Part 3
“He wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I asked him not to share it.”
“Then perhaps he doesn’t remember every instruction you give him.”
Mara walked toward the board. The photograph had been cropped. Julian’s hand, visible in the original near the lower edge where he had reached to wake her, was gone.
His name was absent from every caption.
Mara Ellison, twenty-six weeks.
Baby Ellison, expected October.
A new beginning.
She touched the edge of the board.
“Why doesn’t any of this say Whitmore?”
“Because nothing has been legally determined.”
Mara turned.
Celeste had moved to a nearby table and was adjusting a champagne glass by half an inch.
“The baby is Julian’s.”
“So you have said.”
“So Julian has said.”
Celeste’s fingers rested against the stem. “Julian says many things when he is trying to avoid distressing a woman.”
“He says them to you, mostly.”
The glass stopped moving.
It was the first time Mara saw the smile leave Celeste’s face that afternoon.
Only for a second.
Then Celeste sighed. “There is a room upstairs where you may rest before the guests arrive. I suggest you use it.”
“I’m not going upstairs until you tell me what photographs you meant.”
“You’ll see them soon enough.”
“Celeste.”
The older woman looked toward the open glass doors. Groundskeepers were carrying away the last coils of an extension cord from the lawn. Beyond them, the grass stretched toward a line of maples and a low stone wall. The space was broad, level, and strangely empty.
“Your insistence on forcing every unpleasant fact into conversation is not strength,” Celeste said. “Sometimes it is merely poor breeding.”
Mara almost answered.
A cramp tightened low in her abdomen, not sharp enough to frighten her, but firm enough to make her stop. She placed a hand on the nearest table.
Celeste saw.
Her gaze dropped to Mara’s belly, and something complicated passed across her face. Not concern. Not exactly. Calculation interrupted by an older instinct she did not welcome.
“Sit down,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“Do not create a medical scene in my ballroom.”
There it was.
Mara lowered herself into a chair because refusing would have punished only her. She waited for the pressure to ease. The baby moved beneath her palm, one slow push and then another.
Celeste remained standing.
“Does Julian know you’re doing this?” Mara asked.
“He knows a shower is being held.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No. It rarely is.”
“Does he know you invited reporters?”
“I said reporters were outside. I did not say I invited them.”
“Does he know you took his name off the display?”
“His name was never added.”
“Does he know you plan to show people photographs?”
Celeste picked up a linen napkin, noticed a crease, and set it aside.
“You have built an extraordinary amount of confidence around a man who has not answered you all day.”
The cramp released.
Mara stood slowly.
“He is working.”
“He has been avoiding a problem.”
“You?”
“Paternity.”
Mara did not move.
A door opened behind them. Two caterers entered carrying trays, saw the women facing each other, and lowered their eyes.
Celeste waited until they passed.
“There are photographs of you leaving a hotel with Daniel Mercer three weeks before you told Julian you were pregnant.”
Mara’s mind rejected the sentence before it understood it.
“Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“My former editor?”
“I believe that was his title.”
“He interviewed me for a freelance contract.”
“At a hotel.”
“In the lobby restaurant.”
“After nine at night.”
“Because his flight was delayed.”
Celeste’s expression remained almost sympathetic. “There is always an explanation.”
“There’s a receipt.”
“For dinner?”
“For coffee and two pieces of pie. I paid because he had hired me.”
“How modern.”
Mara felt heat rise beneath her skin. “You had someone follow me?”
“I was sent the photographs.”
“By whom?”
“That matters less than what they show.”
“They show me walking out of a hotel.”
“With a man.”
“People do that.”
“Pregnant women who expect to marry my son should be more careful.”
Mara stared at her.
Not because the accusation was convincing. It was too weak, too deliberately framed. What unsettled her was the effort behind it. Someone had waited outside a hotel, photographed her, identified Daniel, and calculated the pregnancy backward. Celeste had not improvised this cruelty. She had prepared it.
The ballroom staff continued arranging plates.
A spoon fell in the service corridor.
No one came to retrieve it.
“What exactly is going to happen here today?” Mara asked.
“A celebration.”
“Of what?”
Celeste’s eyes shifted briefly toward Mara’s belly. “That depends on you.”
A woman in a black dress entered with a camera around her neck. The photographer. She greeted Celeste, then smiled at Mara with professional brightness.
“You look beautiful,” she said. “We can start with some portraits by the balloons.”
“No photographs,” Mara said.
The woman looked between them.
Celeste’s voice stayed pleasant. “Give us ten minutes, Ana.”
The photographer left without argument.
Mara picked up her small handbag from the chair. “I’m going home.”
“Thomas has been sent to the airport.”
“I’ll call a car.”
“You may.”
Mara unlocked her phone.
No service.
She checked again.
The mansion sat outside the city, but she had used her phone there before. She moved toward the glass doors, watching the signal bars. Nothing changed.
“The network has been unreliable,” Celeste said.
“Your network or every network?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the technology.”
It was a lie so obvious that Mara nearly admired it.
She opened the Wi-Fi settings. The mansion’s guest network appeared, locked. A second network named WHITMORE-STAFF showed full strength.
“What’s the password?”
“I have no idea.”
“You invited seventy people to a house with no phone service and no guest Wi-Fi?”
“They survived childhood.”
Mara tried an emergency call, canceled before it connected, then closed the screen. The act of testing Celeste’s trap made it feel more real.
“I’ll use the landline.”
“The study is locked.”
May you like
“Kitchen.”
“The staff are working.”
