Chapter 6
Celeste looked at me as though Arthur had insulted our entire relationship.
Maybe he had.
“Do you think I spent four years pretending?”
I did not answer quickly.
That frightened her.
Good.
“Did you?”
“No.”
Immediate.
“Did you approach me because Warren told you to?”
Silence.
There.
Not enough.
“Celeste.”
“Yes.”
The word hurt.
I let it.
“When?”
“After the funeral.”
I remembered.
She organized food.
Memorial flowers.
Staff schedules.
Stayed late when everyone else stopped knowing what to say.
A calm woman beside a grieving man.
I thought intimacy had grown naturally.
Apparently it had been planted.
“Was all of it assigned?”
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
“The beginning was.”
I stared.
“How much beginning?”
“Warren wanted someone near you.”
“Someone.”
“Yes.”
“Not necessarily you?”
She looked away.
“No.”
That answer was almost worse.
She volunteered.
“Why?”
She swallowed.
“Because I already cared about you.”
Maybe true.
Cruel people can love.
That makes damage harder, not smaller.
“And the ring?”
“I did what my father asked.”
“You were thirty.”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Old enough.”
Her jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
Good.
“What did you tell yourself?”
“That the orders would stabilize the family.”
“And marrying me?”
Her face broke.
“That became real.”
Maybe.
I believed she believed it.
Then I looked toward Ava.
She sat in the adjoining room with June, drawing on hotel stationery as if adults had not nearly thrown her down a staircase.
“What about today?”
Celeste closed her eyes.
No romantic ambiguity there.
“You saw Arthur give Ava the pouch.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted it.”
“Yes.”
“You pushed my daughter toward stairs.”
“I thought June would stop the cart.”
My body went completely still.
There it was.
Same logic as every powerful coward.
Calculated danger.
Someone else will intervene.
Nothing terrible probably happens.
“I thought June would stop it.”
I repeated the sentence quietly.
Celeste started crying.
I did not move.
“Your plan required my three-year-old to be frightened enough to release her grip.”
Silence.
“That is not love becoming complicated.”
More silence.
May you like
“That is control becoming desperate.”
Her tears did not change that.
