Celeste plopped onto the couch and rested her head in her hands. Tom started to move toward her but then thought better of it, staying where he was beside the couch. Adam stooped to pick up the deed, leaving it on the coffee table, and then lowered himself next to her. He started to rub her back, but she shrugged him off and scooted away from him. Josie and Noah gave her a moment. Adam looked on helplessly. Finally, she lifted her head. Her eyes were dry. She looked at Josie and Noah and then to her husband. “I knew her well enough. She tried to take everything from me. My parents. This place. Everything.”
Josie said, “She sued you for a share of Harper’s Peak Industries.”
Celeste nodded. “She thought she deserved it.”
Adam said, “Celeste, I think you’re forgetting your father’s role in all of this.”
“All of what?” Noah prodded.
Celeste took in several deep breaths, as if she was trying to maintain her composure. Josie could see her mentally erecting walls around her most vulnerable places so that she would be able to talk about what came next in a matter-of-fact way. Emotionless. Detached. Josie recognized the trick because she had spent a lifetime doing it herself. Like Celeste was doing this very moment, Josie knew what it felt like to systematically push the trauma down so deep inside yourself that you couldn’t even reach it yourself anymore. You had to do it in order to survive, to keep functioning, but Josie also knew that, as much mental strength as it took to compartmentalize that trauma and lock it away, something as simple as a word or image, an errant memory or phrase, could spring open that lock and unleash the trauma in a split second, causing a roaring tidal wave of hurt.
Josie said, “Take your time, Celeste.”
Celeste’s eyes traveled to the ceiling. Adam shifted closer to her and she edged away until she was pinned up against one of the arms of the couch. The side where Tom stood, a silent sentry. One of his hands touched her shoulder lightly. She didn’t shrug it off. In a clipped tone, she said, “We were happy. My mother, my father, me. We lived here. My father had opened the larger resort just before I was born. As soon as I was old enough to walk, I went with him everywhere. All over this property. He showed me everything, all the inner workings of this place. When I got old enough to go to school, my mother would pick me up at the bus stop and bring me home, and I’d be off, searching for him. Every day was an adventure. My mother often worked alongside him. She was happy. So happy.”
Celeste’s voice lowered to a whisper. She blinked rapidly, and Josie knew she was trying hard not to let her feelings bubble to the surface.
Noah said, “We were able to find your mother’s obituary. She passed when you were ten years old. I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”
Celeste nodded. Swallowing, she tried again to speak. “My mother killed herself.”
This time, when Adam placed one of his hands over hers, Celeste made no move to push him away.
Josie said, “I’m very sorry, Celeste.”
Celeste’s face hardened. “It was because of Lorelei. You see, my father had a second family in town. He’d been seeing Lorelei’s mother at least as long as he was married to my mother. He impregnated the woman. Funneled money from the resort to her. Then she died of cancer. He could have, and should have, let her offspring go into foster care, but he didn’t. He brought her home.”
As she talked, Celeste’s eyes glowed with barely concealed rage. “That’s how my mother found out about his infidelity, his betrayal, when little Lorelei Mitchell showed up on her doorstep. My father expected her to take care of Lorelei like she was her own. My mother should have left, but she didn’t. Instead, she hung herself.”
Celeste motioned toward the large front windows. “From a tree out there. Right in the front yard. I had it taken down after my father died. Even after my mother’s suicide, my father insisted on keeping Lorelei. He wanted her to be an equal part of this family. As she got older, she expected it, too.”
It seemed to Josie that none of what had happened in the Harper family was Lorelei’s fault, but she sensed that Celeste wouldn’t accept that. Perhaps it was easier to blame Lorelei as an outsider than to lay the fault where it really belonged—at her beloved father’s feet.
Noah said, “Your sister left Denton and became a psychologist. Obviously, she didn’t expect to have a future here at the resort.”
“She couldn’t even do that right, could she?” Celeste spat. “She came back here disgraced, her license revoked, her career over.”
Josie said, “She came back here with thirty-four stab wounds in her neck and back. She was attacked by a patient.”
Tom didn’t look surprised, but Adam gasped. “You never told me that, Celeste.”
Celeste turned toward her husband. “Who cares, Adam? I told you when we met that she was not a part of my life and never would be. I took care of all of this”—she flicked the pages that Adam had placed on the coffee table after he tried to attack Tom—“before we were married. I only told you what you needed to know. She was an illegitimate product of an affair my father had. She didn’t belong here. She failed in her career as a psychologist and then she came back here, begging for money.”
Noah said, “You didn’t give her any. That’s why she sued you for her share of the estate.”
Bristling, Celeste
