Chương 5
“You weren’t bleeding.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
Celeste inhaled sharply. “I’m sorry. That was a terrible thing to say.”
“It was.”
“I’m under pressure.”
“So was Claire.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “It isn’t.”
Celeste’s voice softened. “Please give me a little time.”
Eleanor looked around her kitchen. Frank’s chipped mug sat on the drying rack because she still used it for tea. A small pile of alteration receipts waited beneath a magnet shaped like a lobster. Outside, the sanitation truck groaned at the curb.
“How much time?”
“Until Monday.”
“And am I being paid?”
Another pause.
“Insurance may cover—”
“Am I being paid by the salon?”
“I need to check.”
“Check before noon.”
She ended the call.
Mara stared at her from the doorway.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re making a face.”
“I’m watching you remember that you have teeth.”
Eleanor lifted the coffee cup with her left hand. “I have always had teeth.”
“You’ve spent twenty years pretending not to bite.”
At eleven, a courier delivered a cream envelope embossed with the name of a law firm. Inside was a three-page letter offering to cover all documented medical expenses, transportation costs, and two weeks of lost wages as a gesture of concern. The offer required Eleanor to release Claire, the Waverly family, Daniel, Linden House Bridal, its owners, employees, insurers, affiliates, and anyone else the lawyers could fit into a sentence from all claims related to the incident.
It also stated that Claire denied intentionally causing physical contact.
Mara read that sentence aloud.
“She denies intentionally causing physical contact,” she repeated. “What does she think her hand was doing?”
Eleanor took the letter.
At the bottom, beneath the lawyer’s signature, someone had attached a handwritten note on heavy stationery.
Mrs. Bell, Claire is devastated. She has always been sensitive where her grandmother’s brooch is concerned. I hope we can resolve this in a way that protects everyone from further pain.
It was signed Lydia Waverly.
The note made Eleanor angrier than the legal letter.
Not because it threatened her. It did not. Lydia Waverly had mastered something more refined than threats: the conversion of another person’s injury into an inconvenience shared equally by all.
Eleanor placed the papers back in the envelope.
“What are you going to do?” Mara asked.
“I’m going to shower.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what I’m doing next.”
In the shower, Eleanor found the bruise beginning along the outside of her hip, deep purple beneath skin that had grown thin with age. She touched it once, then braced her hand against the tile until the room stopped tilting.
She had spent years telling nervous brides that fabric remembered pressure. Silk shone where it had been crushed. Satin puckered where a needle entered badly. Lace could be repaired, but under certain light the repair remained visible.
Skin remembered too.
At one that afternoon, Daniel called.
Eleanor almost let it go to voicemail. Then she answered.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like someone dropped me.”
He accepted the rebuke.
“I postponed the wedding.”
“So you said.”
“Claire’s mother is calling it a family medical issue.”
“Whose family?”
“I asked the same question.”
Eleanor moved to the window. Across the street, a man in orange coveralls was trying to coax a small dog out from beneath a parked car. The dog had no interest in cooperating.
“Claire wants to see you,” Daniel said.
“She texted.”
“She wants me there.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
The bluntness surprised her.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I want to know whether what happened yesterday was the worst thing Claire has ever done or the clearest thing she has ever done.”
Eleanor watched the man in coveralls lie flat on the pavement and offer the dog part of his sandwich.
“I can’t answer that for you.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you call?”
He was silent long enough that she heard an office door close on his end.
“Because I have spent eighteen hours being told this was an accident,” he said. “You’re the only person no one can reasonably ask to make me feel better.”
“That has never stopped anyone.”
A breath that might have been a laugh left him.
He told her he had moved into a hotel. Claire remained in their Back Bay apartment. The venue had been notified that the wedding would not proceed Saturday. Guests were being contacted. Vendors were demanding decisions about deposits. Claire’s mother had contacted Daniel’s parents before he could, describing him as temporarily overwhelmed.
“My mother asked if overwhelming was a new word for decent,” he said.
“I might like your mother.”
“She would like you.”
Eleanor did not respond.
Daniel continued. “Mia sent me a message.”
“How did she get your number?”
“I gave Celeste permission to share it if a witness wanted to speak.”
“What did Mia say?”
“That she wrote down everything she remembered immediately after the ambulance left. She’s afraid Celeste will fire her.”
“Celeste won’t.”
“You sound certain.”
Eleanor looked at the legal envelope on the table.
“I used to be.”
That afternoon, Mia came to the apartment carrying a bakery box and a spiral notebook.
She stood outside the door in her beige salon uniform, though Celeste had told her not to work. Her dark hair was pulled into a low ponytail. She looked as if she had not slept.
“I brought pastries,” she said. “I didn’t know what kind you like, so I panicked and bought six.”
“That is an expensive form of panic.”
“I used my employee discount. My cousin works there.”
Eleanor let her in.
Mia placed the box on the kitchen table and kept hold of the notebook.
“Mara’s at school,” Eleanor said. “You can unclench.”
Mia looked down at her hand. Her knuckles had gone white.
“I wrote it all down.”
“Daniel told me.”
“I didn’t want anybody saying I got confused later.”
“That was sensible.”
“I should have done something.”
“You did.”
“I stood there.”
May you like
“You were frightened.”
“So were you.”
