“Drew’s Pecker. Oh that sucks, Raven.” Saylor releases a sympathetic chuckle. “I’m sorry.”
Okay, this is bizarre. I realize Saylor flirts for a living, but no way he went to a funeral with me, found a stranger, struck up a whirlwind romance, mere minutes before asking me out all earnest and adorable. None of this is adding up. Why is Saylor suddenly so invested in…
Oh.
My eyes land shamelessly on Raven’s stomach as a thought scuttles into my mind. But there’s no way…right? No fucking way.
“Raven.” I say her name like a full sentence, effectively silencing her and Saylor. “Whose baby are you carrying?”
She exchanges a nervous glance with Saylor, further confirming my suspicions.
“Whitney’s. Well, Whitney and Donor Zero-two-five-three-three-seven.” She examines my expressionless face, frozen in place as if her words are Botox. She apparently feels the need to fill the uncomfortable silence. “I just made up the donor number. That’s probably not accurate. I only mean to say there’s no official dad. So, it’s just Whitney’s. Well, and yours.”
“I’m sorry?” I barely recognize the pitchy, strained sound that squeaks out of my throat, like someone’s stepped on a deflating balloon.
The world tilts.
Not dramatically—not a fainting, cinematic swoon. More like the moment on a boat when you realize the dock is moving andyou’re standing still, and everything you thought was stable is actually floating.
Whitney’s baby.
Whitney was having a baby.
Whitney—for whom motherhood was never a question of if but when, who would wake me up with midnight texts about whether “Juniper” was too hipster or “Matilda” too old-fashioned, who carried a small notebook just for jotting down DIY nursery ideas. The Whitney who was already trying to master the perfect after-school chocolate-chip cookie. She was already a mother, she just didn’t have her baby yet.
I thought that ship had sailed for her.
How is this possible?
Whitney was going to be a mother. And I didn’t know.
“She wanted to tell you,” Raven says, as if she can hear my internal thought. “She talked about you all the time. Almost every time I saw her. She’d tell me stories about you—how talented and smart you are, how beautiful and kind. I didn’t realize you guys weren’t talking. No one would’ve ever gotten that impression based on the way she talked about you. She said she was going to surprise you with the baby news soon when she officially asked you to be her godmother?—”
“Raven.” Saylor’s voice is gentle but firm. “Slow down. Let her breathe.”
But I don’t need to breathe. I need to understand.
“Whitney left the baby to me,” I say. It’s not a question. The pieces have been assembling themselves since the moment Raven sat down—actually, since before that. My first red flag was in the courtyard when Eleanor askedwhat are you here to collect, since the kitchen when she looked at me like I was a threat she hadn’t anticipated. “Does Eleanor know about the baby?”
Raven nods.
“Does Eleanor know Whitney wanted me to take the baby if something happened to her?”
She nods again. “You’re in her will, Celeste. Whitney told me the day we conceived. She said if anything happened to her, there was only one person in the world she trusted with her baby.” Her chin trembles. “She said that person was you. She told me specifically the paperwork was already drawn up.”
“Raven, if that were true, the executors would’ve sent me a copy of the will. Maybe Whitney told you that, but she changed her mind. It’s possible in the end, Whitney chose her mother. That’s okay.”
But Raven’s head whips side to side with such vehemence that her blond curls become a blur. “Eleanor is playing dirty. You’re in the will, Celeste. Eleanor is trying to hide it from you.”
“That’s illegal,” Saylor says. “She could get in big trouble. I doubt she’d do that and risk the consequences.”
“She’s not risking anything,” I muse to myself. How do I explain to Saylor and Raven that at a certain net worth, you start thinking you can operate above the law?
Saylor reaches across the table and collects my fingers in his. “You okay?”
I nod, but my fingers tell a different story as they grip his hand like it’s the only solid thing in a tilting world. “So I wasn’t actually invited to the service?”
Raven shrugs innocently. “I mean, I invited you. I don’t know if carrying Whitney’s baby gives me that authority, but I did it anyway.”
