She’s still not looking at me, but I register her jostling her head in disagreement. “I didn’t do it for the people at the funeral. I did it for Whit. Because I loved her.Love her.”
“I figure that’s motherhood. Loving someone past your own comfort. Showing up even if you’re not sure they’ll see you. Doing the right thing, even if it matters to no one but you and your kid. All the puzzle pieces are there, Celeste. You’re going to make a wonderful mother.”
I can feel her gaze on me now. “Are you sure?”
I keep my eyes on the road because if I look at her right now, I’ll lose the thread. “Definitely. Maternal isn’t some gene you’re born with. It’s not a personality type. It’s the willingness to carry something that matters more than you do and try your best even when you’re terrified. You’ve been doing that all day.”
The silence that follows is different from the one before. Warmer. Less pressure. Like the surface broke and we’re both breathing now.
“Whitney used to say I’d be a great mother if I could get out of my own way,” Celeste says quietly. “I told her that was a big ‘if.’”
“Sounds like Whitney knew you better than you know yourself.”
“That was kind of her gift. She’d hold up a mirror and you’d see yourself the way she saw you—which was always moregenerous than the version you were carrying around.” Celeste’s voice has the particular quality of someone talking to a memory instead of a person. Soft at the edges. Present tense slipping into past. “She made people realize themselves.”
Tidewater House rises through the trees like something out of a catalog that Celeste’s company would shoot—stone and cedar, tasteful landscaping, the kind of lighting designed to make you exhale the moment you step out of the car. The GPS announces our arrival. Once we’re parked, I grab my bag and Celeste’s, refusing her help like the dutiful pack-mule that I am.
The lobby smells like cedarwood and white tea and money that’s been around long enough to stop being loud about it. A woman at the front desk greets Celeste by name—well, Ms. Prescott, which earns her a pointed look before Celeste clarifiesit’s Brinley—and walks us to the suite personally, narrating the amenities like she’s guiding us through a small museum. The complimentary robe closet. The espresso machine. The fact that turndown service includes lavender on the pillow, as if the pillow needed a personality.
The suite is absurd.
Not gaudy absurd. Square-footage absurd. A living room with a sectional that could seat a football team. A bedroom through French doors with a king bed that looks like a cloud applied for a job in furniture. A bathroom with a freestanding tub and one of those rain shower heads that makes you feel like you’re being gently baptized. A kitchenette with a marble countertop and a fresh-fruit bowl which will probably only ever be decoration. What a waste. I’m eating that papaya before we go.
There’s a balcony overlooking the ocean. The waves are invisible in the dark but I can hear them—steady and stolid, like the sound of the world breathing.
“This is…” I turn a full circle. “More square footage than my apartment, and all of the apartments on my floor.Combined.”
Celeste surveys the suite with the flat appraisal of someone who exists in spaces like this regularly. “It’ll do.” She winks at me. “The couch pulls out into a queen-size. There are extra blankets in the closet if you get chilly.”
I point through the French doors. “Want me to check the closet for monsters first?”
“Cute.”
She snags her luggage from where I set it down and disappears into the bathroom. The door clicks shut and a moment later I hear the shower start, and beneath the sound of expensive plumbing and old stone walls, the muffled cadence of someone letting the day out in the only private space she has left.
I don’t go to the door. I don’t call out.
Instead, I sit on the sectional and pull out my phone.
Me
Hey. Weekend went well. Long story. How are you feeling?
Mum responds before I’ve set the phone down. She’s always near it—her portal to the world beyond the apartment that has the nerve to trap her in her home by three flights of daunting, concrete stairs. I wonder if she’s needing anything right now and refusing to ask for it. Refusing to bother anyone or take up the space she rightfully deserves.
Mum
I’m fine, love. Callie stopped by for stretches. We watched a cooking show after. How was the event?
Me
You know. Work. Met some interesting people.
Mum
Interesting people or interesting person? Unrelated, I’d love to be a grandmother before I die.
I stare at the screen. Mum can read subtext through a phone the way seismologists read tremors—subtle shifts in language that most people would miss, picked up instantly and filed away for future interrogation.
