Chapter 6 - Celeste's Version
Celeste asked to meet at a crowded hotel café, not at the store. She arrived in a plain navy blouse, carrying her own paper cup instead of ordering from the server.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“That's a remarkable opening, considering you watched my husband do this.”
She flinched. I was glad she did, though it didn't give me the satisfaction I expected.
“I didn't know he'd hit you,” she said. “He told me you were coming to embarrass us.”
“Us?”
Celeste stared at the table. “Nathan told me your marriage was over last spring.”
“It wasn't. I know, because I was in it.”
She pressed her lips together. As a teenager I'd watched Celeste help Mother sort photographs, prepare exhibition catalogs, and rescue old handwritten orders from water damage. I believed she was family. She'd once shown me how to draw a proper pendant clasp, then insisted I redraw it until my wrist stopped shaking.
“Mother trusted you,” I said.
“She trusted me to work for her. That's not the same.”
Celeste said she'd helped create the archival collection that had become the company's signature line. Mother promised her recognition and a small equity grant, then died before finalizing it. Nathan had shown Celeste a proposed purchase agreement that awarded her an ownership interest after closing.
“So you helped him take mine?”
“I believed your mother had put you first no matter what the rest of us earned.”
“Did you see the proxy before it was signed?”
Her hand tightened around the cup. “I cataloged the materials used to prepare the file.”
“That wasn't my question.”
She would not answer it. Instead she slid a worn photograph across the table. It showed Mother at her desk in 2016, with Celeste at one shoulder and a man in a green field jacket at the other.
My father.
“Your mother told me he was dead,” I said.
“Your mother told people whatever she thought would keep the atelier together.”
May you like
I looked at the photograph until the faces blurred. Celeste had known my father was alive for ten years. She had laughed while Nathan struck me, but now her eyes filled with tears she seemed angry to have.
“If you want to understand why he's back,” she said, “don't start with Nathan. Start with what your parents signed the year the company was founded.”
