Chapter 3

Rain began to fall outside the windows.

At first it was only a faint tapping against the glass, so soft that Rebecca might have missed it on any other night. But the room had gone terribly quiet after Vance left, and every small sound seemed to find her.

She sat on the edge of the bed without turning on the lamp.

The rain made her think of another night, years ago, when the sea had been black beneath the lights of the cruise ship and someone had screamed from the deck.

She remembered running before she remembered deciding to run. The cold air had torn at her lungs. People were shouting behind her, but all she had seen was the man in the water, his dark head disappearing and surfacing between the waves.

Vance Bradford.

The boy she had watched from a distance for years. The man everyone wanted to stand beside, though he had never once looked at her long enough to know what she felt.

Rebecca had not thought of any of that when she jumped.

The water had closed over her like a fist. It was winter, and the cold stole the strength from her limbs almost at once, but she had been a swimmer long before she had been anyone’s wife. She reached him. She got an arm around him. She kept his face above the water even when her own teeth were locked too hard to speak.

She remembered the edge of the rescue boat.

Hands pulling him up first.

Someone calling for her.

Then nothing.

When she woke in the hospital, the room had been white and warm, and her body had felt strangely distant from her. The doctor spoke gently. Too gently. There had been complications from the prolonged exposure, damage that could not be undone. Children, he said, would be unlikely.

Rebecca had listened with her hands under the blanket, fingers curled against her stomach, not because there was anything to hold there, but because she did not know where else to put them.

Later, Vance came to see her.

He brought flowers. White roses, wrapped in pale paper. He stood beside her hospital bed looking tired and beautiful and serious, and when he asked her to marry him, Rebecca had believed, foolishly and completely, that something impossible had happened.

That he had finally seen her.

That the night had changed them both.

That maybe love could begin with a rescue.

The rain slid down the window now in thin, uneven lines.

Rebecca looked at the empty side of the bed, at the smooth pillow Vance had not touched. Three years of marriage, and she could still count the times he had reached for her without first asking himself whether he should.

She had folded herself into his life quietly. She had learned his habits, his silences, the names of people who smiled at her only because she stood beside him. She had worn his ring and sat through his mother’s inspections and waited through his late nights with the careful patience of someone who believed waiting could become a kind of love.

But Catherine’s voice had crossed the room tonight and undone what Rebecca had spent three years trying not to know.

Vance had not married her because he wanted a wife.

He had married the woman who pulled him from the water.

And perhaps he had tried, in his own restrained way, to be kind to her. Perhaps he had thought kindness would be enough. Rebecca almost wished he had been crueler. Cruelty would have left a mark she could point to. Kindness had only taught her to doubt the ache.

She lowered her eyes to her hands.

Her ring sat loose and cold around her finger.

For a while, she only turned it slowly, once, then again, careful not to make a sound.

Downstairs, the house remained still. Somewhere beyond the rain, Vance was going to Catherine. To the woman whose tears could pull him out of their bed faster than Rebecca’s trembling hands ever could. To the woman who could give him the child Margaret had demanded from her only hours ago.

Rebecca’s thumb stopped against the ring.

The feeling inside her was quieter than tears, and much more frightening.

The morning rain in London always carried a damp, clinging chill.

Vance had not come home all night.

Rebecca did not call to ask where he was. She already knew the answer—he was with Catherine. With the woman carrying his child.

She stood outside the swimming pool at St. George’s Sports Centre and pulled the zipper of her tracksuit jacket all the way up. Three years had passed since she had last been here, yet everything felt close enough to touch. The distant splash of water and the sharp trill of a whistle sent her heart into a rhythm she had not felt in far too long.

She lowered her gaze to her pale hands.

These hands had once cut through the water at the British Junior Championships. For the past three years, they had only trimmed the flowers at Bradford Manor and ironed Vance’s shirts until every crease was perfect.

Rebecca pushed open the door and walked toward the locker room.

Today, she wanted to see if she could still swim.

After changing into the most conservative black training swimsuit she owned, Rebecca walked to the edge of the pool. Just as she reached the water, she heard the click of high heels against the tiles behind her.

In a place where everyone wore flip-flops or went barefoot, the sound was as jarring as a cat wandering into an aquarium.

“Well, isn’t that Rebecca?”

Rebecca turned and saw two young, delicate faces.

Sophia Bradford and Chloe Bradford—Vance’s two cousins, and Margaret’s favorite nieces. They were dressed in expensive athleisure and holding the latest iPhones, clearly here to “check in” rather than to swim.

“Sophia. Chloe.” Rebecca nodded politely and said nothing more.

“What are you doing here, Rebecca?” Sophia tilted her head, her tone touched with exaggerated surprise. “Swimming this early?”

“Working out,” Rebecca replied briefly, her voice calm.

She did not climb out of the pool. She remained in the water, which rose just to her chest, like a thin barrier between them.

“Working out?” Chloe chimed in, her voice even sharper than Sophia’s. “But shouldn’t you be at home making dinner, sorting out Vance’s clothes, or maybe going back to the hospital for another checkup? What are you doing at a swimming pool?”

“I used to be an athlete,” Rebecca said.

“Oh—right.” Sophia drew out the word, as if recalling something from a very distant past. “I remember hearing that. You were a swimmer, weren’t you? But you stopped after marrying into our family. I don’t think I’ve seen you near water once since then. What happened? Did you suddenly remember today?”

“I felt like working out,” Rebecca repeated.

“I suppose that makes sense.” Chloe crouched by the pool, resting her elbows on her knees as she leaned closer, like a curious child peering at an animal in a cage. “After all, staying at home all day must get boring. But Rebecca, if you really want to get pregnant, swimming won’t do much. My mother said you and Vance have been married for three years, and there still isn’t a baby. Is there really something wrong with your body?”

Rebecca looked into Chloe’s eyes.

There was no malice there, and somehow that made it worse. Chloe was not deliberately trying to hurt her. She truly seemed to believe this was a perfectly ordinary topic of conversation, no different from talking about the weather, shopping, or which restaurant served the best lunch.

A few people nearby glanced over with curiosity. Rebecca felt their eyes settle on her, full of scrutiny and speculation. But she did not lower her head, nor did her eyes fill with tears.

She looked at the two young faces in front of her and felt an odd calm settle over her.

Three years ago, when she had first married into the Bradford family, remarks like this would have hurt her. She would have hidden beneath the covers late at night and cried without making a sound. She had once tried to win them over—buying them gifts, speaking up for them at family gatherings, remembering their birthdays.

Later, she realized that in their eyes, she had never truly been a sister-in-law, or even a member of the family.

She was only the woman who had traded a life-saving favor for a marriage.

Sophia let out a small laugh.

“You don’t have to hide it from us, Rebecca.” She sat down on a chair by the pool and crossed her legs. “You went to see Aunt Margaret last night, didn’t you? She was furious when she came back. She spent ages on the phone with my mother.”

Rebecca’s heart sank, but her face revealed nothing.

“My mother said—” Sophia deliberately lowered her voice, though not enough to keep Rebecca from hearing, “you and Vance have been married for three years, and you’re still a virgin.”

Chloe covered her mouth and laughed. “Seriously? Three years?”

A woman even her own husband would not touch had no right to breathe easily in this family.