Chapter 29 #2
The casserole is chicken tetrazzini because heartbreak, according to Celia Mercer, remains vulnerable to cream sauce.
We take it back to my townhouse, where she spends the first ten minutes criticizing the kitchen cabinets, my rental company’s choice of bar stools, and Grant’s decision to buy Russell’s shares at “a price generally associated with cocaine or head trauma.”
She looks immaculate, as always—linen trousers, pale blouse, silver-blonde hair refusing August humidity through either excellent breeding or expensive chemistry—but there’s a tiredness around her eyes I don’t remember from weeks ago.
I set two plates on the counter. “You know you don’t have to keep apologizing for him.”
“I’m not.”
“You brought me food.”
“You really expect a Southern woman not to feed you? It’s policy.” She cuts into the casserole with enough aggression to suggest the noodles have personally disappointed her. “I came because Caroline wants to call you and doesn’t know whether she’s allowed.”
Something tightens in my chest. “She’s allowed.”
“Good. Tell her yourself. She’s spent two days rewriting the same text so many times I’m surprised there’s anything left of it.”
A smile gets me despite myself.
Celia sits, and some of the humor leaves her face. “I know about Camille.”
“Everyone knows about Camille.”
“I knew before the photographs.”
Of course she did.
“Grant called me afterward.”
My fork stops halfway to my plate. “Why?”
“Because at thirty-eight years old, my son occasionally remembers he has a mother after exhausting every option less likely to tell him he’s a fool.” Her attention drops to the napkin in her lap. “He was crying.”
“Celia—”
“I’m not telling you because I want you to feel sorry for him.
” She folds the napkin once, careful and precise.
“I’m telling you because I made that mistake with Harold.
The first time I caught him, he could barely eat.
Lost twelve pounds. Slept on the sofa for weeks.
Started going to church every Sunday and bought me a bracelet so ugly I considered the affair a secondary offense.
” Her mouth twists. “He was miserable, Laurel. Genuinely miserable. And I thought a man couldn’t hurt that badly over what he’d done and ever do it again.
” She gives me a small, humorless smile. “He did.”
The kitchen goes quiet.
Men.
“Feeling terrible isn’t the same thing as changing,” she says. “I wish somebody had told me that before I learned it myself.” Her eyes hold mine. “Grant loves you.”
I drop my attention to my plate. I’ve spent my entire life being told my face broadcasts whatever I’m thinking, and right now I’d rather Celia not see how little Grant’s suffering matters to me.
I huff out a laugh. “Love didn’t stop him.”
“I know.” Celia’s voice softens. “Loving you was never his problem. It’s what he decided loving you entitled him to.
” She reaches for her water. “He hears no and turns it into an insult. He gets scared and calls it protection. He wants something so much he convinces himself wanting it makes him right.”
Well, tell me more. I’ve got years of receipts.
“He called me after Russell signed,” she adds. “Said you tricked him.”
I laugh again, unable to help it. Celia’s mouth flattens. “I asked if you held a gun to his head.”
“And?”
“He hung up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He called back twenty-three minutes later because he remains genetically incapable of ending an argument while believing he lost.”
That gets me again.
Celia smiles too, but this time her eyes shine. “I know I didn’t always show it, and God knows I’ve never had trouble opening my mouth when I had an opinion, but I loved having you as my daughter.”
Fuck.
Suddenly, the chicken tetrazzini deserves my complete attention.
“You still have me.” The words are out before I get a chance to inspect them.
Celia’s face crumples for a second before she lifts her chin and pulls herself back into the woman who once hosted Christmas dinner with a migraine and twenty relatives she hated.
“You make promises like that and I’ll start visiting.”
“Bring better casserole.”
“You little ingrate.”
I laugh hard enough that my throat protests, and Celia points her fork at me immediately. “Stop that. Your mother told me about the procedure.”
“She did? You spoke to my mama?”
Celia looks entirely too pleased with herself. “Vivian and I have entered a temporary diplomatic alliance.”
“This is genuinely terrifying.”
“Grant doesn’t know the date.”
My smile disappears.
Celia’s does too. “And I won’t tell him.”
For fourteen years, Celia has been one of the ways my life reached Grant. Birthdays, illnesses, surprises, family gossip—if his mother knew something about me, sooner or later her son did too. No one ever questioned whether he had a right to know. Why would we? He was my husband.
Now Celia knows something about my body that Grant doesn’t, and she understands without being asked that loving me no longer gives him access to it.
The realization hurts in a place I wasn’t prepared for.
“Thank you.”
She reaches across the counter and covers my hand once. “I’m trying to learn faster than he is.”
∞∞∞
Celia leaves me with half a chicken tetrazzini, a promise that Caroline will call, and the unsettling knowledge that my Mama and Grant’s now have a direct diplomatic channel.
Twenty minutes later, my phone rings.
Unknown number.
I let it ring out. It calls again less than a minute later, and I decline it this time. Whoever wants me can develop manners or leave a voicemail.
The third call comes from Monica.
That I answer. My sister-in-law rarely calls without texting first, and repeated calls from her usually mean blood, fire, or a recipe she has decided cannot wait another second.
“Monica?”
“Don’t hang up.”
Sloane.
I stop halfway across the living room. “Why the fuck are you calling me from Monica’s phone?”
“I’m not. I spoofed the caller ID.”
Cold sweeps through me in one vicious rush. “That is a very fucking stupid sentence to say to someone preserving every communication for lawyers.”
“You destroyed me.”
I hear a horn somewhere farther off, followed by the solid thunk of a car door.
“No, Sloane. You’re going to listen to this part because I’m tired. I did not call Bellemore. I did not remove you from Crown Ridge. I did not fire your manager. I did not tell you to go live and lie about me. You repeated a lie publicly, and I corrected it.”
“You challenged the song.”
“I wrote the damn thing.”
“You weren’t using it.”
Oh God. She really is this stupid.
It’s Grant’s logic all over again: if I’m not actively using something, then somehow my claim to it expires and the nearest interested person gets to help themselves.
“You’d have to work backward from first grade to get ownership this fucking wrong.”
“You had hundreds of songs.”
“And which one of your belongings are you comfortable handing me because I have fewer?”
“Fuck you.”
“I don’t fuck public property.”
Her breathing roughens. “You think you’re better than me because Beckett Vale wants you.”
“For fuck’s sake, why does everyone keep dragging Beckett into shit he had nothing to do with?”
“Everything has to do with Beckett. Grant talked about him constantly.”
My attention sharpens. “What did he say?”
She laughs. “There. You do care.”
“You called me.”
“He said Beckett had been waiting for years, that you loved the attention, and he caught you looking at Vale in Austin.”
“You already released that recording.”
“I have others.”
“Great. Send them to your lawyer and stop calling me.”
“You’re scared.”
“Of recordings proving my ex-husband spent six months discussing me with the woman he was fucking? No. Embarrassed for him, maybe.”
Her voice changes. “Are you scared of me?”
Everything in me stills, the way an animal does when a sound in the trees stops belonging to the wind.
“Should I be?”
Nothing.
Another horn sounds near her.
“You took everything,” she says.
“Where are you, Sloane?”
“You have your songs. Your millions. Your famous husband begging for you. Beckett fucking Vale waiting around to pick up whatever’s left. You get to walk away looking classy while everybody spits on me.”
“Where are you?”
“Do you know what people scream at me now? In parking lots? At my own fucking house?”
I move toward the front window and stop short of stepping into view.
Evelyn’s security company installed cameras two weeks ago. Dean replaced the bedroom lock with something he claims could survive “most respectable home invasions,” which sounded ridiculous when he said it.
The townhouse suddenly has too many windows.
“Sloane, listen carefully. Do not come to my home. Do not go anywhere near Beckett. Whatever you think you need to say to me goes through counsel.”
She gives one short laugh. “You really think I’m gonna take orders from you? I’ll ruin you, I’ll drag Vale House down with you, and we’ll see who’s left protecting you when I’m done.”
The line goes dead.
I keep the phone against my ear for another second, my hand shaking with anger. Every instinct in me wants to call her back, make her answer the question, find out where she is and what the fuck she thinks she’s doing.
Evelyn has spent enough billable hours training that instinct out of me. I save the recording and send it to her, followed by the security consultant. Monica gets the third message because having her number used as bait seems like information she deserves. She calls immediately.
“What the actual fuck?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Dean cannot know this.”
“Why?”
“He bought something called a tactical flashlight last week and has been waiting for justification.”
A laugh escapes me despite everything. “Tell him no vigilante shit.”
“I’ve been telling him that since we got married.”
My phone vibrates again before we hang up.
Security.
I open the message. They ran the footage after receiving my recording, and the same black Range Rover registered to Sloane has appeared near the townhouse twice in the last three days.
Once across from the entrance. Once half a block down.