“Don’t,” Simone said quietly, not looking at me.
I stopped.
“She doesn’t need you going after her right now,” she added, her voice low but clear. “Not like that.”
I swallowed, my hand tightening against the back of the chair. “I just—”
“I know what youjust,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
There wasn’t anything to argue with in that.
Simone stood instead, smoothing her hands down her jeans before stepping away from the table.
“I’ve got her,” she said. She moved past me without waiting. And I stayed where I was. Feeling it settle in, heavier than it had any right to be, and catching the shift in Kendra’s attention as she took in more than I’d intended to show.
Chapter 5
NOVA
Before I tellyou anything else, you need to meet her the way I knew her.
Not the version of Celeste James I carry with me now. I need you to meet her while she was still here, before everything she gave me had to stand in for her.
This was Thanksgiving. Two years before the October you met me at WaxCon. She died in February, thirteen weeks after this dinner. I didn’t know that yet. Nobody did, but this is how she is… well… was.
My mother had an opinion about everything, and she delivered it with the kind of certainty that made you listen whether you agreed or not. She could tell you the right way to set a needle on a record, which direction a couch should face in a room, and the exact second a song either landed or didn’t. She called that momentthe catchand said she felt it in her chest before she ever heard it through the speakers. She also had strong opinions aboutturkeys, which she shared freely from the living room while Auntie Rhonda stood in the kitchen that day doing the actual work.
“It needs another hour,” my mother called out, not bothering to raise her voice like it had anywhere to travel.
Auntie Rhonda opened the oven, leaned in to check, then straightened with the calm of someone who had been having this argument long enough to know she was right. “You cannot tell if a turkey needs another hour from the living room, Celeste.”
“I can smell it,” my mother said, already halfway back to one of her beloved crates. “It smells like almost.”
“Almost is resting.”
“Almost is where people rush and somebody’s uncle gets sick and starts blaming the cook. Another hour.”
Auntie Rhonda didn’t turn around. “If you come in this kitchen and touch my bird, I’m going to let you regret it slow.”
“Rhonnie, you act like I’m scared of you,” my mother said, not even looking up. “Our friendship survived you dating Raymond. It can survive a turkey.”
Auntie Rhonda paused, just for a second, deciding whether to respond as a woman with sense or as herself. “We agreed never to mention Raymond.”
“Raymond is mentioned. The turkey needs an hour.”
My mother had already moved on, flipping through the crate with the same focused attention she gave anything she loved. She was wearing a cream sweater she’d found at a thrift store, slightly oversized but intentional in the way it fell on her, as if it had been waiting for her to findit. Her braids were pulled back. Her glasses were sitting on top of her head, where they had been for at least an hour and where they would remain while she searched for them in increasingly unlikely places. I wasn’t about to tell her. Watching her look for something she already had was one of those small, perfect routines I had no interest in interrupting.
I was on the couch, legs tucked under me, watching her the way I always had, paying close enough attention to convince myself I might finally understand how she did it.
She pulled a record free.An Evening with Diana Ross.
“This one,” she said, already moving.
“You play that every Thanksgiving,” I said, shifting so I could watch her better.
“I play it when it’s time,” she said. “When something’s about to turn.”
She lowered the needle slowly, steady, giving those first seconds their full space.
