Karen grabs her cane, steps out into the hallway, and closes the bedroom door behind her. “Where shall we go?”
Celeste leads her to the end of the hall where there is a glassed-in sunporch that is quiet and unoccupied. Karen negotiates the one step down holding on to Celeste’s arm. Celeste leads Karen over to a sofa with bright yellow-orange cushions the color of marigolds.
Karen takes a moment to admire the room. The floor is herringboned brick covered with sea-grass area rugs. The perimeter of the room is lined with lush potted plants—philodendron, ferns, spider plants, a row of five identical topiary trees trimmed to look like globe lamps. From the ceiling hang blown-glass spheres swirling with a rainbow of color. Karen becomes mesmerized for a second by the spheres; they look as delicate as soap bubbles.
Celeste follows her gaze and says, “Apparently these were an obsession of Greer’s the year she wrote A Murder in Murano. Murano is an island near Venice where they make glass. I had to look it up when Benji told me that.”
“Oh,” Karen says. The room has enormous windows that look down over the round rose garden. “There is no end to the wonders of this house.”
“Well,” Celeste says, but nothing follows and Karen can’t tell if she’s agreeing or disagreeing. She sits next to Karen on the cheerful sofa. “I decided last night that I wasn’t going to marry Benji.”
“I know,” Karen says.
“How?” Celeste whispers. “How did you know?”
“I’m your mother,” Karen says. She could tell Celeste about the dream with the strange hotel and how, in that dream, Celeste was lost. She could tell Celeste that she woke up so certain marrying Benji was the wrong thing for Celeste to do that she got out of bed and went looking for her, but she had found Bruce and Tag instead and learned something she could have lived the rest of her days without knowing. She could even tell Celeste about her visit to the psychic, Kathryn Randall, who had predicted that Celeste’s love life would enter a state of chaos… But there’s nothing either one of us can do about it.
Instead, Karen lets those three words suffice. She is Celeste’s mother.
It’s suddenly clear that Karen’s remaining time on earth matters. There are so many moments of her life that will be overlooked or forgotten: locking her keys in her car outside of Jabberwocky in downtown Easton, having her credit card declined at Wegman’s, peeing behind a tree at Hackett’s Park when she was pregnant with Celeste, beating her best time in the two-hundred-meter butterfly in the biggest meet of the year against Parkland when she was a senior, nearly choking on a cherry Life Saver during a game of kickball when she was ten years old, sneaking out to the eighth hole of the Northampton Country Club with Bruce during her prom. Those moments had seemed important to Karen at the time but then they vanished, evaporating to join the gray mist of her past.
However, what Karen says to Celeste here and now will last. Celeste will remember her words for the rest of her life, she is sure of this, and so she has to take care.
“When you met Benji,” Karen says, “we were very excited. Your father and I have been so happy together… we wanted you to find someone. We wanted you to have what we have.”
Celeste lays her head in Karen’s lap, and Karen strokes her hair. “Not everyone is like you,” Celeste says. “Not everyone gets that lucky on the first try… or ever.”
“Celeste,” Karen says. “There are things you don’t know…”
“There are things you don’t know!” Celeste says. “I tried to make myself love Benji. He’s a good person. And I understood it was important to you and Mac that I married someone who could take care of me financially—”
“Not just financially,” Karen says, although she realizes she and Bruce are probably guilty as charged. “Benji is strong. He comes from a good family—”
“His family,” Celeste says, “isn’t what it seems.”
Karen gazes out the window at the serene expanse of the Nantucket harbor. Maybe Celeste already knows that Tag Winbury’s mistress has a baby on the way. It makes either perfect sense or no sense at all that a family as wealthy and esteemed as the Winburys have a second narrative running deep underneath the first, like a dark, murky stream. But who is Karen to judge? Only a few hours ago, she feared she had caused Merritt’s death.
“So few families are,” Karen says. “So few people are. We all have flaws we try to hide, darling. Secrets we try to keep. All of us, Celeste.”
“I made it to the night before the wedding,” Celeste says. “Before that, I thought if I acted on my true feelings, something bad would happen. Then I told myself that was silly. My actions don’t influence the fate of others. But Merritt died. She died, nearly as soon as I made the decision. She was the only real, true friend I’ve had in my life other than you and Mac, and now she’s gone forever. Forever, Mama. And it’s my fault. I did this to her.”
“No, Celeste—”
“Yes, I did,” Celeste says. “One way or the other, I did.”
Karen watches the tears stream down her daughter’s face. Karen is curious—and more than a little alarmed—that Celeste keeps insisting Merritt’s death is her fault. Did Celeste do something to her? Did she not do something? It can’t be a good idea for Celeste to be carrying on about how it’s her fault when the house is crawling with police.
“What do you mean by that, darling?” Karen asks. “Do they know what happened?”
“I think she took pills,” Celeste says. “I think she did it to herself. She was in a bad relationship, a bad situation… and I was emphatic about her breaking it off for good, but she said she couldn’t. I found her crying in the rose garden last night.”
“You did?”
“She wanted to know why love was so hard for her, why she couldn’t get it right. And I hugged her and kissed her and told her it was going to be fine, she just needed to move on. But you know what I should have done? I should have told her that I couldn’t get it right either. That love is hard for everybody.” Celeste takes a breath. “I should have told her I didn’t love Benji. But I couldn’t even say the words in my own mind, much less out loud to another person. She was my best friend and I didn’t tell her.”
“Oh, honey,” Karen says.
“Early this morning I went outside to look at the water one last time because I knew I was leaving this view behind for good. And I saw something floating.”
“Celeste,” Karen whispers.
“It was Merritt,” Celeste says.
Karen closes her eyes. They are both quiet. Outside, birds are singing and Karen can hear the gentle lapping of the waves on the Winburys’ beach.
Celeste says, “I’m not going to marry Benji. I’m going to take a trip, by myself maybe. Spend some time alone. Try to process what happened.”
“I think that’s wise, darling,” Karen says. “Let’s go tell your father.”
Bruce is still asleep in bed, though his noisy breathing has quieted. His hair is standing on end, his mouth hangs open, and even from so far away, Karen can smell his night-after whiskey breath. His left hand, the one with the wedding band, is resting on his chest, over his heart. Their love is real, Karen thinks. It’s strong but flexible; it’s unfussy and unvarnished. It has thrived in the modest house on Derhammer Street, in the front seat of their Toyota Corolla, in the routine of their everyday—breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime, repeat, repeat, repeat. It has endured long workweeks, head colds, snowfalls and heat waves, meager pay raises and unexpected bills; it endured the deaths of Karen’s parents, Bruce’s brother, Bruce’s parents, and the smaller losses of Celeste’s toads, lizards, and snakes (each of which required a burial). It endured through construction on Route 33, a schoolteacher strike when Celeste was in fourth grade, the Philadelphia Eagles losing season after season after season despite Bruce’s impassioned ranting at the TV (and finally winning it all this past year when, quite frankly, both Bruce and Karen had stopped caring about football); it endured the sad day the Easley family moved away and took their dogs Black Bean and Red Bean, who at the time were Celeste’s best friends, with them. It survived the Pampered Chef parties thrown by women who all secretly thought they were better than Karen, it survived Bruce’s bizarre friendship with Robin Swain, and it will survive this tragic weekend.
We would go to the post office to mail packages or check our box, and the line was always extra-long on Saturdays, but you know what? I didn’t care. I could wait an hour. I could wait all day… because I was with Karen.
While Celeste gently jostles Bruce’s shoulder to wake him up, Karen slips into the bathroom and locks the door behind her. She opens the third drawer, finds the bottle of pills, picks out the three pearlescent ovoids, and flushes them down the toilet.
Karen’s pain is gone. She feels stronger than she has in weeks, months even. It makes no sense, and yet it does.
Karen can’t go anywhere just yet. She needs to see what will happen next.
