“Go ahead.”
“I meant privately. Maybe a walk? The courtyard looked?—”
“Oh, yes, please. What a great idea.” The event coordinator materializes beside me with an eagerness that borders on desperate. She wants Eleanor out of her kitchen the way sailors want storms off their horizon. “The courtyard is gorgeous. The wisteria is in full bloom. I’ll make sure everything here stays on track.”
Eleanor regards the coordinator the way one regards a fly that’s landed too close to one’s wine. But she doesn’t argue.
I pivot to the coordinator before we leave. “I’m sorry, I’m Celeste Brinley. I was wondering if there’ll be a chance during the service for people to speak? I’ve prepared something for Whitney and I’d like?—”
“There is, but the speaking portion is typically reserved for family,” she says gently. Apologetically. Like she’s delivered this line before and knows it stings.
“I am family.”
“Oh, well in that case?—”
Eleanor’s voice cuts in from behind me, cool and precise. “Celeste and Whitney hadn’t spoken in years. That hardly qualifies as family.”
The kitchen goes quiet. Not silent—pans still clank softly; someone adjusts a burner—but the words stop. The caterers develop a sudden, intense fascination with their cutting boards and mixing bowls.
I turn to face Eleanor. I spit out what’s burning the tip of my tongue before I can soften it, “How many years were you and Whitney estranged, Eleanor? Over a decade? So based on your own logic, are you the appropriate person to deliver the eulogy?”
Dammit. There it is.Not the first shot. But I definitely delivered the most lethal.
The air between us crystallizes. A cook near the stove accidentally scrapes a spoon against a pot, and the sound is deafening in the silence.
Eleanor surveys the room—the frozen caterers, the coordinator clutching her clipboard like a shield—and her mouth curves into something that isn’t quite a smile. She eyes me like a cobra, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
I drop my head, shaking it in shame. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for?—”
“Nonsense. Grief brings out heightened emotions.” Her voice is warm, measured, public. Which means the real storm is brewing for later. “I apologize for the disruption, everyone. Please continue.”
She touches my elbow before striding past me. “Let’s walk,” she hisses under her breath.
We exit through a side door into the courtyard, and the late-May air wraps around me like a shawl I didn’t ask for. The Hamptons in spring is obscenely beautiful—the kind of beauty that feels like an insult when you’re this miserable. Wisteria drapes from a wooden pergola in heavy, violet clusters. A stonepath winds through manicured hedges toward the lawn, which rolls out in an unbroken sheet of green toward the ocean. The water beyond is flat and silver under a pale sky. Somewhere, a bird is singing. It doesn’t know that Whitney is dead. None of this knows. Nothing here cares. Nothing about this feels right.
The moment we’re out of earshot, I reach for Eleanor.
“Iamreally sorry,” I say, pulling her into a hug. “I shouldn’t have said that to you, especially not in front of your staff.”
Eleanor does not hug back.
She stands inside my arms the way a mannequin stands inside a dress—present but uninhabited. Her body is rigid, her hands at her sides, and she gives off the faint, powdery scent of Chanel No. 5, which she has worn for as long as I’ve known her and which I will now forever associate with being held at an emotional distance.
I release her and step back.
“I’m also very sorry for your loss, Eleanor. You know how much I loved your daughter.”
The breeze catches a cluster of wisteria petals and sends them drifting between us like confetti at the wrong party. Eleanor watches them fall, then lifts her gaze to mine.
“How did you find out?”
Notthank you for coming. NotI know you loved her. How did you find out. Like the answer matters more than the sentiment.
“I received the letter from Valcott and Finch,” I say. “Something about Whitney’s will. And the funeral invitation was included.”
Eleanor’s forehead tightens. The movement is subtle—a fraction of tension above the brows—but I’ve been reading faces for twenty years. It’s my job to notice when fabric pulls wrong, when a seam sits a millimeter off. Faces are no different.
“Valcott and Finch,” she repeats. Flat. Testing the words.
