“Not exactly.”
“Cry?”
Elena hesitated. “Yes.”
Marissa set the grocery bags down with theatrical satisfaction. “Excellent. Nature is healing.”
Despite everything, Elena laughed. It came out thin and startled, like a sound unused for too long. But once it was out, the apartment felt less tight.
Over pizza slices eaten standing at the kitchen counter while Rose dozed in her swing, Elena told her everything. Not dramatically, not as confession, but in the clear sequence of facts she had been carrying all day.
Marissa listened without interrupting, her face hardening in the right places and softening in the others. When Elena finished, her friend reached across the counter and squeezed her wrist.
“You were magnificent,” she said simply.
Elena looked down because praise still made her uncomfortable. It felt too close to the part of her that had once begged for approval from a man who offered it in crumbs.
On the third day Nathaniel called.
His name lit up on her screen while she was folding onesies at the dining table. For a second her whole body locked. Then she turned the phone face down and kept folding.
He called again ten minutes later.
This time she blocked the number and forwarded everything to her attorney.
By Saturday morning, however, there was a knock at the door.
Elena checked the peephole and went still.
Outside stood Celeste Monroe.
No red dress. No public glamour. No engagement ring. She wore jeans, a camel coat, and the expression of someone who had not slept properly in days. Without the architecture of wealth and events surrounding her, she looked younger and somehow more human.
Elena opened the door only halfway. “What do you want?”
Celeste met her gaze directly. “Not a fight.”
“That would make two of us.”
A flicker of something almost like respect crossed Celeste’s face. “I’m not here to defend him. I’m not even here about him, not exactly. I just… needed to understand what I walked into.”
Rose babbled from the living room.
Celeste’s eyes shifted toward the sound. When she looked back, her voice had lost the last trace of society-page sheen. “Please.”
Leave a Comment