But the driveway stays empty. And the morning, which started with laughter and boy bands and a woman in my arms, ends with a silence that has teeth.
chapter 22
Celeste
The cemetery is beautiful, which feels like a contradiction.
It shouldn’t be beautiful. It’s a place for grief, not for aesthetics. But the Hamptons don’t know how to be anything other than curated, so even the dead get ocean views and landscape architecture. The headstones are spaced generously across rolling green, shaded by old elms and bordered by hedgerows that someone trims on a schedule. There are benches placed at tasteful intervals, stone paths winding between the plots, and in the distance, the gray shimmer of the Atlantic visible through a gap in the tree line. It’s the kind of place where wealthy people come to rest and their families come to grieve in a setting that suggests death is simply another venue requiring appropriate attire.
I am wearing the wrong shoes.
My Louboutins were the right choice for the drive. Black patent, four-inch heel, the pair I wear when I mean business. But the cemetery path turned to grass three minutes ago, and the grass turned to soft earth near the newer plots, and my stilettos are now punching into the ground with every step liketiny aggressive shovels, sinking two inches deep and requiring excavation each time I try to move forward.
I stop walking. Look down. My left shoe is buried to the sole in dark cemetery dirt. I yank it free with a sound that is deeply undignified.
“I’m sorry,” I say to the shoe. “You don’t deserve this. Neither of us planned for terrain.”
I take them off. Both of them. Holding my shoes by the straps in one hand, I continue barefoot across the cold grass, feeling the chill climb through my feet and into my ankles and not caring, because dignity has limits and mine ended at the second sinkhole.
I find Eleanor at the far end of the newer section, standing in front of a white marble headstone with roses carved into the border. The stone is clean. Polished recently, probably this morning, probably by Eleanor herself. Fresh flowers sit in a small stone vase at the base. Not the kind from a florist. These are garden roses, slightly imperfect, the kind you cut yourself from a bush you’ve been tending.
Whitney Anette Trace. Beloved daughter, loyal friend, brave heart.
I stand beside Eleanor. She doesn’t turn to acknowledge my arrival. Her eyes stay fixed on the headstone, her posture rigid, her hands clasped in front of her like a vigilant soldier, guarding whatever moment she’s lost in.
“I guess you had to unblock me to text me,” I say.
Eleanor’s jaw twitches into something akin to a smile. Her eyes never leave the stone. “It was time.”
We stand in silence. The wind picks up from the east, carrying salt and the distant sound of waves and the coolness of a coastline that’s preparing for winter. I look at Whitney’s name carved into marble and try to feel something specific, but what I feel is everything at once, and everything at once has no shape.
“Have you been out here?” Eleanor asks. “To visit her?”
I hang my head. The honest answer costs me. “No, actually.”
Eleanor’s chin lifts a fraction.
“Not out of disrespect,” I say quickly. “I miss her constantly, but that’s not news. I’ve missed her for years. I hear her sometimes. Not literally, but her opinions. Her reactions. The things she’d say if she were standing next to me, which would mostly be inappropriate but always brilliant.” I press my hand flat against my chest. “She’s never far.”
Eleanor is quiet for a long time. When she speaks, her voice has lost the polished edge I’ve heard at every prior encounter. What’s underneath is rougher. Older. Tired in ways that have nothing to do with sleep.
“I envy that,” she tells me. “I don’t hear her at all. I come out here every day and I stand where you’re standing and I wait. For a sign, a feeling, something. Anything that tells me she’s still close.” Her throat moves around a swallow. “I told you at the funeral there’s no apologizing to someone who’s gone. And yet here I am. Every morning. Trying to find the words.”
The wind shifts. A leaf skitters across the base of the headstone. I watch it catch against the stone vase and hold.
“Why did you want to meet, Eleanor? Because if this is just to gloat over your victory, speed it up. I have a long drive home and a crumbling life to get back to.”
Eleanor reaches into her purse. Not the portfolio-sized designer bag she carried at the ultrasound. A smaller one, practical, the kind of purse you carry when you’re not performing wealth. She pulls out an envelope, opens it, then hands me a check.
I look at the number. Then I look again, because the first time my brain rejected it as a misprint.
“What is this?”
“What does it look like? A very large check, dear. Made out to you.”
I stare at her. The check is trembling slightly in my hand, which I’m going to attribute to the wind. “Are you out of your mind? What is this? You’re paying me to go away? The judge already ruled. I can’t contest your guardianship.”
“I sold two commercial resort properties in Fort Lauderdale.” Eleanor says this with the flat efficiency of someone reporting a transaction, not a sacrifice. “Prime waterfront. My husband acquired them in the eighties. They’ve appreciated substantially. I sold them twenty percent under market value for cash offers because I needed the money liquid and I needed it now.” She nods at the check. “That should be more than enough to cover your corporate debt. The unauthorized lines of credit, the inventory reconciliation, whatever Greg left you holding. Keep the company private. I’ll be your angel investor. Don’t worry, very favorable terms. Now, speaking as an investor, how long would you need to get the business back up and running?”
