Chapter 5 - Celeste
Celeste Sterling arrived at Nina's apartment the next morning wearing yesterday's clothes under a camel coat.
Adrian almost did not let her in.
She stood in the hallway holding a paper bag from a pharmacy and looked nothing like Vanessa except around the eyes. Vanessa's gaze always seemed sharpened toward a target. Celeste's eyes looked tired enough to lose focus.
"I'm not here to defend what she did," Celeste said before Adrian spoke. "If you're expecting that, close the door."
Adrian kept one hand on the door.
"Then why are you here?"
"Because the police took her purse, and her attorney called me for medical information. I brought a list of prescriptions. And because I owe Claire something I should have done months ago."
Adrian stepped aside.
Oliver was awake in the living room, sitting supported by pillows on the rug. A home-health pediatric nurse Adrian had hired for forty-eight hours was nearby, mostly because Adrian no longer trusted his own ability to distinguish sensible caution from panic.
Celeste stopped when she saw the baby.
Her face folded.
She covered her mouth.
"Is he okay?"
"He's okay."
"Can I-"
"No."
She nodded immediately.
"Right."
They sat at the dining table.
Adrian put his phone between them and started a voice memo.
Celeste noticed.
"You're recording me?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The answer surprised him.
She folded her hands.
"Claire called me six days before the accident. She asked me whether Vanessa had ever... attached herself to people."
Adrian frowned.
"Attached how?"
"Intensely."
Celeste searched for words.
"Vanessa has always been good at becoming necessary. In high school, it was our mother. In college, it was Claire. Then it was a professor who helped her get her first agency job. Later it was a client who introduced her to everyone in New York hospitality. She is generous. She anticipates what people need. She remembers details. She also becomes furious when people stop needing her."
Adrian watched her.
"You're describing ambition."
"Sometimes it was ambition. Sometimes it was fear."
"Fear of what?"
Celeste rubbed her thumb across a scratch in the tabletop.
"Being irrelevant."
Adrian thought of the funeral.
Vanessa at the front door before anyone asked her to come.
Vanessa answering Claire's mother's phone because the older woman could not speak.
Vanessa ordering sandwiches for staff.
Vanessa finding Adrian's black tie when he could not remember where he had put it.
Useful every minute of every day.
"Did Claire say why she called you?"
"She said Vanessa had started speaking as if she knew what you thought before you said it. Claire asked whether that was something Vanessa had done with other people."
"What did you tell her?"
Celeste looked at him.
"I told her she was probably exhausted."
Adrian's mouth hardened.
"Of course you did."
"I know."
"Why?"
"Because I had spent thirty-eight years learning that if Vanessa was upset, everybody paid for it."
Celeste's voice remained level, but her hands tightened together.
"Our mother compared us constantly. Vanessa was the beautiful one, the relentless one, the one who never needed help. I was the easy one because I learned to stay out of the way. When Vanessa got obsessed with a friendship or a job or a man, we called it loyalty because the other explanation required somebody to challenge her."
"A man?"
Celeste's eyes lifted.
"Not you. Not then."
Adrian felt an unexpected flash of relief and hated himself for it.
"There was someone when she was twenty-seven. Married. He was her boss. She said he depended on her more than his wife. When he ended the relationship, she showed up outside his house three nights in a row. No threats. No violence. Just sitting in her car where he could see her."
Adrian leaned back.
"Did Claire know?"
"Some of it. Vanessa told the story like she'd been exploited. Maybe she was. I wasn't there."
Celeste looked toward Oliver.
"That's the problem with Vanessa. She can be genuinely wronged and still do terrible things afterward. If you make her either victim or monster, you miss half of her."
Adrian disliked the sentence because it demanded more thought than anger did.
"Why did Claire call you?"
"Because she had told Vanessa to stay away from the house for a month. Vanessa said she wouldn't."
Adrian sat forward.
"She told Claire she wouldn't?"
"Claire said Vanessa laughed and told her, 'Adrian invited me into his life. You don't get to revoke that because you're insecure.'"
Adrian felt heat rise behind his eyes.
"I never invited her into our house without Claire's consent."
Celeste gave him a sad look.
"Maybe not in those words."
The pediatric nurse began singing softly to Oliver across the room.
Adrian lowered his voice.
"Did Claire tell you she was planning to leave me?"
"No."
"Did she tell you she was afraid Vanessa would hurt her?"
"No. She said Vanessa made her doubt herself. That's different."
"Not anymore."
"No," Celeste said. "Not anymore."
Adrian stopped the recording.
Celeste sat back.
"There's one more thing."
He did not restart the memo.
"Say it."
"After Claire died, Vanessa called me from your guest room. It was three in the morning. She said you had finally fallen asleep."
Adrian remembered nothing of that night except the taste of whiskey he had poured and never finished.
"She told me she knew how to take care of you because Claire never had."
Adrian stared at her.
Celeste's eyes filled.
"I told her not to talk like that. She said I was disgusting for thinking she meant anything romantic. Then four months later, she told me you kissed her."
Adrian looked at the floor.
He had kissed Vanessa in the kitchen after a charity dinner. Oliver had been asleep upstairs. Adrian had been unable to enter his own bedroom for months, so he had started sleeping in a guest room.
Vanessa had said, "You don't have to be alone to prove you loved her."
He had believed the sentence was permission.
Maybe he had wanted permission badly enough not to ask who was giving it.
Celeste stood.
"I don't know why Vanessa dropped Oliver. I don't know if she planned it before that minute. I don't know what she thought would happen. But I do know that being replaced is the thing she fears most."
Adrian looked toward his son.
"Replaced by a baby?"
"By Claire."
"Claire is dead."
Celeste's expression tightened.
"That doesn't mean Vanessa stopped competing with her."
She walked to the door, then turned.
"Her lawyer may argue that she had some kind of acute psychiatric episode. I don't know whether that's true. I'm giving him her medication history because that's what family does when somebody is in custody."
Adrian said nothing.
"But I will not lie for her."
"Good."
Celeste opened the door.
"And Adrian?"
He looked at her.
"Don't punish Maria for knowing your house better than you did."
The door closed behind her.
Adrian stood alone in the entryway.
A minute later, the nurse called from the living room.
"Mr. Cole? Oliver needs a change."
He almost said, Can you do it?
The words reached his tongue.
May you like
Then he put his phone down and went to his son.
