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“Adam,” she says, laughing softly. “That’s funny.”
“What?”
“You don’t remember? You went through a phase where you named everything Adam. Our pet hamster, the potted plant in our bedroom, the cloth doll that Aunt Marianne gave you for your third birthday.”
My eyes go wide. “I don’t remember that at all.”
“You grew out of it,” Celine says with a shrug. I stare at her, realizing how many memories she has of me that I don’t share. “Sometimes, I’m not sure I remember things because I genuinely recall them, or because Mom told me certain stories so often that I made them my own memories to match hers.”
I didn’t want to bring Mom up, but here we are. And some things do need to be spoken of. Processed.
“It’s still weird, isn’t it? Not having her around.”
Celine closes her eyes. In the slanting sun, I can see the brushstrokes of her makeup, contoured perfectly along those too-gaunt cheekbones.
“It’s weirder not having been at her funeral,” she whispers, eyes still closed. “In some ways, I’ve never been able to truly accept her death because of it. I never got the closure.”
“Have you been to her grave?”
“Ilarion takes me every year.” My chest tightens at the thought of them standing hand-in-hand at the gravesite. “I see her headstone, I see the engraving, and…I just don’t feel a connection to it. I don’t actually believe she’s under there, listening to me.”
“She’s not,” I assure her. “She’s somewhere better. Somewhere warmer, sunnier, cancer-free, sipping cocktails and smiling down at us.”
To my surprise, Celine frowns. “Oh, God, I hope not. She’d be so sad if she saw what’s happened to us. The one thing she wanted for us was to be there for each other, to have each other’s backs. But we haven’t seen each other in years, Tay.”
My heart thuds hard against my chest. For a moment, it’s so tempting to tell her that the reason I left was for her. So she could have what she deserved.
“I didn’t mean to abandon you—”
“Then why did you?” She snaps it so fast, I feel the whiplash. “You could have stayed. You could have convinced Dad to stay. I get that he doesn’t like Ilarion, but you never even gave him a chance.”
Oh, God…
If she only knew.
“Celine—”
“You didn’t even give us a chance to have a conversation. You know everything by now, I’m sure?”
“Of course.”
I think.
She nods. “Ilarion promised me a long time ago that he wouldn’t retaliate against Dad for what he did. He doesn’t break his promises. He may seem like a hard man on the surface, but he’s a good one beneath it.”
“Well, I’m here now,” I say apologetically. “I want to get to know you again. I want to know your life. I want to be a part of it.”
It sits there between us, all the secrets we’re not telling each other. I don’t want to bring up the suicide attempt until she mentions it, but it’s there on the tip of my tongue. The questions…the fear…the reasons behind it all.
Her smile turns careful, almost secretive, and it strikes me that I’ve never seen Celine smile like that before. She’s never been a calculated person. She used to be an open book.
But maybe I don’t know her as well as I thought I did.
Maybe Ineverknew her as well as I thought I did.
Or maybe…I chose to believe what I wanted to.
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