50
Between the blackout and the heat, everyone had fled to the beach. With few customers, Celeste closed the store early and met Jack on the water.
The boat offered an escape. Out on the Pacheco, it was their own private P’town. Celeste leaned back on the bench seat and looked out at the horizon. The early evening light never lost its wow factor. Celeste had witnessed countless summer sunsets, and no two were ever the same. Once, she’d heard herself explaining this to a friend back in New York, and she realized she sounded just like her father talking about diamonds.
“Uh-oh. I know that look,” Jack said affectionately from behind the wheel.
“What look?”
“That line between your brows. Never a good sign. Come take the wheel for a minute. I’m losing the wind.”
She took his place behind the control panel while he adjusted the sails. The truth was she felt more relaxed than she had in a long time.
“Elodie finally told me what happened to Paulina’s ring,” she said. “My parents sold it after she died.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully. “You let all that go a long time ago. Now maybe your niece can, too.”
Well, that’s where he was wrong: She hadn’t let it go. And now her sister and niece were stirring it all up again. She found herself thinking, again and again, of her last conversation with Paulina. It had been the morning after Gemma’s eighth birthday party, her next visit after the stressful anniversary celebration for the Electric Rose.
The birthday party was yet another Pavlin extravaganza. Alan and Constance rented out the Plaza’s Oak Room for an intimate family gathering of, oh, two hundred people. When Paulina invited her, she felt torn. She wanted to be there for her sister and niece but hated the thought of making small talk with strangers all night, explaining why she lived so far away, and why she wasn’t married. Jack begged out of the spectacle, and she didn’t blame him.
“Why don’t you and Liam bring Gemma here for a visit instead?” Celeste had suggested with a trans-Atlantic call to Paulina a few weeks earlier. The three of them were still busy bouncing around Europe. Paulina and Liam’s habits hadn’t changed much in the years since becoming parents, and Paulina insisted she was going to settle in one place “soon.” Constance was pushing them to plant themselves in the city so Gemma could have a proper education, but so far Paulina hadn’t committed.
“Oh, please come to the party! I can’t deal with Elodie’s dirty looks without you as a buffer. You’re honestly the only one I really want to see. And bring Heron—Gemma is begging us for a pet, so at least that might satisfy her for a weekend.” At the time, Celeste and Jack had a rescue dog named after her favorite Cape Cod bird.
Celeste agreed to go for the weekend—without the dog. She was staying at her parents’ on Park Avenue and Constance didn’t like animals because they smelled.
She mollified herself during the long drive with the fact that at such a huge party, the tension between her sisters would be swallowed up by the crowd. Celeste should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
It wasn’t enough for her parents to have a wedding-sized party for their eight-year-old granddaughter. They also hosted a dinner the night before, family only, at the apartment. When Celeste arrived, she found that Paulina and Liam were also staying there for the weekend. She’d had enough of the acrimony between her sisters during the last visit, but her adorable niece was some consolation; Gemma was a sweet, shy child who looked a lot like Paulina, with the same flaxen hair and bright blue-green eyes. But even at that age she was clearly her own little person. She talked about her love of animals and how she wanted to be a veterinarian or an artist when she grew up.
Gemma showed Elodie a drawing she’d made, and Elodie sneered that she’d better learn to color properly if she planned on becoming an artist.
“Ease up,” Celeste had whispered, pulling her aside. “Whatever happened in the past isn’t her fault. She never did anything to you.”
“Her existence is doing something to me,” Elodie said. “Something you’d understand if you ever took a second to consider my feelings.”
It was hopeless. Years and years since the nuclear photos of Paulina, Liam, and Celeste on the beach, and Elodie was no closer to getting over it. She still hated Paulina, she resented the child, and she blamed Celeste for not taking her “side.” Celeste would have to just ride out the weekend, and the next time Paulina wanted to see her, it was going to have to be in Provincetown.
She had no idea that there wouldn’t be a next time.
The table was set with crystal candlesticks and vases bursting with pink peonies. Paulina asked their mother if the birthday cake had pink icing, as she’d requested.
Constance turned to Gemma. “Your mother always insisted on pink frosting on her birthday cakes.”
“It’s the best!” Paulina said, giving Gemma a wink.
Her father praised Liam’s latest boost to their marketing efforts. While Liam no longer worked for the ad agency, he never stopped sending ideas to Alan even as he and Paulina traveled the world. That night, he told Alan that the new popularity of “blogs” was something they should capitalize on. Specifically, he showed them that Paulina’s blog got a tremendous amount of “traffic” and they should look at ways to monetize that.
“If she wears a piece in a photo on her blog, women will want to buy it. We need to figure out a way to integrate commerce so that her followers can buy with the click of a button.”
“No one really buys jewelry online,” Constance said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I hate to say it, Constance, but they do,” Liam said.
“Online shopping is the way of the future, Mom,” said Paulina. Celeste agreed, but she kept her mouth shut. Getting involved in any conversation with the group was a lose-lose.
“The only future I want to discuss is when you’re going to come home. Enough of this gallivanting around! My granddaughter needs a proper education. I’ve made some inquires and she can start at Spence in the fall.” Constance turned to Liam. “And then you can come work for the company full-time. Save your ideas for the team in a conference room, not my dinner table.”
“The team has it covered, thanks, Mom,” Elodie said acidly.
After dinner, while her parents’ kitchen staff set out the dessert, Alan asked Celeste to come along with him for his walk. He always took a walk between dinner and dessert no matter how hot or cold the weather. Even at a restaurant he would take a stroll around the block.
It wasn’t unusual for him to tap one of them to accompany him. When she was growing up, the walks had afforded her some of her best conversations with her father. After a good meal and a glass of wine—he never allowed himself more than one glass—he was at his most relaxed and amiable. But that night, she sensed an agenda.
Sure enough, as soon as they rounded the corner into Central Park, he said: “Celeste, no matter how far away you live, you’re still the eldest sister. Everyone respects you. And I need your help.”
Respect? Did he call cutting her off financially for moving away respect? Maybe it was a form of respect. Maybe it was a way of letting her make her own way in the world. She was happy to do so.
“Dad, whatever it is, I don’t want to be involved.”
“This isn’t for me,” he said. “This is for your sister.”
“Paulina?”
“No. Elodie. I can’t have Liam working at the company. It would drive her mad. And I need her focused. Elodie has become a vital part of our organization.”
“So whatever you’re about to ask me is for you. For the company.”
“Your mother is determined to lure Paulina back here. I have a feeling this time Paulina will say yes. And I can’t have that.”
“So tell all this to Mom.”
“There’s no reasoning with your mother. She wants her baby back in the fold. So I need you to convince Paulina to say no.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“By example. You’ve decided that living at the farthest reaches of the earth is preferable to being part of our lives here. If it’s best for you, isn’t it best for Paulina?”
She told her father she’d think about it, even though she had no intention of getting involved.
The next morning, Paulina knocked on her bedroom door while she was packing up.
She carried a mug of coffee and was dressed in a T-shirt and faded red sweatpants with holes in them. With her long hair up in a ponytail, she looked like a teenager.
“I wish you could stay a few more days,” she said, sitting on the bed and crossing her legs.
“Bring Gemma to P’town,” Celeste said. “She’d love it.”
Paulina nodded. “I will. But also I need to figure out everything else.”
“What’s everything else?”
“Well, Mom and Dad want us here full-time.”
Celeste stopped folding her clothes. She’d already decided she wasn’t going to do her father’s bidding, but last night, seeing her little niece at the ostentatious party clearly planned more to impress her parents’ friends than to please a child, Celeste started thinking that maybe it was best for Paulina and Liam to have their own family life away from the Pavlin & Co circus.
“Don’t be pressured into moving back to the city just because Mom says so,” Celeste said. “What do you want?”
Paulina sighed. There was a certain light missing from her eyes. It wasn’t unhappiness. It was the absence of the complete carefree self-centeredness. It was motherhood.
“I almost feel ready to be here more of the time. But Liam wants to spend some time sailing. He’s really into the idea of going back to the South of France. I just don’t know how practical that trip would be with Gemma.”
“You always take Gemma with you. Why would this be any different?”
Paulina shrugged. “I guess you’re right,” she said. Just like that: I guess you’re right.
One month later, she and Liam were dead. A boating accident near an out-of-the-way village called Villesèquelande.
Jack took his place back behind the steering column of the boat. When Celeste sat back down on the bench, her hands were shaking. Elodie had been right to be angry with her all these years, just not for the reasons she thought. Celeste hadn’t done wrong by her: She’d done wrong by Paulina. She told Paulina to leave because that was her personal method of dealing with their parents. But maybe Paulina could have stayed in New York and found another solution. At least she’d still be alive today.
“Jack?” Suddenly she felt that if she kept this inside for one moment longer she would burst.
“Yes, my dear?” he said, smiling at her.
“Nothing,” she said.