Chapter 3
“What?”
“You are allowed to grieve without making yourself the villain.”
That sentence finally broke something open.
Claire covered her mouth.
Eleanor let her cry.
When the sound passed, the attorney said, “Now listen carefully. Today you’re going to make decisions as a mother, not as a wife begging a man to choose her.”
Claire stared at the little shape on the ultrasound.
“I won’t beg.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean it.”
Her voice steadied.
“I will never beg Vincent Moretti to love me.”
By six that evening, Boston had turned the kiss into entertainment.
One website called Elena Vincent’s “mystery queen.”
Another posted photographs of Claire beside her and asked whether the Moretti marriage had secretly ended months earlier.
A columnist described Claire as “the famously private and considerably less glamorous Mrs. Moretti.”
Claire closed the browser.
There had been a time when descriptions of her body could ruin an evening. She was not thin, never had been, and public life beside Vincent had taught her that people treated a woman’s appearance like evidence.
Too soft.
Too ordinary.
Too quiet.
Too much woman in photographs and not enough spectacle for a man like Vincent.
Vincent had once been the person who made those voices disappear.
The first time Claire apologized for gaining weight during a stressful year, he had stared at her as though she had spoken another language.
“Apologize to me for lying,” he’d said. “Apologize for breaking a promise. Don’t apologize because a dress fits differently.”
She had loved him for that.
Remembering it now hurt more than cruelty would have.
Because monsters were easy to leave.
It was the men who had once been good to you who taught grief how to stay.
Near midnight, Claire returned to the Moretti estate.
She did it deliberately.
Running would tell Vincent she was afraid.
She was sitting beside the fireplace when he entered.
Rain covered his coat.
He stopped when he saw her.
“Claire.”
“How long?”
He did not pretend to misunderstand.
His jaw tightened.
“What happened today—”
“How long?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen publicly.”
Claire almost laughed.
“That’s your defense?”
“No.”
“Good, because it’s a terrible one.”
He removed his coat but did not come closer.
“Elena and I—”
“How long, Vincent?”
He looked toward the fire.
Then back at his wife.
“Eleven months.”
The number passed through her quietly.
Eleven months.
May you like
Last Christmas.
Their anniversary dinner in Newport.
