Chapter 5
The deeper reason came from Corisandra.
Not her mother.
She cried for almost an hour before saying it.
“I was scared of becoming second.”
“To a toddler?”
“To Celeste.”
My late wife.
Nessa’s mother.
Dead two years.
There it was.
Corisandra did not fear Nessa exactly.
She feared what Nessa carried.
Every bedtime story Celeste used to read.
Every photograph.
Every phrase:
Mommy did this.
Mommy liked that.
Mommy sang that song.
Corisandra believed our wedding would not feel like the beginning of anything if Celeste remained emotionally present through our daughter.
So Evelyn gave her a solution.
Distance first.
New marriage first.
Then Nessa returns after the house looks different.
New bedroom arrangement.
New photographs.
New routines.
New central woman.
They called it transition.
It was territorial.
I asked:
“Did you want Nessa gone permanently?”
“No.”
Immediate.
I believed her.
She wanted something subtler.
Nessa returned after the new hierarchy hardened.
Still loved.
Still cared for.
May you like
But no longer defining the emotional center of my home.
Corisandra wanted to arrive before my daughter could remind everyone someone had been there before her.
