Chapter 7: What Celestine Knew
Celestine stopped a few feet away.
Elodie stood beside her, holding her hand, looking at Maren with the careful attention she gave to everything.
"She asked about you," Celestine said.
"After you walked away earlier.
She asked if you were the lady from the photograph."
Maren went very still.
"What photograph?"
"The one I keep in the drawer beside my bed." Celestine's voice was quiet and completely steady.
"It was taken before Elodie came to us.
You're holding her in it.
She's maybe two weeks old." She paused.
"I told Elodie it was a lady who loved her very much."
The garden noise continued around them — clinking glasses, laughter, the soft drag of chairs on stone.
None of it touched this particular corner of the afternoon.
"You knew," Maren said.
"Not at first." Celestine crouched down to Elodie's level.
"Sweetheart, can you go find Mrs.
Hale and ask her for a biscuit?
Tell her I said it was all right."
Elodie looked at Maren once more.
Then she walked toward the catering table with the careful, deliberate steps of a child who had learned to move quietly through rooms.
Celestine stood back up.
"Dorian told me the custody was clean," she said.
"He told me the birth mother had agreed, that she was unwell, that she wanted Elodie placed with a family who could provide stability.
I had no reason to question it.
We'd been trying for years.
Elodie was—" She stopped.
"She was everything."
"When did you find out?"
"Fourteen months ago.
I found a copy of the original letter in Dorian's files.
The one sent to Petra." Celestine's hands were clasped in front of her.
"I didn't know what Petra's name meant at first.
I had to piece it together.
It took me three weeks to understand what I was looking at."
"And then?"
"And then I stayed." The words came out flat and honest.
"Because I didn't know what else to do.
Because Elodie was three years old and she called me Mommy and I didn't know how to hand her a truth that size." Her eyes were steady on Maren's.
"I'm not asking you to forgive that.
I'm telling you because you deserve to know."
"The mark on her wrist," Maren said.
Celestine's composure cracked — just slightly, just at the edges.
"That happened four days ago.
She was climbing the garden fence and she fell.
I cleaned it myself.
I put the bracelet on to keep her from picking at it." Her voice dropped.
"I know how it looked.
I know what you thought when you saw the bl00d.
I need you to know that it was an accident.
I would never—" She stopped.
"She is the person I love most in the world.
Whatever Dorian did, whatever I failed to do — Elodie has been safe with me.
I need you to believe that."
Maren looked at her for a long time.
She thought about the tenderness she had seen that afternoon — the way Celestine had fixed Elodie's hair, the way the child leaned into her without thinking, the way Celestine had known which shoes hurt her feet.
She thought about the photograph in the bedside drawer.
"Why did you run to the cliff?" she asked.
"Because I panicked." Celestine pressed her lips together.
"Because you asked to see her wrist and I knew how it would look and I didn't know yet whether you were someone I could trust." She glanced toward the catering table, where Elodie was now solemnly accepting a biscuit from Mrs.
Hale.
"I know who you are now.
Aldric told me, months ago, that he was trying to reach you.
I didn't stop him."
"You helped him."
Celestine said nothing.
Which was its own kind of answer.
"The photograph he sent me," Maren said.
"The one taken inside Elodie's bedroom while she was sleeping."
"I took it," Celestine said quietly.
"I sent it to Aldric.
I told him to find a way to get it to you." She met Maren's eyes.
"I didn't know how else to start."
The string quartet had stopped.
Somewhere inside the estate, a door closed.
"He's calling his lawyer," Maren said.
"I know."
"When this goes to court—"
"I'll testify," Celestine said.
"Whatever you need.
Whatever the lawyer needs.
I'll give a full statement about the letter, about what I found in his files, about the timeline." She paused.
"Elodie needs you.
She has needed you for three years.
I was just—" Her voice caught for the first time.
"I was just the person who was there."
Maren looked across the garden at her daughter, who was now examining her biscuit with great seriousness, apparently deciding the best angle of approach.
"You were more than that," Maren said.
It cost her something to say it.
She said it anyway.
Celestine nodded once — a small, careful nod that held more in it than any longer response could have.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now," Maren said, "we go sit with her."
They walked across the garden together.
Elodie looked up when they arrived, biscuit in hand, and looked from one woman to the other with the focused assessment of a four-year-old conducting important research.
"Are you staying?" she asked Maren.
"For a while," Maren said.
"Is that all right?"
Elodie considered this.
Then she held out half her biscuit.
May you like
It was, Maren understood, the most complete answer she was going to get.
She took it.
