Chương 4
Margaret pointed toward the ballroom.
“She adjusted the plan.”
Celeste’s face hardened.
“I touched you because you grabbed me.”
Margaret’s chair scraped sharply.
Richard moved toward her.
She raised one hand.
He stopped.
Margaret looked directly at Celeste.
“I touched your sleeve.”
Celeste’s eyes flickered.
“You told the guards I had stolen jewelry. I showed you the locket. You took it.”
“You were causing a scene.”
“I was speaking.”
“You wouldn’t stop.”
“No.”
The room went quiet.
Margaret could hear someone rolling a service cart down the hall.
Metal wheels clicked over tile seams.
A perfectly ordinary sound.
For a moment she wanted to follow it.
Just walk out behind the cart and let the Hale family return to its dinner.
Richard sat on the edge of the folding table.
“What happened twelve years ago?”
Margaret rubbed her thumb over the dented side of the locket.
“You and I had a fight.”
“I know.”
“You went to Singapore.”
“For the acquisition.”
“I know where you went.”
He nodded.
Margaret looked at Celeste.
“Three days after you left, she came to the house.”
Richard’s eyes moved toward his wife.
Celeste said nothing.
“She told me you didn’t want me at the apartment anymore. That you were tired of me calling the office, criticizing the wedding plans, criticizing her.”
“You were criticizing her.”
Margaret looked at Richard.
“I was.”
That surprised him.
Margaret had criticized the age difference. The speed of the engagement. Celeste’s habit of dismissing employees while they were still standing in the room. The way Richard deferred to her after years of deferring to nobody.
Some of Margaret’s objections had been fair.
Some had been jealousy in respectable clothing.
She had spent enough years alone to know the difference now.
“I thought she made you shallow,” Margaret said.
Celeste’s face shifted almost imperceptibly.
“That was cruel,” Margaret added. “And lazy. You were perfectly capable of being shallow without help.”
Nora looked down.
Richard gave a short sound that might have been pain or laughter.
Margaret continued.
“I left because I was angry. Not because Celeste forced me. I rented a place near Jim Thorpe from a woman whose husband had died. I turned off my phone for a while.”
“How long?”
“Seven weeks.”
Richard stood.
“You disappeared for seven weeks?”
“I was furious.”
“I thought you were—”
“No. Not then.”
He lowered his voice.
“Sorry.”
Margaret looked at the fluorescent light.
“After seven weeks I called your office. I was told you didn’t want to speak to me.”
“I never said that.”
“I know.”
“Who told you?”
“A woman named Dana.”
Celeste closed her eyes.
It lasted less than a second.
Richard saw it.
So did Margaret.
“Dana Mercer?” he asked.
Celeste exhaled.
“She worked for me.”
“She handled personal scheduling for both of us.”
“She worked for me.”
Richard turned fully toward her.
“What did you tell Dana?”
“This is absurd.”
“Celeste.”
“She knew we were having family issues.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That your mother needed boundaries.”
Margaret lifted the legal letter.
Richard’s face drained of what little color remained.
“Did you tell her to block my mother’s calls?”
Celeste did not answer.
Richard took a step toward her.
Margaret said his name.
He stopped.
She did not want him looming. Not now. Not on her behalf.
Celeste noticed that too.
“Richard,” she said, “you were sleeping four hours a night. You were flying back and forth across the world. Every time she called, you got angry. Every conversation ended with you furious.”
“So you decided I shouldn’t have them?”
“I decided you needed peace.”
Margaret laughed once.
This time there was nothing humorous in it.
“That word.”
Celeste looked at her.
“People use peace when they mean silence.”
Richard stared at the floor.
“What happened with the flood?”
Margaret did not answer immediately.
The question took her to a different room.
A motel outside Wilkes-Barre, years ago. Brown carpet. A television bolted to a dresser. Rain striking the air conditioner. Her wet shoes lined beneath a chair.
She returned to the service room slowly.
“It was a landslide, not a flood.”
Richard frowned.
“The report said flooding.”
“There was flooding. The hill came down afterward.”
She had been renting a cottage above a state road. Three homes had been damaged. One collapsed. Margaret had left that morning to stay with a woman from church because officials had warned residents the slope might go.
Her car remained.
Her phone remained too, charging on the kitchen counter.
By evening the cottage was half buried.
Her name went onto a missing-person list because no one knew where she was.
The church friend had taken Margaret farther west to stay with family and had no power for nearly two days. By the time Margaret reached a phone, local authorities had already corrected the record.
She had been alive.
Bruised, angry and embarrassed.
“I called your house,” she said.
Richard’s lips parted.
“Celeste answered.”
Nobody moved.
Nora stared at Celeste.
Richard’s voice changed.
“When?”
“Two days after the slide.”
Celeste shook her head.
“No.”
Margaret looked at her.
“You said Richard had been informed I was missing.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You said he had asked you not to put me through.”
“No.”
“You said he was done being punished by me.”
“That sounds like something you would invent.”
Margaret nodded.
“It does.”
Celeste hesitated.
Margaret had not expected agreement.
“That’s the problem,” she said. “I was awful enough that parts of your story fit.”
Richard covered his face with one hand.
Margaret looked at him.
“You were angry enough that I believed you might mean it.”
He lowered his hand.
“But you called again.”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Enough to become embarrassing.”
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I did.”
Celeste stepped away from the door.
Margaret watched the movement.
“You remember that.”
Celeste’s voice was almost a whisper.
“You came to the townhouse.”
“Six months later.”
Richard looked between them.
“I was in London.”
May you like
“I know.”
Celeste’s face had gone gray.
