Chương 2
Celeste pressed her lips together.
Adrian picked up the card from Ivy’s hand. The paper was damp where the blue ink had spread through the fold. Beneath Ivy’s name, barely visible, a black curved line showed where another word had been covered.
He opened the card.
Inside, written in Rosa’s compact hand, was Eleanor.
Someone had folded the card backward and written Ivy on the clean outer side.
Adrian looked toward the empty chair beside Celeste. It was the place where Eleanor had been seated when they entered. Ivy’s original seat, beside Adrian, now held a card that said Eleanor.
He had noticed the change when he sat down. He had assumed Rosa had made it.
“Why switch Ivy and my mother?” he asked.
Celeste’s expression changed by less than most people would have noticed. Her shoulders remained level. Her chin stayed lifted. But the muscle beside her mouth tightened, and she drew a careful breath through her nose.
“I thought Ivy would be calmer beside me.”
“I didn’t ask to sit beside you,” Ivy said.
Adrian rested his hand against her back. “You don’t have to explain anything else right now.”
Celeste looked at him. “That was unnecessary.”
“She’s six.”
“She has just accused me of something in front of your family.”
“She said what she saw.”
“She saw me write a name on a card. She does not understand why.”
Eleanor leaned back in her chair. “Then explain why.”
Celeste looked at the older woman.
For an instant, the polished certainty left her face. What replaced it was not guilt, exactly. It looked closer to resentment—the exhausted resentment of someone who believed she had already explained too much to people who refused to understand.
“You’ve been confused at dinner lately,” Celeste said. “I thought sitting beside me would help.”
Eleanor blinked once.
Adrian’s hand became still against Ivy’s back.
Rosa rose from her crouch but did not remove her hand from the child.
“I have not been confused at dinner,” Eleanor said.
“Last Sunday you asked where Thomas was.”
The name altered the room.
Thomas Vale had been dead for eleven years.
Eleanor’s gaze dropped to the tablecloth. “I was tired.”
“You asked twice.”
“I corrected myself.”
“You also called Ivy by her mother’s name.”
Ivy’s mother, Claire, had died four years earlier.
Adrian turned toward Celeste. “Enough.”
“I am answering the question.”
“No. You’re defending a seating change by listing my mother’s worst moments in front of my daughter.”
Celeste’s eyes flashed. “Those moments are why the seating mattered.”
“To whom?”
“To the people who keep pretending they aren’t happening.”
Eleanor removed her napkin from her lap and placed it beside her plate. Her fingers had begun to tremble. She folded one corner over another, missed the edge, and tried again.
Ivy watched her.
“Grandma knew my name this morning,” she said.
No one answered.
Celeste looked away first.
Adrian told Rosa to take Ivy to the library.
Ivy resisted with her body rather than words. She stayed close to his side, shoulders raised, eyes fixed on Celeste.
“It’s all right,” he said.
It was the kind of sentence adults gave children when nothing was all right and no better sentence presented itself.
Ivy looked up at him. “Are you coming?”
“In a minute.”
“You said that at the hospital.”
Adrian’s face changed.
Rosa closed her eyes briefly.
Ivy had been two when Claire went into the hospital for the final time. She could not truly remember Adrian saying those words in the corridor. She remembered the story because Rosa had once repeated it carelessly, not knowing the child was awake on the sofa. Since then, Ivy used the sentence whenever she believed an adult was promising something they might not be able to give.
Adrian crouched so they were level.
“I’m coming to the library after I speak with Grandma and Celeste. I will not leave the house.”
Ivy studied him with slow seriousness.
“Two minutes?”
“Five.”
“That’s more.”
“I know.”
She handed him the place card.
Then she went with Rosa.
Her black Mary Jane shoes made almost no sound on the polished floor.
When the door closed behind them, Eleanor pushed her chair back.
“I am not staying for this.”
Adrian turned. “Mother.”
“I have been invited to my own house to learn that my worst moments are being cataloged over soup.”
“This is my house,” Adrian said automatically.
Eleanor stopped.
He regretted it at once.
The mansion had belonged to Adrian and Claire for twelve years. Eleanor had her own town house twenty minutes away, though she spent enough time at the mansion to move through it without turning on lights. Since Claire’s death, she had treated the dining room, kitchen, and garden as shared territory. Adrian had rarely corrected her.
Now she looked around the room as if she had mistaken the address.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course it is.”
She reached for the back of her chair, steadying herself.
Adrian went to her, but she moved away from his hand.
Celeste remained standing across the table. “Eleanor, I wasn’t trying to humiliate you.”
“You changed a child’s seat so you could manage me.”
“I changed a card.”
“You changed where I was allowed to sit.”
“That is not what happened.”
“What did happen?”
Celeste looked toward Adrian. “We discussed this.”
Eleanor followed her gaze.
Adrian felt the first cold turn of fear beneath his ribs.
“What did you discuss?” she asked.
Celeste said nothing.
Eleanor’s attention settled on her son. “Adrian.”
He looked at the folded card in his hand.
Three nights earlier, after Eleanor had left her handbag in the refrigerator and spent forty minutes searching the house, Celeste had suggested they speak privately with a geriatric care consultant. Adrian had agreed. He had told himself an assessment would protect Eleanor. He had also told himself there was no reason to frighten her before they knew more.
May you like
The appointment was scheduled for the following morning.
He had not told his mother.
