Chapter 15 Roxy
Celestina Lombardi was waiting for me on the porch when I arrived at her house.
It was small but well-maintained, with cheery-looking zinnias planted in the windowboxes.
As for the lady of the house, she looked just as expensive as her home suggested.
She was waiting on the front porch in a simple white tee and jeans with pearl studs in her ears, clean and modern.
Yet when she wrapped her arms around me, I was instantly transported back to those wild Murphy parties, where a younger Celestina would show up on occasion, hoop earrings swinging with each vodka shot.
“I’m a businesswoman now,” she explained proudly as she waved me inside.
She showed me to an elegant kitchen, which was fragrant with the scent of fresh coffee warming in the coffeepot. An indoor herb garden crowded the windowsill above the sink. Basil, parsley, and cilantro grew from a trio of terra cotta pots, bristling with leafy, green growth.
“Sit down,” Celestina said, gesturing to the marble-topped island. She poured some coffee into a pair of matching earthenware mugs and set out a plate of chocolate chip scones. “How are your parents doing?”
“They’re enjoying retirement in Florida,” I said. “How about you? What kind of business are you in these days?”
“I run a party-planning company with my aunt. It’s all legit,” she said.
I felt my smile faltering. My life paled in comparison to everything Celestina had accomplished. To avoid talking some more about our goals and achievements, I skipped straight to the headline.
“So, I reached out because I’m looking for a divorce lawyer.”
Celestina lowered her mug. “Okay, she said slowly. “I’m going to need you to explain why.”
It's now or never, I thought to myself, drawing in a quick breath. "I came here to end it with him, officially and on paper. I’ve been keeping a low profile because…of the judgement. I haven’t been living up to wifely duties. Which is why a divorce is necessary."
Celestina tipped her head back and laughed, flashing her perfectly straight teeth.
"Oh don’t worry, I get it. This life is especially tough on the women. Why do you think I swore I’d never get married?"
I stared down at my cup. “I wish we’d been closer back then. Maybe you would’ve told me not to get married in the first place.”
“I would’ve told you to marry him if you love him. Did you?”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” I said.
“And do you still?”
That I couldn’t answer.
Celestina raised a slim eyebrow. “What is it that you want, really?”
"Well, I've been asking myself the same question," I said with a laugh. "I think I just want it to be over and done with. No more dirty tricks. I want the freedom to finally move on with a clean conscience."
"I see," Celestina said. She took a long, pensive sip of her coffee, then cleared her throat. "Have you seen Liam since getting back?"
"A few times."
Celestina's lips twisted in a skeptical-looking way.
"Oh don’t look at me like that. I have needs and so does he. And in the eyes of God, we’re still—"
"God has nothing to do with this. You took your vows in front of God, didn’t you?"
“That sounds like something Liam would say,” I said.
Celestina sighed and set down her cup. “My advice? Go to his father before looking for a lawyer. Tell him how you feel. He’s an honorable man, and he’ll hear you out. Maybe it doesn’t have to be an all-out war, and both of you can still get what you want.”
To be honest, the thought of facing his family made me even more nervous than that first dinner with Liam. But I also knew that when I first made that choice to leave, I’d picked a path, and this was where the path ended.
* * *
After getting home from Celestina's, feeling restless and unable to wind down, I finally dragged myself to the boxes in my bedroom and started sorting through three years of my life crammed into cardboard.
It was clear that I’d held onto a lot of nonsense. Old bartending polos I should've thrown out. A stack of tax documents from four different states. A shoebox of receipts and ticket stubs I couldn't bring myself to part with, the ghost of a life I'd built entirely out of running.
I found the folder near the bottom of the second box.
It was a plain manila one. And although it wasn't labeled, I knew it was stuffed with old pay stubs from the Silver Anchor.
I'd shoved a bunch of paperwork in there the night the casino folded, angry and half-drunk on the last free pour I ever gave myself from behind that bar, grabbing whatever was scattered across the back office because it felt like taking something back from a place that had taken so much from me.
I hadn't looked at it since. I barely remembered what was even in there.
Which was exactly why it took me a full ten seconds of staring to realize something was wrong.
The folder was out of order.
I knew my own mess. I'd shoved those papers in there fast and sloppy, pay stubs on top, everything crammed at odd angles the way things get when you're moving too fast to care.
But now the pay stubs were on the bottom, and there was a single loose page sitting slightly askew near the top, like someone had pulled the whole stack out, flipped through it, and put it back in a hurry without matching my original chaos.
My pulse picked up.
I lifted the loose page out with careful fingers, like it might bite me.
It was a printed spreadsheet, half a page of numbers and account codes that meant absolutely nothing to me on their own: dates, percentages, a column labeled Silver Ace Holdings LLC next to another labeled Reported.
There was a faint, unfamiliar crease down the middle, like it had been folded and unfolded more than once.
I sat back on my heels in the middle of my bedroom floor, surrounded by the wreckage of boxes, and felt the apartment go very quiet around me. The hairs on my arms rose.
Someone had been in here.
I wasn't robbed, though. Nothing else looked touched.
My jewelry, cheap as it was, sat untouched in its dish on the dresser.
My laptop was still on the nightstand where I'd left it.
Whoever had come through hadn't wanted money or electronics.
They'd wanted this. This exact folder, this exact page, and they'd been careful enough about it that if I hadn't decided, on a random restless Sunday, to finally unpack, I might never have noticed at all.
I grabbed my phone again, hands still shaking as I dialed the only person I knew who could help. Because whatever this was, whatever it meant, I was done sitting alone in an apartment that clearly wasn't as private as I'd thought.
“What?” Liam said when he picked up.
“Someone’s been in my apartment,” I blurted out. “I don’t know who, or how, or even when—”
“Are you there right now?” Liam said, his voice going dark with urgency.
“Yeah—”
“Get outta there right now. Grab your purse and your keys and just go. I’m on my way.”