Twelve Months To Ruin You

Celestine Visits

Celestine Wheeler walked into Derrick Cavell’s penthouse, looked around once and said “this place needs more plants.”

“Hello to you too, Mama.”

“I mean it. It’s too empty.” She was already walking, not waiting to be shown around, just moving through the living room like she owned it and had opinions about the renovation. She stopped at the windowsill. Looked at the plant Anne had put there in week two. “Oh, this one is happy. You’ve been watering it.”

“Every three days.”

“Good.” She turned. Looked at the couch. The throw blanket. The kitchen through the doorway. She looked at Anne with the expression she used when she’d already worked something out and was deciding whether to say it. “It looks lived in.”

“We live here.”

“I can tell.” She held out the dish she’d brought. “Put this somewhere warm.”

****

Derrick appeared twenty minutes later from the direction of his study, jacket off, looking like a man who’d forgotten the time. Celestine was already at the kitchen table and she looked up at him and smiled like they’d met before.

“You must be Derrick.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Sit. Anne made tea and I guessed how you take it.”

He sat. Picked up the cup she pushed toward him. Took a sip. “That’s right.”

“I’m good at guessing people.” She said it without pride, just as a fact. “Anne says you run your father’s company.”

“Built on it. He started it.”

“How old were you when you took over?”

“Twenty two.”

Celestine was quiet for a moment. “That’s young to carry something that heavy.”

“He was younger when he built it.”

She tilted her head. There was something very still about the way she listened, not polite stillness, actual attention. “You think about him a lot.”

It wasn’t a question. Derrick looked at her. “Yes.”

“Good. You should.” She looked at her tea. “My husband was the same. Clement. He built his company young, worried about it constantly, drove around this part of Dallas sometimes in the evenings just to think.” She paused. “He said the skyline helped.”

Derrick was quiet for a second. “My father used to do that too.”

Celestine looked up at him.

“Same route, probably,” Derrick said. “He talked about this area.”

Something moved across Celestine’s face. Not grief exactly, something older than fresh grief, the kind that had settled into something quieter. “He sounds like he was a good man.”

“He was.”

Anne had been watching from across the table. She looked at Derrick when he said it, two words, nothing decorated, just true, and then she looked at her tea.

****

Celestine stayed for two hours.

She had a way of asking questions that didn’t feel like questions. At one point she asked Derrick what he did when the company got difficult and he said he managed it and she said “no, what do you actually do” and he paused long enough that it was honest and said he drove sometimes, just around, no destination. She said “like your father” and he said yes and left it there.

When she finally stood to leave she touched Derrick’s arm and said “come for dinner sometime. Properly. Not for any reason, just dinner.” He said he would. She nodded like that was settled.

Derrick went to get her coat.

Celestine turned to Anne fast, like she’d been waiting for exactly this gap. She took Anne’s hands and held them and said quietly, not a whisper, just low… “he looks at you when you’re not watching. You know that?”

“Mama…..”

“I’m not making it into something. I’m telling you what I saw.” She squeezed once. “That’s all.”

Derrick came back. Anne let go, stepped back and helped her mother with her coat, walked her to the elevator and said all the normal things, call when you get home, the food was too much, you didn’t have to. Celestine waved all of it off. The elevator came. The doors closed.

Anne stood there.

Then she went back inside.

****

Derrick was at the sink.

He was washing Celestine’s cups. Not the dinner dishes, those were done, just the teacups and the small plate her mother had used, standing there with his sleeves pushed up doing it because apparently that was just something he did now.

Anne stood in the doorway for three seconds.

Then she went to her room.

She sat on the bed. Looked at the wall. Had a serious, clear conversation with herself, about why she was in this penthouse, about her father, about six years, about the plan that was still sitting exactly where she’d left it. She went through every point. Every reason held up. She was fine. She won the conversation.

She turned the light off.

Lay in the dark.

*He looks at you when you’re not watching.*

She stared at the ceiling.

Here was the problem. Not the looking, she’d noticed that herself weeks ago and filed it. The problem was that she’d spent two hours tonight watching her mother sit at a kitchen table that wasn’t hers and make it feel like home, and watching Derrick answer questions about his father with two words and mean all of them, and she’d felt something she didn’t have a clean category for.

She closed her eyes.

The plan was fine. She was fine. Two attempts, two misses, she needed to adjust the approach and she would and that was what tomorrow was for. Tonight she was going to sleep and in the morning everything would be clear.

Her phone buzzed.

She looked at it.

Maya. A message with a document attached and a note that said *client moved the meeting to 7am, sorry.*

Anne looked at the time. Eleven forty.

She sat up. Opened the document. Started reading.

Forty minutes later she was still at her desk when she heard movement in the hallway. Footsteps. They stopped outside her door.

A knock. One.

“Anne.”

“I’m working.”

“It’s midnight.”

“I know what time it is.”

A pause. “The Abara thing?”

She stopped. “How did you know about the Abara thing?”

“You mentioned it was running behind two days ago.”

“I mentioned it once.”

“I know.” Another pause. “Do you need anything?”

She looked at the document. Looked at the door.

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

Silence. Then footsteps going back down the hall.

She sat at her desk and looked at the door he’d knocked on at midnight because she’d mentioned something once two days ago and he’d remembered it and she did not know what to do with a man who remembered things like that while she was busy planning to get rid of him.

She looked at the document.

Looked at the door.

Closed the document.

Opened it again.

Her third attempt was going to have to be different. Smarter. Something that didn’t rely on his routine staying the same because his routine kept changing. She needed something that came to him instead of waiting for him to come to it.

She needed to think.

But right now at midnight what she was actually thinking about was footsteps stopping outside her door and *do you need anything* said through wood in the dark and she was in considerably more trouble than she’d planned to be at the six week mark.

She was going to fix that.

Starting tomorrow.