter. "If you don't have nausea yet, you will, from what I’ve heard. Consider it a preview."
"You didn't have to do this."
"I wanted to." Margaret unpacked the food, her movements brisk and competent, a woman who organized operating rooms and could certainly organize a crisis.
Margaret stopped unpacking. She stood with a container of soup in one hand and looked at Isabelle with an expression that was new. Or maybe it wasn't new. Maybe it had always been there, behind the deadpan humor and the surgical composure, and Isabelle had just never been still enough to see it.
"I should have said more," Margaret said. "At those dinners. All those years of Mom calling your work a hobby and Dad saying 'how fun' and me just sitting there shaking my head. I should have said something. I should have stood up and told them you're brilliant."
"Margaret, it’s fine.”
"I'm saying it now. You're brilliant. You're talented, you're fierce and you're going to be an incredible mother. Xavier is a fool."
Isabelle's eyes stung. She blinked hard and nodded. But her heart still ached.