Two Rings And A Grudge

CHAPTER TWO

Celeste Lin POV

Two days later, the rain was relentless. It poured over the black umbrellas gathered around the small grave and turned the cemetery grass into mud.

I stood a few meters from the crowd, because I didn’t know where I belonged.

My velvet dress had soaked through and clung to my legs. My boots sank into the mud.. I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I hadn't thought of it. Wet hair stuck to my cheeks, and I let it. If I was going to look like a drowned cat at my grandmother’s funeral, I would at least do it with commitment.

Across the grave, my parents stood among a cluster of relatives. My mother kept looking at me, and every time she did, her eyes drifted to my neck and my collarbone, to the ink at my throat and collarbone. It felt like a hand closing on my neck. She still saw my life as an artist as nothing more than a shameful phase.

Oliver stood with his parents. Even at a funeral, the Vanes family looked like a magazine spread. Blair wore a tailored black coat with a fur collar. Corbin stood stiff beside her, with two feet of empty air between them, a quiet reminder of their bitter divorce.

I looked at Oliver longer than I meant to, and something was wrong with the picture. His coat hung loose. His face was grey. He held a black umbrella over a small girl in a yellow raincoat, and he hadn't tilted any of it towards himself. Rain ran down his glasses. he didn’t wipe it away.

Zoe. Annika’s little girl, Oliver’s niece. I knew her from the photograph Gran kept on her fridge, and I had never for once met her.

For the first time in my life, Oliver Vane looked like a stranger.

Then he looked up and found me across the grave. Rain between us. A coffin between us. And the years of a valid grudge between us.

Neither of us looked away, not for one long, stupid second, and I felt it all the way down to my wet boots.

He looked away first. I decided that counted as a win. I was not going to examine why it didn’t feel like one.

When the casket went down, nobody spoke. Grief hung heavily in the cold air. I held my arms tight across my chest and watched the wood disappear, and I did not cry. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t, not in front of them.

Goodbye, Gran.

When the priest finished, people slowly began moving away from the grave. My mother reached me first.

“You could have worn something more appropriate.” she said sternly, her eyes judging every detail.

I looked down at myself. Nothing ever satisfied her.

“It’s a funeral, Mum. I’m wearing black.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Her lips pressed together.

Of course it wasn’t. with my mother, appropriate has always meant less like you.

My father stepped in, his hands tucked into his coat pockets. He had that soft look he always wore, as if he might say something kind. That was the worst thing part. He never did.

“How have you been managing with work?”

“Fine.”

My mother’s eyes did a full lap of me. “You're getting thin.”

I almost laughed. But I forced a smile instead. “I said I’m fine.”

Nobody believed that. Behind the worry was the old disappointment: the lawyer I’d never become.

My father opened his mouth, but my mother spoke first. “Come home with us.”

I stiffened. “I have my own place.”

She gave me a look that called me a bad liar. I was a terrible one. My car was three streets away with a blanket folded on the back seat, because I’d been too ashamed to park it where anyone might see.

I lifted my chin.

“We’re your parents, Celeste.”

“And I’m twenty-six.”

Silence.

“Just think about it.” my father sighed, wrapping an arm around my mother before steering her away.

I let out a breath I’d been holding since the first hymn.

“Celeste?” A soft voice called out to me.

Blair Vane stood in front of me, one gloved hand over the other. Up close, she was even more composed. Not a single raindrop had dared land on her.

“I’m so sorry about Hazel. She was a dear friend to Fiona, and to me.”

“Thank you.”

She gave me a small, sad smile that almost undid me.

Then Corbin Vane stepped up, grey at the temples with a face that had never been surprised. I hadn’t heard his voice in six years. And I hadn’t missed it.

“Your grandmother was remarkable.”

“Thank you, Mr. Vane.”

My voice came out flat and polite. My hands had gone cold inside my sleeves. His eyes moved towards Oliver, and mine followed without permission.

Oliver was bending to Zoe, who buried her face in his coat. His hand cupped the back of her head, so carefully it hurt to watch.

Corbin noticed me looking.

“He’s been worried about you.”

My eyes snapped back to him. “What?”

“Corbin.” Blair touched his arm. “That’s enough.”

He nodded. They offered another quiet condolence and walked away. I stood there with my heart thudding, wondering what exactly Oliver had been saying about me, and why Corbin had sounded almost sorry.

“Celeste!”

Iris, leaning out of her blue sedan, one arm waving as if she were landing a plane.

I’d known her since we were six. She was small and round-cheeked, with a cloud of dark curls pinned up in a clip that never held and a laugh you could hear across a street. She was a therapist now, which meant she couldn’t walk into a room without reading it. She had read me in the first week of school, over a shared bag of crisps, and she had never once pretended she hadn’t. She’d called Gran Grandma Yai since she was seven.

She ran across the grave with a pink umbrella, and hugged me before I could say a word. Coconut shampoo and car heater. She held on until I stopped holding my breath.

“Where’s your car?” she asked into my shoulder.

“At the mechanic.”

She pulled back and looked at me. Just looked, soft-faced, one second too long. She didn’t belive me.

She didn’t push. That was Iris.

“Come on. I’m buying ice cream. You need some.”

Despite everything, I smiled. “It’s raining.”

“It’s always better in the rain. It’s a rule. Grandma Yai would have said so.”

I laughed, wobbly, and let her tuck her arm through mine.

We were halfway to her car when a man in a three-piece suit stepped into our path, a leather briefcase under one arm. Grey hair, grey eyes, the calm of someone who’d spent forty years being the quiet one in the room.

“Miss Lin? Lewis Walter. I’m the executor of your grandmother’s estate and Mrs. Vane’s joint trust.”

Iris squeezed my arm and drifted off to her car. Smart woman.

“There will be a private reading of the will on Thursday at nine, at my firm’s office. Your attendance is required.”

“Required?” I frowned. “Gran didn’t have anything to leave me. A box of teacups, maybe.”

“The joint trust is considerably more than teacups, Miss Lin.” His eyes flickered over my shoulder. “And it required your presence. Along with Dr. Vane’s.”

I turned.

Oliver was buckling Zoe into the back of a black SUV. He’d taken off his wet coat and wrapped it around her. He closed the door, straightened, pushed up his glasses, and looked straight across the cemetery at me.

My stomach twisted, and I told myself it was the lawyer’s fault.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I walked to Iris’s car. I could feel his eyes on my back the whole way. I didn’t turn around.

I’m proud of that. It was the hardest thing I did all day.