“Maybe you can just mind your own business.” Celine sets the glass down and pours more, her hand wavering a bit. A few drops of wine splash over the side of the glass and onto the linen tablecloth.
“I’m just trying to help,” I say.
“Well, you’re not helping. You’re actually making it worse.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” Celine’s tone is quick and terse.
I sit back in my chair, dumbfounded. “How am I making this worse?”
Celine regards me for a moment, narrowing her eyes. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” she says, her words dripping with cynicism. “Having you here in my house right now is not helping me. At all.”
“Because you’d rather be alone?” I reply, genuinely perplexed.
“Because I’d rather you weren’t here.”
“So you’re saying it’s me? I am personally making it hard foryou? I honestly don’t understand, Celine. If I have offended you in any way, please tell me, because I assure you it was unintentional, and I am so very sorry.”
Celine shakes her head as if I am dense. “I don’t want you here, because you remind me of Truman. You’re his sister and you look like him. And you sound like him. Every minute of every day that you’re here, I see him when I see you, and I hear him when I hear you.” Celine says this with a tone of revulsion, not sorrow. It’s not grief in her words but contempt. I am momentarily at a loss for words.
“Oh, Celine,” I finally reply. “What happened between you?”
My sister-in-law picks up her glass, takes a sip, and swallows. “Of course, you wouldn’t think it was his fault, would you?” She sets the glass down hard. “Because you think Truman was wonderful and I was terrible to him and he deserved better than me. So of course you think he couldn’t possibly do anything to hurt me.”
“Celine, that is not what I’m thinking.”
She locks eyes with me, as if daring me to look away. I don’t. She leans over the table.
“Your brother betrayed me.” She sits back in her chair as though triumphant, her head bobbing slightly to and fro.
“Betrayed you? You mean... he was unfaithful to you?”
“Want to know who it was with?” Celine asks, a false and crooked smile on her face. “You’ll never guess.”
“I don’t need to know that. That’s personal.” I’m sure it is the alcohol talking and that Celine would not want to have this conversation if she were sober.
“It was Rosie,” Celine continues, her voice oozing venom. “That girl I let into this house out of the goodness of my heart. Truman got her pregnant.”
I feel the room go cold. It can’t be true. Truman would not sink to that level, no matter how unhappy he might have been in his marriage. He wouldn’t have done that, couldn’t have.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Celine grabs her wineglass. “But it’s true. Your brother humiliated me and I hated him for it. I hated him because I could do nothing to get back at him. I had to pretend he hadn’t done what he’d done, and I had to pretend that girl wasn’t carrying his child. I had to pretend all was well in front of everyone, including Wilson. And I hated it. When I got the telegram that Truman was dead, I was glad.”
Tears are slipping down my cheeks. I have no ready words of response. None. Celine barrels on.
“I was glad because I could finally stop pretending I had a happy marriage. He got what he deserved after what he did to me.”
“What he did to you?” Tears continue to stream down my face. “What about Rosie? What about what he did to her?”
“Oh, you would be thinking about her and not me!” Celine’s voice is just on the edge of rage. “She wanted it!”
I wince at the unwanted image of my brother, in his forties, taking a teenage girl—his ward!—to his bed. Impossible. I try to shake the image away. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Because I asked her!”
