Chapter 3: Turning Black into White

She had no idea whose face the wine landed on, but the shout that followed was furious. "Who do you think you are, throwing wine at me?"

Nora, by contrast, stayed perfectly calm. She cleared her throat and said, evenly, "I'm the fake heiress you were all just discussing. The real blind woman, in the flesh."

The room went dead silent. Every head turned toward her, and toward the white cane in her hand.

The man wearing the wine swallowed whatever he'd been about to say.

That was when Vivian's voice cut through, calling toward the man slumped against her shoulder. "Grant. Nora's here. Wake up."

Grant's eyes opened. The second he registered who was standing in the doorway, he sat up straight, sobering fast.

His first thought, relief, sharp and immediate, was that Nora was blind. She hadn't seen a thing.

Still warm from where Vivian had been leaning into him, he got up anyway and crossed to Nora. "What are you doing here?"

He reached for her hand. She pulled it away without hesitation.

Grant froze.

In three years of marriage, Nora had never once pulled away from him like that.

His expression darkened instantly, and the room went quiet enough to hear a pin drop, nobody dared breathe wrong.

He hauled her against him, voice dropping low. "Nora."

A warning, plain as day.

The old Nora might have let it go. This Nora didn't.

She bit her lip, eyes glassy with something that looked exactly like heartbreak. "Grant. Tell me the truth. Do you still love me? Or have you fallen for Vivian?"

Grant went still. How had she landed exactly on the thought he'd been trying to bury?

Does she know something?

If Nora could have seen his face in that moment, she'd have been looking at the guiltiest man alive.

He glanced at Vivian, then back at Nora, and denied it flat out. "That's ridiculous. Of course I still love you."

His voice softened toward the end, quieter than he meant it to be.

Tears spilled freely down Nora's face now, the kind that could soften even the coldest heart. Her voice cracked. "Your friends said I'm not good enough for you. That I'm just some blind woman. That you and Vivian are the perfect match."

A chill ran through the crowd that had been laughing at her not two minutes earlier.

Blind, sure, but who had actually said the crueler things out loud?

"Mrs. Pierce, we'd had too much to drink, we didn't mean any of it"

"Please, just forget we said anything"

"You and Grant are perfect for each other, we were the ones being blind"

Apology after apology tumbled out, each one falling over the last.

Knowing exactly when to stop, Nora didn't push further. She turned, found his hand, and lowered her head with a look of quiet misery. "Grant. I want to go home."

The smoke, the noise, the whole ugly scene, none of it belonged near a pregnant woman, and everyone in that room knew it.

Grant took her hand and started toward the door, until Nora let out a small, pained sound. He stopped instantly.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not used to this place," she said softly. "I think I twisted my ankle coming in."

Without another word, he scooped her up into his arms. "Where does it hurt? I'll have someone look at it first thing tomorrow."

Nora buried her face in his chest and said nothing more, letting the silence read as shyness.

Grant's mood visibly lifted.

The private room only relaxed once the two of them were gone.

"I always figured Grant was sick of the blind wife by now," someone murmured. "Didn't expect them to actually be that close."

"Did you see how fast he sobered up? That wasn't an act."

"Honestly, Mrs. Pierce is gorgeous. No wonder he keeps her tucked away, doesn't want anyone else looking too hard."

Vivian sat off to the side through all of it, eyes fixed on the doorway long after they'd disappeared through it. Then she picked up a glass of wine and drained it in one go.

---

Outside The Tideline, Grant settled Nora carefully into the car.

Cold air outside, warmth inside. Nora sat upright, gaze fixed on nothing in particular, and felt the engine hum to life beneath her, felt Grant's warmth settle in beside her.

He leaned in, voice low against her ear. "Why did you come all this way so late?"

Her expression didn't change. "Vivian called and said you'd had too much to drink. Asked me to come get you. I wasn't thinking clearly, I just came. Looking back on it now, though..."

She let the sentence trail off.

Grant studied her face. "Now what?"

She shook her head, smiling faintly. "It's nothing. I'm probably overthinking things."

She could feel him watching her, weighing something. Finally he pulled her against his side. "Vivian had a hard childhood, Nora. She's not as complicated as people make her out to be. She doesn't have a cruel bone in her."

Nora's face went bloodless. Beneath her sleeves, her nails cut half-moons into her palms.

Is that how deep it runs, deep enough to rewrite the truth itself?

She stole my fiancé, and she's not cruel? She staged the accident that took my sight, and she's not cruel? She has my eyes in her skull right now, and she's not cruel?

Because she'd been the one swapped at birth, Nora had spent her whole life cast as the villain in everyone else's story.

Anyone could put a hand on her. Even the household staff of the Ashford estate had been permitted to strike her, scold her, treat her like something lesser. Being humiliated by Vivian, framed by Vivian, that had simply been the shape of her childhood.

Just remembering it sent a cold current down her spine.

And still even after Vivian took her fiancé, she'd never once let herself hate her. Not really.

Not until she'd stood outside that hospital door and heard the truth for herself. That was when something in her had finally, quietly, given out.

---

When they got home, Nora climbed out of the car on her own.

It was well past midnight, and the night's chaos had left her hollowed out with exhaustion. She washed up and lay down, and a few minutes later, Grant lay down beside her.

The instant his fingers brushed her waist, his phone lit up on the nightstand.

He grabbed it and was out of bed almost before it finished its second ring. "Nora, I need to take this."

She kept her voice level. "Okay."

The second he was gone, Nora threw back the covers and followed.

She stood outside the study door. His voice carried through, low and urgent.

"How could I possibly fall for her? Nothing's changed on my end."

A pause.

"Vivian, you've had too much to drink. Didn't Adrian ask to pick you up?"

Another pause.

"Fine. Wait there. I'm coming."

In the dark, Nora slipped silently into the bathroom just as Grant stepped out of the study, just in time to see the bathroom door swing shut behind her.

Guilt flickered across his face. "Nora? You're still up?"

Three years living in that house meant she knew every inch of it by memory, she'd never needed the cane inside these walls.

"I got up for water," she said simply. "Then the bathroom."

He seemed to relax, telling himself he'd imagined the whole thing.

He crossed to her and pressed a light kiss to her forehead. "Get some rest. Something's come up at the company, I have to go handle it myself."

That old line again.

For three years running, Grant had been pulled away in the middle of the night, sometimes mid-embrace, always with some rational, unquestionable excuse. And for three years, Nora had believed every word of it.

Looking back now, she understood exactly whose emergencies those had really been.

He dressed quickly, tie still loose and crooked from the rush, and left the room without a second glance.

The sound of his footsteps faded down the hall, and Nora's face drained of what little color it had left. Her nails bit into her palms hard enough to leave marks.

He really does care that much. One phone call from her, and he's out the door before it even finishes ringing.

Then, without meaning to, without any plan behind it at all, Nora found herself moving, chasing after him barefoot down the hallway, catching his hand before he reached the stairs.

"Grant." Her voice cracked. "Can you just, not go tonight?”