Chapter 2 — The Name He Would Not Let Go Of
The word “Beatrice” did not belong in the wedding house.
It lingered in the hallway like smoke after a fire—unseen, but impossible to ignore.
Grace stood frozen in front of her son.
“Caleb,” she said again, slower this time. “Who is Beatrice?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he stared at the floor as if it might open and swallow him whole.
From the guest room down the hall, Katherine’s muffled sobbing carried through the walls.
Each sound felt like a separate fracture forming in Grace’s understanding of her own home.
Finally, Caleb spoke.
“She was my classmate,” he said.
“That’s not an answer,” Robert cut in sharply. “You just married that girl upstairs, and she’s crying like she’s been destroyed. What does another woman have to do with this?”
Caleb flinched.
“She didn’t die because of me,” he said quickly. “But she got hurt because of what happened in our engineering program.”
Grace frowned.
“What happened?”
Caleb finally looked up.
And for the first time that night, Grace saw something worse than anger in his eyes.
Conviction.
“She was assigned to a structural safety simulation with me,” he said. “A bridge load test model. There was a mistake in the data set. I flagged it. The professor ignored it.”
His voice tightened.
“The structure failed in simulation review. Beatrice was on the team that signed off on the final report anyway.”
Silence.
Frank, standing near the doorway, shook his head.
“This has nothing to do with your wife,” he said.
Caleb snapped.
“It has everything to do with her!”
The shout echoed through the hallway.
Katherine’s sobbing stopped for a second—like even she was listening now.
Caleb continued, lower now.
“Beatrice was suspended. She lost her scholarship. She tried to appeal, but the university covered it up. They said I was the one who pushed the final approval.”
Grace felt a chill.
“And you didn’t?”
Caleb hesitated.
“I didn’t sign the final report,” he said. “But I didn’t stop it either. I left it. I was tired. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”
His voice cracked.
“It ruined her life.”
Grace stared at him.
“And Katherine had something to do with this?”
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“She works in the same department now,” he said. “Same faculty assistant program. She got the position Beatrice was supposed to have.”
A silence fell so heavy it pressed against the walls.
Frank exhaled slowly.
“So you married her to punish her?”
Caleb didn’t deny it.
May you like
That was the answer.
And it shattered something inside Grace that she didn’t know could still break.
