Andthen, he looked at me over that bowl ofcassouletthe way I had always wanted someone to look at me. Like I was the most interesting person he’d ever met.
We talked until two in the morning overcassoulet, a baguette I’d made that afternoon, and a bottle of Saint-Émilion Grand Cru from Dina’s small wine cellar, which I curated.
Four months later, I was pregnant.
I did not trap him, though I know the Bennetts have their own version of events, the one where Lucy Vidal from Antioch showed up in their son’s life with a plan and a borrowed dress and a womb she weaponized.
I know that version exists.
I have seen it on Margaret’s face—the careful, polite blankness she arranges herself into whenever my name comes up, like she’s composing a response to a slight she refuses to acknowledge out loud.
The truth is simpler.
We were careless.
We were, and I know how this sounds, especially now, happy.
We were at the beginning of something, I was certain, spectacular.
When I told him, I expected him to go pale, to stammer, to ask me what I wanted to do. Instead, Fox looked at me for a long moment, then he said, “Okay,” and declared, “I think we should get married.”
He said it calmly and with such certainty that I never doubted that he loved me, even if he hadn’t said the words to me.
And that is how stupid I was.
We got married at the courthouse with Dina, my parents, my brother, his wife, and Fox’s oldest friend—going back to college—Percy as witnesses.
My family wanted the works, but it felt wrong to have a big wedding when his own family wouldn’t be present.
His family wouldn’t understand, he’d assured me.
I agreed.
That’s when I shouldn’t have married him, but I was in love.
Stupid!
After the wedding, we had dinner at Rolf and Daughters because Fox loves their pasta, and then we went to our new home, his place in Germantown, and that was that.
The Bennetts found out three days later.
Margaret called itunfortunate.
Caroline called it asituation.
David smirked and said, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”
Fox ignored them all and asked me to do the same.
At eighteen weeks pregnant, I lost the baby.
I don’t talk about that part.
Not with Fox, not with anyone except Dina, and even with Dina only sometimes, only when the weight of not talking about it becomes heavier than the weight of the words.
It was a girl.
I had known right away.
