The next morning I walk into Wentworth Holdings.
The receptionist on Lawrence's floor sees me and arranges her face.
"Mrs. Wentworth — Mr. Wentworth is in a meeting."
"I'll wait."
She is rising from her desk to intercept me when his office door opens.
Cordelia walks out. She is wearing Lawrence's suit jacket over her shoulders, the cuffs falling past her hands.
She sees me. Stops.
"Trix. What are you doing here?"
I walk past her, into the office, and set the divorce paperwork on Lawrence's desk.
"Sign."
He is at his computer. The chat window is up on his screen. The recipient is Cordelia.
He does not look at me.
"Don't make a scene, Beatrix."
I keep my voice level.
"I'm not here to fight."
Cordelia, soft from the doorway: "Trix, married couples have misunderstandings. You don't have to keep threatening divorce."
I look at her.
"Are you afraid I might actually do it?"
She blanches.
Lawrence finally looks up. His voice carries a low warning.
"Beatrix."
I lay the pen on the contract.
"Sign."
He stands. He walks around the desk and stops in front of me.
"Have you finished?"
"No."
His hand closes hard around my wrist.
"Walk out of here right now and don't come home tonight."
I look down at his hand.
For three years I waited for him to reach for me.
Now it just hurts.
I peel his fingers off my wrist one by one.
"Then I won't."
The office is very quiet.
His eyes are dark with something close to anger.
"Where exactly are you going to go, Beatrix?"
I have not opened my mouth when a man's voice comes from the doorway, even and cool.
"She can come with me."
We all turn.
Dr. Soren Voss is standing in the doorway with my pathology folder under one arm. White coat, hospital lanyard, the tall narrow build of a long-distance runner. When his eyes settle on me, the cold goes out of his face by a measurable amount.
"Trix. We're due back in clinic."
Lawrence frowns.
"And you are?"
Soren walks past him. He stops at my shoulder.
"Her oncologist."
A pause. Then, quieter, only to me, but loud enough that the room hears it:
"And her friend."
He slides his coat off and settles it across my shoulders.
Lawrence's eyes go to Soren's hand on my shoulder.
"Beatrix. Since when do you know him?"
"It doesn't concern you."
The phrase moves through him like a thrown stone.
He smiles, thin.
"So divorce was the cover. You already had the next one lined up."
I have not finished a breath when Soren speaks.
"Mr. Wentworth, the patient cannot tolerate emotional escalation right now."
"Patient."
The word lands.
My chest tightens.
Soren's eyes flicker toward me, the faintest knot between his brows.
I shake my head, almost imperceptibly.
Lawrence catches it. Something in his face changes.
"You're sick."
Cordelia, suddenly: "Trix, please don't make a game of your health to soften him up."
Lawrence's face hardens again.
Of course.
In this room, even my dying registers as strategy.
I take the pathology folder back from Soren and slide it into my bag.
"Dr. Voss. We should go."
Lawrence steps in front of me.
"Let me see the report."
I look up at him.
"On what authority?"
"I'm your husband."
I smile.
"Not for much longer."
His face goes ugly for a beat.
That is when Cordelia presses a hand to her chest and lets her body sway sideways.
"Lawrence — I'm dizzy—"
He catches her without thinking.
I walk past them.
The elevator doors are closing when I look back. He is standing exactly where I left him, Cordelia in his arms, his eyes following me out.
I do not feel triumphant.
I feel, mostly, that this is absurd.
In the parking garage, Soren opens the passenger door for me.
"You aren't going to tell him."
I pull my seatbelt across.
"And listen to him decide I'm faking for attention?"
Soren is quiet for a stretch of garage exit ramp.
"Your window is closing. There's a Phase II PARP-inhibitor combination trial in Houston. I got you a slot."
I turn.
"Odds?"
"Not high."
He says it without dressing it.
"Better than waiting."
I look out at the glass façade of Wentworth Holdings as we pull onto Atlantic Avenue. The afternoon light bounces off it hard enough to hurt.
"I'll go."
His hand on the steering wheel relaxes by a knuckle.
"Good."
Before I leave for Houston, I drive over to Beacon Hill.
My father is in the front room with the Wall Street Journal folded on his lap. My mother is in the kitchen, ladling bone broth from a Le Creuset stockpot into the small enamel ramekins Cordelia likes.
She sees me come in and her mouth tightens.
"Your sister just got in. She isn't well. Don't start something today, Beatrix."
I tell them about the divorce.
My father's first response is not what happened.
He says, "No."
"Why."
The teacup hits the saucer hard enough that I expect it to crack.
"Two of our live deals are bound to Wentworth. If you divorce, what does that say about us?"
My mother now, voice rising: "Beatrix. From the beginning you were never as easy as Cordelia. She has stepped aside for you year after year. Are you really going to take from her again?"
I look toward the kitchen, at the bone broth.
It has always been like this.
Cordelia took piano. They flew Sergei Babayan in twice a year for masterclasses.
I painted. My mother said it wasn't worth the cost.
When Cordelia went to London, they wept all night.
When I married Lawrence, my mother said, "You're lucky, Beatrix. Take care of him for your sister."
I say, "Lawrence was never mine. I'm giving him back."
My mother goes still.
My father is not still. He is loud the way these men get — no raised voice, just a room with no air in it.
"Don't talk like a child. Lawrence married you. You hold the seat. Cordelia's reputation is what we cannot afford to lose. We will not have people saying she came home to a sister in the middle of stealing her husband."
I laugh out loud.
So that is it.
They are not afraid for me.
They are afraid of what Beacon Hill will say about Cordelia.
Cordelia comes down the staircase, her eyes pink in the way she has always been able to achieve in eight seconds.
"Trix, if my coming home is making you this miserable, I can leave."
My mother goes to her at once and pulls her in.
"Sweetheart. This is your home. Where would you go?"
My father turns on me.
"Apologize to your sister."
I look at the three of them. I am not going to argue.
I take a folder out of my handbag.
"This is the assignment that would re-vest my three percent of the Ashcombe trust into Cordelia's line. I'm not going to sign it."
My father's color drops.
That three percent is from Constance. My grandmother. Constance cut around my mother to leave it directly to me, in 2019, six weeks before she died.
For five years they have asked, then pressured, then demanded that I sign it over.
I tear the assignment in half on the kitchen island.
"Don't reach out."
Cordelia's mask finally cracks.
"Beatrix. Does it really have to be this absolute?"
I am at the door when I look back.
"You taught me how."
Lawrence starts calling.
I do not pick up.
He texts.
Come home.
I am not signing.
Cordelia has explained. She did not mean to provoke you.
Beatrix. Don't make me come find you.
I read each one and block him.
The morning my flight to Houston is booked, the rain comes down hard.
Soren picks me up.
He opens the trunk and finds one suitcase.
"That's everything?"
"That's enough."
The truth is that three years inside Lawrence's life left me with very little. The ivory dresses, the diamond earrings, the perfume in the bottles I never asked for — those were all bought to a Cordelia spec.
The things I actually loved are still in my old apartment in Allston, in a single trunk.
A Nantucket fog-blue cashmere wrap.
A portfolio of paintings.
A jade pendant Constance hung around my neck the summer I turned twelve.
Soren hands me a cup of warm water.
"Did you take the morning dose?"
I nod.
We are on I-90 westbound when traffic stops dead. Brake lights all the way to the Allston tolls.
Soren glances at the GPS.
"Accident. Lane closure. We may not make boarding."
Something in my chest sinks.
A black Range Rover pulls onto the shoulder beside us.
The driver's door opens. Lawrence gets out with an umbrella. The rain has him soaked at the shoulders within ten seconds.
He raps on my window.
I do not move.
Soren rolls his window down halfway.
Lawrence does not look at him. He is looking at me.
"Get out."
I say, "I have a plane to catch."
"Where."
"Treatment."
His face shifts.
"Treatment for what."
I look at him.
"You said I was faking, didn't you?"
His mouth tightens.
"Beatrix. This is not the moment for pride."
I laugh.
"Lawrence. I do not have time for pride."
His eyes change. For the first time, they are afraid.
"Tell me what you're saying."
A horn blares behind him. Then another.
Soren's voice from the driver's side, even and final.
"Mr. Wentworth. Move."
Lawrence does not move.
I roll my window down the rest of the way. Rain comes in, cold across my mouth.
"Sign the paperwork, Lawrence."
His breathing is heavy.
"Not a chance."
I roll the window up.
Soren cuts the wheel and pulls into the breakdown lane and around the stopped traffic. In the rearview mirror Lawrence is standing in the rain, smaller and smaller.
My phone buzzes once.
A 617 number I do not have saved.
Trix. I'm pregnant. It's Lawrence's. — Cordelia.
I stare at the message until my fingers are stiff.
Soren glances over.
"What."
I hand him the phone.
He reads it once. His jaw shifts.
"Do you want me to handle this?"
I shake my head.
"No."
A second message. A photograph of an ultrasound printout. Six weeks.
I count.
Six weeks ago she was still in London.
Whoever the father is, it is statistically not Lawrence.
But she sent it because she is gambling that I will spiral. That I will turn the car around. That I will burn the last of my dignity calling him, demanding, sobbing.
I switch the phone off.
"Drive."
Before the plane lifts off Logan, Lawrence has called from four different numbers. The last text reads:
Beatrix. Come back. I'll take you to the hospital myself.
I do not reply.
The Houston protocol is harder than I had planned.
The first cycle, I cannot keep water down for three days.
After every morning round, Soren brings a bunch of fresh hydrangeas to my hospital room and puts them in the plastic carafe on the side table.
They are Nantucket fog-blue.
The third time, I look at them and ask him.
"How did you know that's the color."
He is sliding stems into water, not looking up.
"Your senior thesis show. Your dominant pigment."
I sit very still.
"You were there."
"I was there."
His tone is ordinary, as if we are discussing my white-cell count.
"Your painting. Tideline. You won the Frankenthaler Memorial Prize. The dean mispronounced your name three times. You corrected him from the podium each time."
I remember.
Lawrence had been there too. He left after twenty minutes because Cordelia, in London, had a fever.
I press the back of my hand to my mouth.
It is not Lawrence I am crying about.
It is the fact that someone, once, in a folding chair in a RISD gallery, looked carefully and saw.
Soren hands me a tissue from the box.
"Don't. Your white count tomorrow."
I laugh against the tissue. Halfway through laughing I throw up.
He catches me by the shoulders. His arm is steady.
I clutch his sleeve. The cramp is bad enough that I cannot speak.
He says, low, "Trix. Hold on."
I sleep that night without remembering falling asleep.
In the dream someone calls my name across an enormous room.
Not Cordelia.
Not Beatrix.
Trix.