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“Whatever it is that’s making you look so sad.”
I regret it the moment the word slips out of my mouth. Mostly because of the way Celine looks at me when I say it. Like she’s somehow let herself down by revealing too much to me. Of course, I’m only guessing. I have no idea what she’s thinking right now. She’s become a mystery over the years.
I only have myself to blame for that.
“I’m not sad, Taylor,” she demurs. “I’m content. I made my choices and even though they haven’t turned out exactly as I’d envisioned, I still have hope.”
I nod. “I’m glad to hear that.”
I hear Adam’s shrill giggle from across the garden. The scampering of his feet. The birds are chirping over here, I notice. The corner of the garden where we were just sitting was a cone of silence in comparison.
“Who’d have thought?” Celine softly laughs. “Mila’s good with kids.” She turns to me. “Iamlooking forward to meeting Adam. Please don’t interpret my reaction as disinterest. It’s just…I’ve wanted a baby for a long, long time now. I suppose it felt a little jarring to find that you had a child without even trying. All I’ve done is try.”
“Oh, Cee—”
I reach out to her, but she flinches back out of my reach. “Ilarion will give me what I want, though,” she says. “Eventually.”
Her words are vague, but there’s only one thing that she can possibly mean.
They’re trying to have a baby.
They’vebeentrying to have a baby.
On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like a betrayal. But somehow, that’s exactly how it feels.
I gulp and force a smile on my face. “You’ll be an amazing mother, Cee. I’ve always known that.”
She smiles sadly. “I saw what a good mother looked like. I experienced it firsthand.”
My eyes wander. To the sky, to the hedges, back to Celine. Then I look down and I see it: the paper-thin scars across her wrists.
I suck in a sharp breath. Her eyes follow my gaze and she covers her wrist with her hand self-consciously.
“Celine…”
“It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” I repeat incredulously. “That doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s nothing. It was a long time ago.”
“When?” I croak, still too afraid to even voice the actual words. “Why?”
Her eyes cloud and she turns her face away from me again. She keeps it rooted in the distance when she finally speaks. “Six or seven months after you and Dad left,” she murmurs. “As for why…that’s more complicated.” She pivots back towards the path and gestures for me to follow. “And I’m not willing to talk about it now.”
“Was it Ilarion?” I ask. “Was it something he said? Something he did?”
She glances at me from over her shoulder. “Ilarion has never done anything but be honest with me,” she says. “I was the one who couldn’t handle that honesty.”
I frown. If he didn’t tell her about us, about Adam, how honest exactly was he for her to feel like suicide was the only way out? And whatever it was, if death had been her go-to, if that had been her only solution…
It makes me think that keeping the truth from her was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.
27
TAYLOR
When we emerge from the maze, I spy Mila and Adam on the other side of the lawn. The two of them are kicking a ball back and forth across the grass.
