Chương 7
Eleanor did not look at her.
“I should not have done it.”
“No.”
“But the rest is not imaginary.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “That is what makes what you did unforgivable.”
Celeste’s throat moved.
Adrian stood.
“You need to leave.”
She reached for the suitcase handles.
“At least keep the appointment,” she said.
“That is my mother’s decision.”
Eleanor looked toward the dark windows.
“I’ll go.”
Adrian turned.
She pressed one thumb into the other palm.
“I’ll go to the appointment,” she said. “But not with her.”
Celeste flinched.
“And not with you,” Eleanor added.
This time Adrian did not hide his reaction.
Eleanor looked at Rosa, who had returned to the doorway.
“Will you take me?”
Rosa nodded. “Yes.”
Celeste left the mansion at nine forty-three.
Adrian watched from the front hall as a car service driver placed her suitcases in the trunk. Celeste stood beneath the portico in her ivory dress, arms bare in the cool evening, waiting for him to say something that might alter the finality of the moment.
He almost did.
Eight months earlier, she had found him asleep on the floor of Ivy’s room after a fever and covered him with a blanket without waking him. She had spent three days helping him prepare for a client presentation when his lead designer quit. She knew how he took coffee and which anniversary he pretended not to dread. She could make him laugh in elevators, where he otherwise felt trapped. She had not entered his life as a villain.
That was part of the pain.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“My apartment.”
“You gave it up.”
“I kept the lease.”
He absorbed this.
“For work,” she added.
He did not know whether she was lying.
Celeste looked past him into the house.
“Do you love me?”
The question was quiet enough that the driver could not hear.
Adrian looked at the diamond on her hand.
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“Then don’t decide everything tonight.”
“I’m deciding where you sleep tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I learn what happened.”
Her eyes opened. “You will believe Rosa.”
“I will listen to everyone.”
“You will believe Ivy.”
“I believe she saw you change the card.”
“That is not the same as understanding me.”
“No.”
The car waited behind her, engine humming.
Celeste folded her arms against the cold.
“I was trying to save you,” she said.
“From what?”
“From becoming the man who notices danger only after someone disappears.”
He thought of his father walking through snow in house slippers.
Then he thought of Ivy in the hallway saying, You said that at the hospital.
“You don’t get to frighten me into trusting you,” he said.
Celeste’s face tightened, but she did not cry.
She turned and entered the car.
The red taillights disappeared between the stone gates.
Adrian remained in the doorway until Rosa came to lock it.
Eleanor slept in the east guest room after the sheets were changed.
She refused Adrian’s bedroom, refused Claire’s old room, and refused to return to her town house.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said, looking at Rosa rather than her son.
Adrian accepted that.
At eleven fifteen, he found Ivy awake beneath her quilt, still wearing the white collared dress she had worn to dinner. One Mary Jane shoe rested on the floor. The other remained on her foot.
He sat at the edge of the bed and removed it.
Ivy watched him.
“Is Celeste gone?”
“Yes.”
“For always?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said she lied.”
“I said she changed the card.”
“That was lying.”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you know?”
Adrian placed the shoe beside the other one.
“Because knowing what someone did is easier than knowing everything it means.”
Ivy frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No.”
He unbuttoned the cardigan and corrected the bottom button before removing it. The small mistake had pulled the fabric sideways all evening. He wondered how many times he had looked at her without seeing it.
“Grandma is sick,” Ivy said.
“We don’t know.”
“She forgot she was standing.”
“She did.”
“Will she forget me?”
The question came without tears.
Adrian folded the cardigan over the chair.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Ivy’s mouth tightened.
He wanted to give her reassurance. He had given reassurance in hospital corridors, doctors’ offices, school meetings, and funeral homes. Most of it had been false because adults often confused comfort with certainty.
“But if she forgets something,” he said, “we’ll tell her again. And we won’t trick her to prove it.”
Ivy looked toward the door.
“Celeste tricked her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
He took longer to answer.
“I agreed to a doctor’s appointment without telling her.”
“Was that a trick?”
“It felt like one to Grandma.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Adrian lowered his eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “A little.”
Ivy pulled the quilt to her chin.
“You should say sorry.”
“I did.”
“Did she say okay?”
“No.”
“Then you have to wait.”
He almost smiled.
“Apparently.”
She moved over, creating a narrow space beside her.
Adrian lay on top of the quilt, one arm bent beneath his head. Ivy’s breathing gradually slowed.
After she fell asleep, he remained there listening to the house settle.
At midnight, his phone lit with a message from Celeste.
Please do not let shame make you ignore the medical evidence.
A second message appeared.
And please do not let your mother destroy your firm because you are afraid to upset her.
He read both messages twice.
Then a third arrived.
I should never have changed the card. I know that.
He did not respond.
Dr. Miriam Lang’s office occupied the second floor of a medical building beside a grocery store. Eleanor objected to the location because she had expected polished wood and discreet entrances from a physician Celeste described as excellent.
“Apparently excellence rents above discount produce now,” she said.
Rosa looked at her in the rearview mirror.
May you like
“You can still leave.”
Eleanor adjusted one pearl earring. “That would please everyone who thinks I am incapable of facing facts.”
