He looks panicked, eyes darting between me and Eleanor who is now selecting a chair in the waiting room with the careful deliberation of a woman who thinks every chair she sits in is a throne. “Are you sure?” His jaw works. “I can stay.”
“I’ll be fine. Go.”
Once again, I send him off to battle Eleanor alone.
He goes. Not happily. He follows Raven and the nurse down the hallway with the reluctant energy of a man who is leaving a situation he doesn’t trust but is choosing to respect the woman who asked him to. The door closes behind them and I am alone in a waiting room with cucumber water and Eleanor and twenty years of history that neither of us has ever resolved.
I sit down across from her. Not beside her. Across. The natural geometry of opposition.
“Eleanor.”
“Celeste.” She crosses her legs. Folds her hands in her lap. The perched, ready-to-swoop-in-and-attack posture. “You look well. Rested.”
“Thank you. I am rested.”Total lie.Saylor and I have been doing everything except sleeping. The man knows tricks. A lot and lot of tricks that end in blinding pleasure every single time.
“I was being polite, dear. Your crow’s-feet are out of control. I have a nice firming cream if the Botox can’t quite mend what’s broken.”
“Eleanor, why are you like this?”
“Like what?”
Bitchy, I say in my head, but don’t allow it through my lips. “Never mind. I wanted to tell you that I’m renovating my parents’ house in Westchester. It’s coming together beautifully. Saylor’s done so much work. New kitchen cabinetry, new deck, the nursery is finished.” I let that word sit. Nursery. A room thatexists, in my home, for this baby. “The home visit went well. Janet has been thorough and fair.”
“I’m sure she has.”
I force out a deep breath. “Eleanor, I want to be direct with you. I think we’re past the point where subtlety serves either of us.” I lean forward. “If you stop this, you can still be part of this baby’s life. You’re her grandmother. That matters. It would’ve mattered to Whit and it matters to me. I would never take that away from you. But Whitney wrote a will. She was clear about what she wanted. She chose me. Not because she didn’t love you, but because she trusted me to raise her child in a way that honored who Whit actually was, not who your family wanted her to be.”
Eleanor listens. Her face doesn’t move. It’s a skill, that stillness. A talent honed over decades of country-club luncheons and charity galas and marriage to a man who screamed at her behind closed doors while the rest of the world saw a philanthropist and his elegant wife. Eleanor learned long ago that the safest face is the one that reveals nothing.
“I’m offering you an important place in this child’s life,” I continue. “Holidays. Birthdays. Weekends. Whatever arrangement makes sense. But I’m asking you to let go of the custody fight. For the baby’s sake. For Whitney’s sake.”
Eleanor smiles.
Not the polite one. Not the social one. A smile that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. The smile you’d wear in a game of poker when you know without a doubt you’re holding the winning hand.
“What are you so happy about?”
“I’m happy because I know your vile little secret, Celeste.”
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. My spine straightens involuntarily, the way it does in boardrooms when someone says something designed to draw blood. I knowimmediately what she means. I know because there’s only one secret that could produce that particular grin on Eleanor’s face, and it involves a man in a navy button-down who is currently in an exam room looking at a sonogram of a baby he already loves.
“It doesn’t matter how Saylor and I met,” I say, and my voice is steady because I’ve been preparing for this conversation since the caseworker visit, since the moment we lied about being engaged, since the first time I looked at Saylor and knew that his past would eventually become ammunition. “What matters is who he is and what he means to this baby. He’s been present every day. He built the nursery with his own hands. He cares about this child not because of obligation, not because of biology, but because he chose to. That’s love by choice. No strings. And you should be thrilled that your grandchild has a support system like that before he or she is even born.”
Eleanor laughs. The sound is precise and surgical, a scalpel wrapped in cashmere.
“Your little escort-for-hire posing as your future husband?” She waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, Celeste. We all see through that and it’s pathetic. A prostitute you’ve rebranded as a fiancé to impress a caseworker. Please. Even Janet Lundy isn’t that naïve.”
“Don’t you dare speak about him like that.” My chest tightens. Not because she’s wrong about how we met, but because she’s reducing Saylor to a transaction, flattening three dimensions into a punchline, and the cruelty of it, the casual cruelty, reminds me so much of Greg that I can feel the connective tissue between them. People who diminish others to feel tall.
“But anyway, dear, that’s not why I’m smiling,” Eleanor continues. She uncrosses her legs. Leans forward. The distance between us shrinks and the air fills with her perfume, Chanel No. 5, the lavish fragrance I’ve smelled at every society event for thepast twenty years. “I’m smiling because I had a very interesting conversation with Greg recently. Over bourbon. You know how men are after their second glass. Defenses down. Tongues loose. Especially when someone is offering to write a very generous check.”
My stomach lurches. “A check for what?”
“An investment, he called it. Into the company. Into you, really. Eleanor Montgomery-Trace investing in Celeste Brinley’s fashion empire. A show of good faith. Family supporting family.” She pauses for effect, the way a woman who has been rehearsing this moment pauses, savoring the architecture of the reveal. “But Greg didn’t need an investment. Greg needed a lifeline. Because your company, Celeste, isn’t struggling.It’s drowning.”
No.What?“I don’t know what Greg told you, but?—”
“He told me everything. He was remarkably forthcoming.” Eleanor’s voice is level, almost kind, which makes it worse. Cruelty dressed in compassion is her signature. She learned it from her husband. “Your company is functionally bankrupt. The revenue looks adequate on the surface, but underneath, it’s been hemorrhaging for years. Mismanaged funds. Overextended lines of credit. Inventory costs that haven’t been reconciled since before your divorce.”
