I have been Mrs. Lawrence Wentworth III for three years.
Beacon Hill says he is in love with me. Town & Country once ran four pages on it.
The gown he sends to my dressing room for tonight's gala is ivory satin with seed-pearl shoulder straps. It is identical, down to the placement of the hand-stitched silk peony at the waist, to the dress my older sister wore to the Miss Porter's senior dance in 2013. Lawrence keeps a Polaroid of that dance on his desk.
The white burgundy he orders for me at every restaurant is the 2009 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet. It is the bottle he ordered for Cordelia at L'Espalier the night of their first date.
I have played Mrs. Wentworth for three years.
Then a Mass General oncologist hands me a pathology folder.
"Six months, Mrs. Wentworth. As a conservative estimate."
I take the divorce paperwork to Lawrence the next morning.
He is texting Cordelia. He does not look up.
"Don't make a scene, Beatrix."
Later, I do disappear.
He ends up on his knees on the Boston Public Library steps in the rain, his Brioni tuxedo soaking through, my grandfather-in-law's Yalta-era Patek Philippe fogging on his wrist, his voice gone before the first responders show up.
He says he loves me, not the shadow he once loved.
But the man holding the umbrella over my head that night already knew, without ever being told, the exact color I have always loved.
The doctor tells me I have six months while I am on the phone choosing Lawrence's third-anniversary watch.
The salesman at Shreve, Crump & Low is warm.
"Mrs. Wentworth, the Patek I set aside — Mr. Wentworth will love it."
I look down at the pathology folder in my lap and laugh, a small dry sound.
I already know the answer to whether Lawrence will love it.
He has never loved a thing I picked.
I love Nantucket fog blue. He gives me ivory.
Because Cordelia wears ivory.
Cordelia is my older sister. She is also the woman my husband is half in love with, the way a man stays half in love with someone who left him standing at a chapel rehearsal eight years ago and went to London.
She has been gone five years. No calls, no Christmas card, nothing.
The day Lawrence and I were married, the Globe style page ran the photographs. People said I had stopped being the spare and become the wife.
Only I heard him, at the altar, when he leaned in to kiss me and whispered.
"Cordelia."
Quietly.
Quietly enough that the officiant did not catch it.
But I caught it.
I thought, then, that company was its own kind of love. That you could be loved by being beside someone long enough.
I have since learned that some men keep house with the dead. It does not matter who is sleeping in the bed.
I fold the pathology report into my handbag.
My phone buzzes.
Lawrence.
Gala tonight. Wear what I had sent up.
I send back one word.
Yes.
The dress arrives within the hour. Ivory satin. Seed pearls along the shoulder. A silk peony at the waist.
I have seen this dress.
In a Polaroid Lawrence keeps framed on his desk, Cordelia is wearing it on the front lawn of Miss Porter's School the night of the senior dance.
The peony is in the same place.
Our housekeeper hovers.
"Should we steam it, Mrs. Wentworth?"
I say, "No."
She lets her shoulders down. Then, quieter, the part she was sent up to deliver: "Mr. Wentworth was very specific that this is the one for tonight."
I take the pathology folder out of my handbag and set it dead-center on my vanity, under the engraved gala invitation.
Then I put on the dress.
The woman in the mirror is beautiful.
She also looks like someone else.
The gala is in the Wentworth ballroom at the Boston Harbor Hotel.
I walk in on Lawrence's arm and the room turns toward us the way rooms do.
"Lawrence, Beatrix, you are perfect together."
"Mrs. Wentworth, that gown. That gown."
Lawrence smiles in the way he does — chin slightly down, eyes warm and unfocused, the practiced civic smile he learned at fourteen. His palm hovers an inch from the small of my back. The exact correct distance.
We look like a marriage.
As long as I do not glance at his phone screen.
The notification lights up his cuff.
Lawrence — I walked past L'Espalier today. I thought of us.
— Cordelia
Lawrence's thumb is moving before the screen goes dark.
Tell me when. I'll book.
I am holding a champagne flute.
A waiter offers white wine.
Lawrence takes the glass before I can wave it off.
"She has the burgundy," he says, smooth.
I read the label.
The same vintage.
The Puligny-Montrachet he ordered Cordelia at L'Espalier in 2014.
My stomach turns over.
I set the glass back on the tray.
Lawrence's brow tightens.
"What now?"
I say, "I don't want it."
Quietly, lower: "Don't make a scene out here."
A board member's wife is half-watching us from across the room.
I smile and pick up the wine glass.
Lawrence's face softens.
"There. That's better."
I lift the glass to my lips.
I have not yet swallowed when a woman's voice comes from behind us.
"Lawrence."
Lawrence's hand goes still.
I turn.
Cordelia is standing under the chandelier in ivory silk, hair loose at her shoulders, smiling the soft, unhurt smile she has been deploying since she was fifteen.
Her eyes find mine. They redden, on cue.
"Trix. It's been so long."
She is back.
While I have six months left.
Lawrence leaves me in the ballroom and walks Cordelia to the residents' lounge.
The reason he gives is decorous.
"She just got in from London. She doesn't know the room."
I nod.
"Go."
He looks at me a beat too long, surprised by my flatness. "Don't read into it, Beatrix."
He has said don't read into it a thousand times.
He has a small portfolio of these.
Don't read into it.
Don't be dramatic.
Don't make a scene.
I take my clutch and find the powder room.
I push the door open and stop. From inside one of the stalls, two women are talking, voices low.
"So Cordelia is back. What's Beatrix going to do?"
"What can she do? The understudy meets the lead."
"You know he chased Cordelia all over Andover and Brown. If she hadn't bolted to London, the little sister wouldn't even be in the picture."
I stand at the marble counter and turn the tap.
The water runs over the laughter.
My phone buzzes again.
Lawrence.
Cordelia isn't feeling well. I'll take her home. Have Marcus drive you.
I look at the screen and almost laugh.
I am not feeling well either.
I am dying.
He does not know.
He is also not curious.
I send: No need. I'll get myself home.
It sends. As it sends, the door opens.
Cordelia. She has reapplied her lipstick. Exactly the right red.
"Trix, don't be hard on Lawrence. He just lives in the past."
I shut the tap off.
"You know that about him."
Her smile slips, just a hair.
"He hasn't had an easy time these years."
"And so you came back."
She watches me, voice gentle.
"I just came back for what was always mine."
I tear a paper towel from the dispenser and dry my hands.
"My husband included?"
Her eyes drop.
"If he was always going to belong to me, then you never really had him."
I drop the towel into the bin.
"Then I hope you can hold onto him."
Her face changes.
I turn to leave. Her hand snaps out and closes around my wrist.
A second later she lets go on her own and stumbles backward into the marble counter, hard enough to gasp.
The door bangs open.
Lawrence sees Cordelia, one hand cradling her upper arm, tears already pooled and pretty.
"Trix, I just wanted to talk to you—"
His eyes move to me. They are cold in a way I have never seen at this distance.
"Beatrix. Apologize."
I do not apologize.
Lawrence drives Cordelia to Mass General. I take a car home alone.
It is one in the morning when his key is in the door. His tuxedo jacket is folded over his arm. He smells of hospital antiseptic.
I am sitting in the front room. The divorce paperwork is on the coffee table.
"Sign it."
He stops, mid-loosen of his tie.
"What is this now?"
"A divorce."
He glances at the cover sheet, snorts a small cold laugh.
"Because Cordelia is back."
"Because I don't want to do this anymore."
His face hardens.
"Beatrix. I gave you the Wentworth name. I gave you the foundation seat. I gave you a life every woman in this city would trade her own teeth for. What more do you need?"
I look at him.
Three years of marriage, narrated as charity.
"What did you ever give me?"
He laughs as if I have made a joke.
"This house. The car you drive. The Amex you carry. Pick something I haven't paid for."
I nod.
"Then I don't want any of it."
I push my house keys, my Amex, the fob to the brownstone garage across the table.
"What I came in with, I'll take with me. What you gave me, I leave."
For the first time, his eyes change. Something moves behind them.
"You think this is how you get me to comfort you?"
His phone lights up on the side table.
A voice memo from Cordelia.
"Lawrence. My arm is killing me. Could you come over for a little?"
He looks at the screen. He picks his jacket up off the chair.
I say, "Sign first."
He turns his back.
"Don't make me dislike you, Beatrix."
The door clicks shut.
The room goes very still.
I sit on the sofa for a long time. Then I gather the divorce paperwork, square the corners, slide it back into its folder.
My stomach is cramping.
I make it to the powder room and bring up a bright mouthful of blood into the white porcelain.
Red against white.
It looks like a verdict somebody filed late.