15. Heidi
HEIDI
Celeste arrives at the diner seventeen days after Ivy's birth wearing the camel coat she wore in the hospital café.
People recognize us. That is why I agreed to meet here.
The woman behind the register looks at Celeste, then at me. Two people in a booth near the windows stop talking.
My body wants to leave. I am seventeen days postpartum, tired from feeding Ivy before I came, and every careful step still pulls through my pelvis.
I chose public because Celeste has used the public against me. I did not expect courage to feel this much like nausea.
Celeste takes the outside seat and reaches for the menu. I remain standing until she looks up. “I need that seat.” Her mouth tightens, but she gets up and moves to the opposite bench.
“You look well,” she says.
“I look as though I had a baby seventeen days ago.”
Her gaze drops for a fraction of a second.
“Congratulations.”
“Her name is Ivy.”
“Beau told me.”
The waiter arrives before I answer. I order tea I do not want because I need one ordinary minute before the conversation begins.
She says Beau came willingly. I say I know. She says he never promised her a future. I say I know that too.
“Then why are you blaming me?”
“I blame my husband for his choices. I blame you for yours.”
I ask why she shared the photograph without correcting the paternity assumption.
“Because for once people saw that I mattered to him.”
“You used my daughter's birth to prove it.”
Her hand closes over her stomach. “He talked to me because you made everything about schedules and babies.”
I brace one hand against the table as the sleepless nights rush back.
“Schedules and babies,” I repeat.
“I don't mean there is anything wrong with being organized.”
“How generous.”
“He needed somewhere he wasn't being managed.”
I think of Beau bringing lunch to the clinic because I forgot to eat. Refinishing the rocking chair. Learning exactly where to press during a contraction before he removed his hand and left.
Celeste has received the version of our marriage he used to make himself interesting. She speaks as though she saw the rooms. She saw only what he carried out to her.
“Did he tell you I managed him?”
“Not in those words.”
“What words?”
She looks toward the window. “He said you always had a plan.”
“I did. The plan was to have our daughter with my husband beside me.”
The tables nearest us go quiet.
“He told you that?”
She retreats into paraphrase. Beau said I was practical. Beau said he could breathe when somebody simply needed him.
The waiter brings the check before I ask. His eyes stay politely on the table.
Celeste reaches for it.
“Beau would hate you paying for both of us.”
I take out enough money for my tea.
“Beau is not here.”
“Because you made him choose.”
“Yes.”
She blinks.
“Marriage contains choices,” I say. “So does friendship. You keep talking as though needing him removed his ability to decide.”
“You don't understand what panic feels like.”
“I gave birth while watching the door,” I say. “Do not explain panic to me.”
For the first time, she has nothing ready.
“You relied on my silence because you thought humiliation would keep me quiet. It won't.”
Celeste's face flushes.
“I didn't force Beau to come.”
“No. You created situations where asking him became a test of how much you mattered.”
“He could have said no.”
“Yes.”
The agreement unsettles her.
“He should have said no,” I continue. “He should have told me. He should have stayed. I am not offering you his responsibility.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because you posted the photograph. You wrote family. You invited people into my workplace. Those choices belong to you.”
Her hand moves protectively over her stomach. I will not attack the movement or the child beneath it.
“If you use my name, my daughter, or my workplace again,” I say, “I will answer with the exact truth. Not a rumor. Not an insult. The truth.”
I leave the money beneath my cup and stand carefully. The ache through my pelvis makes the movement slow, but I do not let her mistake slowness for hesitation.
Celeste follows me toward the register.
“You think being his wife means you know every part of him.”
“No. I thought honesty meant I was allowed to know the parts that could destroy my life.”
She says Beau was lonely. She says he could speak to her without being given a list of tasks. I ask whether he used those words. She admits he did not.
The distinction matters. She has built a promise from the room he left around his statements. Beau let her build it because her belief pleased him.
I leave Celeste in the public room she chose to use against me.
Outside, my body reminds me I gave birth seventeen days ago. I sit in my car until the ache eases. Public courage does not make me physically recovered. I call Mom, tell her where I am, and wait until I am steady enough to drive home.