Chapter 8
The engagement ended three days later.
Not because Rosamund was perfect.
Not because Isabetta was irredeemable.
Because marriage requires trust before crisis.
Ours now required investigation.
That was enough.
Isabetta sat in the morning room.
No ring.
She had already removed it.
“Do you hate me?”
“No.”
She laughed through tears.
“Why does everyone want that?”
“Because hatred is cleaner than grief.”
She looked at me.
“Do you still love me?”
“Yes.”
There.
Harder.
She cried.
So did part of me internally, though Hawthorne men are apparently allergic to useful timing.
I asked her one final question.
“When did this stop being about your father’s letters?”
She knew.
“Months ago.”
Before Maribel.
Before the photographs.
Isabetta had already opened Rosamund’s rooms.
Read letters.
Seen photographs.
Every discovery made her feel smaller.
Rosamund advised charities.
Rosamund negotiated with rivals.
Rosamund wrote beautifully.
Rosamund had been loved by staff.
Dead competition.
Unfair competition.
“You could have told me.”
“I tried.”
Again.
I let that accusation land.
I had answered badly.
Dismissed discomfort with reassurance.
But she continued:
“And then I decided if I couldn’t become more important, she had to become less.”
There.
The whole tragedy.
Not revenge.
Comparison.
I looked at the engagement ring on the table.
“You were already important.”
“Not in the same way.”
“No one ever is.”
That is the problem with replacement thinking.
Nobody can occupy another person’s exact place.
Rosamund was wife.
Isabetta could have been wife later.
Different marriage.
Different years.
Different woman.
I had failed to make that distinction clear.
She had failed to tolerate it.
Both.
But only one of us forged betrayal.
She whispered:
“I’m sorry about Celandine.”
“Tell her if she wants to hear it.”
“And Maribel.”
“Yes.”
“And you.”
I nodded.
“And Rosamund.”
That one had nowhere to land.
But perhaps needed saying anyway.
Isabetta stood.
At the door she stopped.
“Would you have married me if I had simply said I couldn’t live with her everywhere?”
I thought.
“Maybe.”
Her face crumpled.
May you like
The tragedy was possibility.
Not destiny.
