Chapter 6 - Cecilia
Celeste dropped the mother act first.
Not completely. People like her never remove a mask if they can simply turn it around and call it another face.
But her posture changed. The soft maternal tilt of her head vanished. Her eyes sharpened, and suddenly the age difference between her and Adrian no longer felt like mother and son, but like partners in a business old enough to be tired and greedy.
“You don’t understand what you found,” she said.
I almost laughed.
“That tends to be what fraud suspects hope.”
Adrian’s face hardened. “Stop talking like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re in court.”
“I’m usually there because men like you get careless.”
His jaw flexed.
Celeste moved toward the desk. “Evelyn, listen to me. Whatever the county thinks, this is more complicated.”
“No, Cecilia. It’s actually getting simpler.”
Her name struck the room.
Adrian looked at her too quickly.
That glance was better than a signature.
I let my eyes move to the papers.
“Did Anne think it was complicated?”
Neither answered.
“How about Patrice?”
Celeste’s mouth tightened.
“Or Nora in Maine?” I asked. “Did she misunderstand too?”
Adrian said, “You’ve been talking to people.”
“Yes.”
“You have no idea who they were.”
“I know they survived you.”
For the first time, his expression slipped into something ugly.
“They signed.”
I felt the sentence move through my body like ice water.
Not denial.
Not sorrow.
They signed.
That was how he thought of them. Not wives. Not women. Not lives. Signatures that had performed their function.
I kept my breathing even.
“So if I sign, I’m responsible for what happens next?”
His eyes narrowed, sensing the shape of the question but too angry to avoid it.
“You’re an adult, Evelyn.”
“And if the marriage license contains false information?”
Celeste whispered, “Marcus.”
The name left her mouth before she could stop it.
There.
The final thread.
Adrian turned on her. “Shut up.”
My phone sat face down in the outer pocket of my handbag, recording clean audio while my pulse beat so hard I could hear it in my ears.
I smiled then.
Not happily.
Never that.
But with the faint, unreadable calm of a woman watching the trap close from the inside.
“Marcus,” I said softly. “That sounds less like my husband.”
A knock landed on the suite door.
Three steady taps.
Adrian froze.
Celeste looked at me.
I said, “That will be the honeymoon transportation.”
May you like
Then Helen Price’s voice came from the hall.
“County registration office. Open the door, please.”
