Chapter 3 Mrs. Cole

Beatrice did not scream. She had grown up among people who smiled while their lives burned, and she had learned from the best. She turned off the television, went to the kitchen, and made two cups of tea. Her hands were steady. She noticed that, distantly, as if observing someone else's hands. When the man came down, rumpled and warm-eyed and wearing her husband's face, she handed him one and said, "Sleep well?" "Better than I have in years." "Good," she said. "I have a charity luncheon. Mr. Dray will be wondering where I am." She walked out of that house with her heart going like a trapped bird and did not look back until she was in the car. Then she asked the driver to take her to the Cole Foundation library instead. The library was quiet and cold, the kind of room designed to impress rather than to welcome. Beatrice sat at a table in the corner with a bound volume of old society pages, turning the pages with hands that had begun, finally, to shake. She found the photograph on page forty-seven. Two boys at a regatta, identical, one grinning and one scowling. The caption: Sebastian and Edward Cole, aged twelve. Edward. The brother with his own company. The rival whose name made Sebastian's jaw tighten. She had never seen his face, because every photograph of him had been quietly removed from the house. She stared at the photograph for a long time. She traced the faces with her finger-first one, then the other. They were identical. The same dark eyes. The same sharp jaw. The same mouth. She thought of the tea with honey. The questions about her father. The notebook. The laugh on the sunroom floor. She thought of the cold. The locked study. The way Sebastian said my wife, the way people said my car. She thought of the way he had asked permission. The way he had stopped when she tensed. The way he had called her remarkable. The book slipped from her fingers and hit the table with a sound that made the librarian look up. Beatrice didn't notice. She was staring at the photograph, at the two identical faces, and she was thinking about the note on the pillow. The wrong S. The short dash. The paper that smelled of something she couldn't name. She had known. Some part of her had known, even then. She had told herself she was imagining things because the alternative was unbearable; if she admitted what she suspected, she would have to do something about it, and she didn't know what to do. She had no money. No family. No friends who would believe her. She was a Hale, and Hales did not make scenes. But she was not a Hale anymore. She was a Cole. And Coles, she was beginning to understand, made all kinds of scenes. She closed the book and sat there for a long time, and she didn't know what she was feeling: rage, grief, hope, terror. All of it. None of it. She thought of her father, who had taught her to read a bill of lading before she could ride a bicycle. She thought of her mother, who had flown to Lisbon and stopped answering calls. She thought of the notebook in the sunroom, the small fire she had kept alive in a house with no windows. She thought: I am not going to cry in a library. She did not cry. She sat very still, and she breathed, and she thought. She did not confront anyone. She waited, and eleven days later the Cole Foundation gala filled the ballroom of the Meridian Hotel with six hundred guests, and for the first time in public, both brothers were present. She saw him across the room. Same height, same shoulders, same dark hair. But where Sebastian carried himself like a man guarding a vault, this one moved like he was listening to music nobody else could hear. She watched him for a long time before he saw her. She watched the way he talked to people with ease, with warmth, with a kind of attention that seemed genuine. She watched the way he laughed. She watched the way he held his glass loosely, carelessly, like it didn't matter. And then he turned, and he saw her, and everything changed. He didn't smile. He didn't wave. He just looked at her, and it was the same look he had given her in the sunroom, the same look he had given her when she handed him the notebook. He crossed the room. When he reached her, he took her hand and bowed over it. "Mrs. Cole. At last." The voice from the dark. The voice from the sunroom floor. The voice that had called her remarkable. He leaned close, as if to kiss her cheek, and murmured so that only she could hear: "Did the storm keep you up Thursday?" Thursday. The night Sebastian had been in another country. She felt the floor drop. She felt her heart stop. She felt She didn't know what she felt. She stood there, frozen, and he pulled back, and for a moment,t just a moment,nt his eyes were soft, almost sad. "Don't," she whispered. "Don't what?" "Don't pretend." He didn't pretend. He looked at her, and she saw it: the truth, the whole of it, the terrible complicated thing that he had done and the equally terrible thing that had come before it. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry you had to find out like this." "Did you think I wouldn't?" "I hoped. He stopped. Swallowed. "I hoped you would be happy. For a little while. At least." "Happiness built on a lie isn't happiness." "I know." "Then why did you do it?" He didn't answer. He looked at her, and his eyes were bright, and for a moment she thought he might cry. But he didn't. He just stood there, holding her hand, waiting. She pulled her hand away. She walked away. She didn't look back. But she felt him watching her.