Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER…
Celeste
Time blurs with Max in my life. Three months ago, I nearly dropped my phone when Selena called asking to represent me.
Now I'm frozen at my kitchen table, staring at a check that makes my previous salary look like pocket change.
Six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
For words I wrote. My signature wobbles across the endorsement line, and after taxes and Selena's commission, I know exactly where the money's going. I put a substantial down payment on a condo for Mom, over her objections, and the greatest thing is, she’s strong enough to move now.
So, a week later, I watch Lexi toss her backpack onto the cream-colored sofa in Mom's new Westwood place, UCLA's iconic bell tower framed perfectly in the window behind her.
Just weeks ago, Mom's hands shook too much to hold her tea. This morning, she planted herself in the doorway, spine straight, finger pointing as she commanded the moving crew. “Oh, for chrissakes, that’s a Tiffany lamp, not a baseball!” she barks to the movers who are still bringing her stuff into the new place.
The hollows in her cheeks have filled in, her jeans fit again, and though Max denies it every time I ask, I know exactly who paid for the treatment that's bringing her back to us.
Max. Soon-to-be my ex-husband. The expiration date on our marriage ticks away silently between us, neither of us acknowledging the countdown.
I catch myself watching him sometimes across the breakfast table, wondering how I'll feel when this is over.
But there's Mom—her color returning, her appetite back, her laugh no longer forced.
"No evidence of disease," the oncologist said last week, his voice betraying surprise at how quickly she'd responded to the treatment. May is circled in red on our calendar now—merger completion, divorce papers, as the merger has been postponed from March until May now, so there’s some reprieve but not a lot.
I've practiced saying the words "irreconcilable differences" in my bathroom mirror.
Yet every time Mom calls, bubbling with energy she hasn't had in years, I know whose signature is on those medical bills she never sees.
While Max jet-sets to Tokyo for some gaming company deal—something about expanding Kensington's "intellectual property portfolio," as he calls it—I'm here with cardboard boxes and packing tape, helping Mom and Lexi move.
Things between Max and me have been like something from a movie these past months, but I find myself stepping back.
Creating distance. When he texts from Japan, I wait hours before responding.
Our nightly FaceTime ritual? I've let it slide completely.
I tell myself he's swamped with meetings anyway, that I'm doing him a favor by not interrupting.
But really, I'm protecting myself. Because fairy tales end, and I can't bear the thought of building my whole world around someone who might disappear.
Mom staggers through the doorway, her arms wrapped around a cardboard box labeled "Kitchen—Fragile" in my hurried Sharpie scrawl.
Her cheeks are flushed pink against her newly cropped blonde hair, evidence of its post-chemo regrowth.
"Oh, Celeste," she groans, setting the box down on the hardwood floor with a muffled clink of dishes.
"Why did I let you talk me into this?" Then her weathered face breaks into that familiar crinkle-eyed smile.
"Ah, but look at this!" She rolls up the sleeve of her faded blue t-shirt and flexes her bicep with theatrical flair.
"Just started Pilates. Can you believe it?
" The muscle is small but defined—a victory flag raised against everything her body has endured.
I grin. "You know why I helped you buy this condo, Mom.
It's super close for Lexi, it's gorgeous and it's yours, not a rental.
And I know you need this sunroom." I sweep my arms towards the sunroom where afternoon light streams through floor-to-ceiling windows, casting honey-gold rectangles across the polished maple floors.
I love everything about this place, and Mom does too - from the rich amber hardwood that gleams under our feet, to the intricate crown molding that frames each room like artwork, to the soaring 10' ceilings that make even this modest space feel palatial.
The terrace outside, barely larger than a postage stamp but perfectly positioned to catch the morning sun, already holds Mom's collection of jewel-toned glass hummingbird feeders and three terracotta pots where tiny green tomato seedlings reach skyward - a world away from the water-stained ceilings and peeling linoleum of her dingy old apartment.
Tally and Liv push through the door with cardboard boxes stacked to their chins.
Tally blows a strand of hair from her face and sets her load down with a thud.
"Tell me we're done after this round, Celeste.
" She turns to Mom with an apologetic grimace.
"Patricia, you know I'd do anything for you, but my back is killing me. Thank god it’s cool today. "
I bite my tongue to keep from mentioning my upcoming move from Max's place—Mom doesn't need to hear that right now.
She and Max have developed this unexpected connection since Christmas, when she stayed with us.
I still can't get over the sight of Mom hunched over a poker table with Max, Gianni, and the rest of the Kensington brothers—Ansel, Roman, Kalen, Asher, Cameron, Silas and Connor—all of them locked in their family's traditional Christmas Eve tournament.
Turns out they do it every year instead of singing Christmas carols and opening gifts, and I was there for it.
Mom's face when she raked in that final pot!
The next day, on Christmas Day, the wind whipped through our hair as Max steered his sailboat towards Catalina Island.
I watched them from the bow, and then watched their heads bent close together over a museum exhibit, then later splashing each other like kids during our kayak adventure.
Mom's laugh—that full-throated one I hadn't heard in years—echoed every time Max launched into another outlandish tale, such as the one about him about stealing his grandfather's yacht at thirteen and accidentally docking at a nudist beach, his hands painting elaborate pictures in the air, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper at the punchlines that made Mom double over, clutching her sides. Or about the time he accidentally set his prep school headmaster’s toupee on fire during a chemistry experiment gone wrong.
Mom got a kick out of these stories and by the time she went home after staying with us a week, she told me how much she adored my husband.
Mom grimaces and jabs a thumb in my direction.
"Don't look at me. This genius right here is responsible.
" She rolls her eyes so hard I'm surprised they don't get stuck.
"You should move, she said. You’ll love it, she said.
Meanwhile, I'm seriously contemplating whether they'd let me plead temporary insanity if I strangled her.
Lucky for her I love her too much. And I guess she was trying to help. So there's that."
I can't help but laugh. "Well, the silver lining is I can actually pay for movers now.
" I catch Tally staring at one of the movers—the one with arms like tree trunks and a jawline that belongs on a movie poster.
I nudge her with my elbow. Earlier, I overheard him mentioning his husband while arranging boxes.
Mom nearly spilled her coffee when I whispered it to her.
Classic Tally—somehow always gravitating toward men who couldn't possibly be interested.
We spend the next few hours lugging boxes while the moving guys handle the furniture for Lexi's new condo.
Once everything's inside, Lexi—who orchestrated this entire move like a general—collapses onto the bare living room floor.
She fans her arms and legs across the hardwood, making invisible snow angels and dissolving into laughter.
I join her, our limbs sweeping in unison.
The gesture transports me back to Kansas City winters, when we'd fall backward into real snowdrifts, our breath clouding above us.
Los Angeles hasn't seen actual snow since '62.
Sometimes I miss the Midwest's clear-cut seasons, though I conveniently forget how much I cursed those icy mornings while scraping my windshield, my nostalgia selective as always.
“What are you two nuts doing?” Mom asks, laughing.
Lexi's eyes sparkle as she surveys the new place. "This is heaven compared to the rat colony we were living in before. Though I was always partial to sweet Willard.”
I groan at the memory. Only my sister would name a disease-carrying rodent after a horror movie.
The whole nightmare started when her neighbor Bill's "pet" Suzy turned out to be pregnant.
Instead of dealing with the babies responsibly, Bill released them into the wild—the wild being their apartment complex.
Six months later, management was setting traps while Lexi conducted her one-woman rescue operation, relocating captured rats to "the countryside" where they're probably staging a takeover of some poor farmer's barn.
She even kept one as a pet until her class schedule made rat-parenting too demanding.
I still remember her tearful goodbye when she surrendered Willard to the animal shelter, gender still undetermined.
Three and a half months into marriage with Max, and I still catch myself wondering if this is real.
I wake up tangled in his sheets, his scent lingering on my skin, and have to pinch myself.
Last month, he casually mentioned tickets to the Super Bowl—as if everyone just happens to have access to a private suite at SoFi Stadium.
When we found out the Chiefs were playing, his eyes lit up with that look I've come to recognize: the one that says he's about to make me deliriously happy. Mom, Lexi and I all got to share his family’s suite at this past Super Bowl.
Mom and Lexi couldn't stop gaping at the champagne fountains and celebrities, while I couldn't stop watching Max watching me celebrate as Kansas City demolished Detroit. I screamed every obscenity known to man during that game - couldn’t help myself, it was a nail-biter for the first three quarters before the Chiefs broke it wide open in the fourth quarter, scoring 21 unanswered points.
So, yeah, that was yet another fantasy brought to life by Max.
It's past midnight when I finally make it home after helping Lexi and Mom settle into their new place.
The house is empty—Max won't be back from Tokyo until tomorrow—and I stand for a moment in the dark stillness, listening to the distant rhythm of waves against the shore.
My fingers trace the outline of my phone, still warm from Mom's call thanking me again.
Two screenplay deadlines sit in my inbox.
And somewhere over the Pacific, a man I never expected to love is flying back to me.
I can't help but smile at the ceiling, even as a tiny voice whispers: surely the universe won't let me keep all this.