“Actually,” I say, and I hear the shift in my own voice—something lighter, something almost shy, a register I haven’t used in so long that it takes me a moment to recognize it as hope. “I think I want to spend the weekend in Westchester.”
Rina raises an eyebrow.
“The renovations aren’t done,” I add quickly, because I am still Celeste and I still require a logical framework for every emotional decision. “There’s the backyard. The guest rooms. Saylor can’t do it all alone. I should be there. It’s my house.”
“It’s your house,” Rina repeats, and her tone is so carefully blank, it’s practically neon. “And that’s the reason you want to spend the weekend there. The house.”
“Yes.”
“Not the Australian.”
“The house, Rina.”
“The house that the Australian is currently living in. With his mother. While pretending to be your fiancé.”
I pick up my iced coffee. Take a long sip. Meet her eyes over the rim.
“I’m going to help with the renovations,” I say firmly. “That’s all.”
“Sure. You of all people, getting your hands dirty.”
“Hey!” I scold. But we both know it’s the truth.
Rina stands. Collects her bag. Smooths her pantsuit with the practiced gesture of a woman who is about to leave and wants her exit to carry the appropriate weight. She pauses at the door.
“Celeste?”
“What?”
“Bring wine this weekend. You know, to Westchester. Good wine. The kind you drink when you’re celebrating something, even if you haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
She winks, then leaves in the expected Rina fanfare. She’s so goofy and yet ethereal, a bizarre combination.
The studio is quiet again. Just me and the copper silk and the dress form and the eleven pieces that are finished and the eleven that aren’t and the particular silence of a woman sitting in the mess of an afternoon that contained a work crisis, an unexpected sandwich, a revelation, a long-overdue confrontation, and a decision she’s pretending is about a house.
I look at the copper swatch. I rotate it a quarter inch.It’d help if you had some hips, Patrice!I rotate it one more quarter inch, and voilà.
For the first time in weeks—not because anything has changed, but because something inside me has shifted, like furniture being rearranged to catch the afternoon light—I see it. The drape. The cascade. The way the fabric wants to move if I just stop fighting it and let it fall.
Newly inspired, I pick up my pencil and start sketching once again.
chapter 14
Saylor
Mum is standing at the kitchen island without her cane.
I notice it the way I notice everything about her mobility—automatically, constantly, the background hum of a brain that’s been tracking her pain levels for years. Always hoping for the best, expecting the worst. She’s leaning against the granite, both palms flat, the posture of someone who wants to appear casual while doing something that costs her more than she’d ever admit. Her tea is steaming beside her. The morning light through the curtains I found on clearance at Home Depot that Celeste seemed to like anyway.
“This countertop,” she says, running her hand across the granite, “is bigger than our kitchen at home.”
“The old kitchen or the current kitchen?”
“Both. Combined.” She lifts her tea and takes a careful sip. “You know, back in Wollongong, I had exactly one counter and it was also the dining table and also, occasionally, the ironing board. Multi-purpose. Quite efficient.” She looks around the kitchen—the new hardware, the scrubbed countertops, the fridge I stocked yesterday with groceries that cost an entireweek’s worth of bartending tips. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How people can have all this and just let it sit. Let it rot. Like it’s nothing.”
“Money does that. When you can replace anything, nothing’s worth maintaining. Money’s never worth chasing, in my opinion.”
“That’s very wise for a boy who grew up chasing chickens.”
