Chapter 9
ISABELLE
She'd been at Margaret's for five days when the doctor's office called.
Isabelle was sitting on the sofa with her laptop open and a mug of ginger tea going cold on the coffee table.
She'd been looking at the website of a restoration firm in the East Bay, scrolling through their project gallery knowing, quietly, certainly, that she could do it better.
The Victorian in Noe Valley with the rebuilt staircase.
The Edwardian on Liberty Hill with the salvaged firebox.
Good work. Careful work. But the staircase newel was a reproduction, and the firebox surround had been refinished with a polyurethane that would yellow within two years.
She could see the shortcuts. She'd always been able to see the shortcuts.
She just hadn't known, until very recently, that seeing them meant something.
Her phone rang. She glanced at the screen expecting Xavier, who had called multiple times in five days and left voicemails she hadn't listened to. It wasn't Xavier. It was Doctor Levine's office, confirming her appointment for Thursday at ten.
"We have you at seven weeks," the receptionist said. "Will your husband be joining you?"
The word husband sat in Isabelle's chest for a long moment.
"I'm not sure," she said.
"We just need to know for the room. It's a transvaginal ultrasound, so it's a smaller space."
"I'll let you know."
She hung up.
She didn't want to go alone. That was the truth she kept pressing against, the one that made her angry at herself.
She wanted Xavier beside her, his hand on her knee, his eyes on the screen, his face doing the thing it had done in the hallway when she'd told him.
That unguarded, radiant joy. She wanted that version of him in the room when the image appeared on the monitor, because that version of him was the man she'd married.
She still loved that man, and loving him while being furious at him was the most exhausting thing she'd ever done.
Isabelle called him that evening, reluctantly. Margaret was at the hospital. The house was quiet. Isabelle sat in the guest room, and she dialed Xavier's number before she could talk herself out of it.
He answered before the first ring finished.
"Bella."
His voice. God, his voice. It was raw in a way she'd never heard from him, stripped of every layer of composure, charm and authority that Xavier wore like armor. He sounded like he’d been sitting with his phone in his hand waiting for it to ring, which he probably had, and the thought of him sitting alone in the Pacific Heights house staring at his phone made something in her chest ache in a way she resented.
"Don't," she said. "I'm not calling to talk."
Silence.
"I have a doctor's appointment Thursday. Ten o'clock. Dr. Levine on Sutter. It's the first ultrasound."
More silence. She could hear him breathing. She could hear him choosing not to say the things he wanted to say, which was its own kind of effort, and she recognized the effort because she was making the same one.
"I'd like you to be there," she said. "If you want to be."
"Of course I want to be." His voice wavered on the word want. "Isabelle, of course."
"This isn't a reconciliation. I need you to hear that. I'm inviting you because this baby is yours and you have a right to be in the room. That's all this is."
"Okay."
"I'll text you the address."
"I know where it is. I drove you there for the last two rounds."
The sentence landed between them. The last two rounds.
The IVF. The needles, the blood draws, the waiting rooms and the hope that had calcified, round by round, into something neither of them could talk about anymore.
He'd driven her every time. He'd sat in the passenger drop-off, waited and come inside when she texted him. He’d held her hand while they read the results.
She'd loved him for it, she loved him for remembering it now, and she hated that the memory made her soften.
"Thursday at ten," she said, keeping her voice firm.
"I'll be there."
"Don't come early. Don't bring flowers. Don't try to make this into something it isn't."
"Okay."
She hung up. She sat on the bed and pressed both hands against her face and breathed until the ache in her throat subsided. Then she texted Margaret: Invited Xavier to the appointment Thursday.
She saw the typing dots appear almost immediately.
Margaret: Do you want me to come too?
Isabelle: No. I need to do this with him. Just him.
Margaret: Okay. But if he says one wrong thing I will remove his spleen. I know how. I've done it.
Isabelle almost smiled. Almost.
Thursday arrived the way difficult days always did: too fast and too slow simultaneously.
Isabelle dressed at Margaret's, which meant choosing from the limited contents of the bag she'd packed in four minutes while Xavier stood in the kitchen and watched her leave.
She wore a sweater she didn't remember grabbing and jeans that were already a fraction tight at the waistband, which was new, which was the baby making itself known in the most ordinary possible way.
She drove herself. She didn't want to be in his car.
She didn't want to be in the passenger seat where she'd sat for a decade, looking at his profile while he drove, watching his hands on the wheel, existing in the passenger seat of his life.
She drove herself, parked in the garage on Sutter and walked into the building, taking the elevator to the fourth floor.
She sat down in the waiting room and pressed her hands against her knees.
Xavier was already there.
Isabelle saw him before he saw her. He was sitting in a chair by the window with his coat over his lap and his phone on his thigh.
He wasn't reading. He wasn't scrolling. He was staring at the wall across from him with an expression she'd never seen on his face before: open, undefended, afraid.
His shirt was wrinkled. His hair wasn't right.
Xavier Grant, who wore suits that fit him so well, was sitting in a doctor's waiting room with a crease in his collar and shadows under his eyes.
He looked up. He saw her. And his face did the thing she'd been afraid of: it broke open. Relief, longing, grief, hope, all of it at once, uncontrolled, the composure gone. He started to stand.
"Don't," she said.
He stopped halfway out of the chair.
"Sit down. I'm going to sit next to you because we're in a doctor's office and that's what married people do in doctor's offices. But don't touch me. Don't hold my hand. Don't do the thing where you find my pulse with your thumb. I can't handle it right now."
He sat. She sat beside him. There were two chairs between them and the one she chose. She could see him register the distance and absorb it. He put his hands in his lap.
"You look tired," he said quietly.
"I am tired."
"Are you eating?"
"Margaret's feeding me. She's aggressive about it."
"Good." He paused. "Bella, I need to tell you..."
"Not here. Not now."
He closed his mouth. He nodded. They sat in the waiting room, side by side, not touching, not talking.
Isabelle stared at the silent television and willed herself not to cry.
She could smell him. Cedar and the peppermint he kept in his jacket pocket and underneath that the distinctive scent of Xavier's skin, which she'd been breathing in for ten years, which her body recognized before her mind did.
Sitting next to him without touching him was one of the hardest things she'd ever done.
"Isabelle Grant?"
They both stood.
The exam room was small. Isabelle changed into the gown behind a curtain while Xavier stood on the other side with his back turned, which was absurd, which was heartbreaking, her husband standing with his back to her while she undressed because she'd told him not to touch her and he was trying so hard to respect that boundary that he'd extended it to looking.
She tied the gown, sat on the table and said, "You can turn around. "
He turned. His eyes went to her face and stayed there.
He didn't look at her body in the gown, didn't let his gaze drift, didn't do any of the things that Xavier's gaze normally did, which was move over her with a possessive warmth she'd once loved and now couldn't think about without wanting to cry.
Dr. Levine came in. She was a calm woman in her fifties with short gray hair and kind eyes. She'd been Isabelle's doctor through the IVF rounds, through both losses.
"Seven weeks today," Dr. Levine said, pulling up the chart. "Blood work looks strong. HCG levels are excellent. How are you doing, Isabelle? Any nausea?"
"Some. Mornings mostly."
"That's normal and actually a good sign. Let's take a look."
The ultrasound was transvaginal, which meant a wand, a monitor and a silence in the room that was almost unbearable while Dr. Levine adjusted the angle.
Isabelle lay on the table, stared at the ceiling and gripped the edges of the paper sheet.
She tried not to think about the last time she'd been in a room like this, the last ultrasound, the one at nine weeks when the technician had gone quiet.
The quiet had lasted too long and Isabelle had known, before anyone said a word, that the heartbeat was gone.
"There we are," Dr. Levine said.
Isabelle turned her head. The monitor showed a gray-and-white blur, abstract, shifting, and in the center of it a dark oval, and inside the oval something so small it was almost nothing.
A flicker. A rapid, rhythmic flutter that was separate from Isabelle's own pulse, separate from everything in the room, insistent, alive, saying I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
"Strong heartbeat," Dr. Levine said. "One hundred and forty-two beats per minute. Exactly where we want to be."