The Debt Beneath the Flowers
Chapter 08 - The Debt Beneath the Flowers
Celeste invited Nora to tea in a quiet hotel two blocks from Lydia's office. She made the invitation through Lydia and offered three possible times, any of which Nora could decline. It was the first time in three years Celeste had approached her without assuming she would come.
Nora chose the earliest appointment. Celeste was seated beside a window, dressed in gray, with a plain gold wedding band instead of the diamonds that had seemed part of her body. She stood when Nora entered. Nora had once thought this woman incapable of uncertainty. Now the uncertainty was visible in the way she held the chair.
"Thank you for coming," Celeste said.
"I came for information."
"Of course."
They ordered tea. Neither touched it. Beyond the windows people crossed the street carrying shopping bags, coffee, umbrellas. Nora felt vaguely irritated by the city's refusal to slow down for personal ruin.
"My father wrote that a Moretti visited him after he tried to return a payment," she said. "Was it you?"
Celeste folded her hands. "Yes."
Nora had prepared herself for an evasion. The plain answer left her without her next question for several seconds.
"I didn't go there to threaten him," Celeste continued. "My husband had died by then. Rafe told me Elias was demanding money from the company. He gave me a copy of an invoice and asked me to settle it quietly."
"You believed him?"
"I chose to. There's a difference. I had learned what the company did to people who became inconvenient. I thought if I could persuade your father to take the money and leave, both families would survive."
"He had already tried to give it back."
"I know that now. He told me he wanted the original safety reports made public. I told him he would ruin himself and my son. I was cruel to him. I called him ungrateful."
Nora looked down at the table. Her father had spent his final years convinced that nobody with influence would listen. Here sat one of the people who had taught him that belief.
"Why are you telling me?" she asked.
"Because I've spent years behaving as if regret were a private form of payment. It isn't. I've retained a lawyer, separate from Dominic's, to give a statement. I've also established a restitution fund for the families affected by the fire. Not in exchange for releases or silence. The claims will be handled independently."
"Money doesn't reverse a death."
"No. And it doesn't reverse what I said to your father."
Celeste reached into her handbag and placed a small key in a paper sleeve between them. It belonged to a bank deposit box. Adrian had kept one, she explained, to store a cassette recording and letters concerning the pier's finances. She had removed the contents years earlier. She would now give everything to the investigators.
"Why didn't you do that when Adrian died?" Nora asked.
Celeste's composure broke at last. Not into tears, but into a hard, ungainly expression of shame. "Because I'd already buried one son. I told myself I couldn't bear losing another. Dominic's signature was on the acceptance. I was afraid they'd charge him."
"So you let my father live under the accusation."
"Yes."
It was the most terrible word Celeste had spoken. Nora believed it because there was no protection inside it.
They sat for another minute. Then Nora stood, leaving the tea untouched. Celeste did not ask whether she was forgiven. At the door, however, she said quietly, "I loved you, Nora. In my selfish way."
Nora turned. "I think you did. But you loved the way things were more."
She walked out before Celeste could answer.
Across town, Dominic stood before a conference table with Anne Keller and two outside lawyers. They had identified a series of undisclosed payments from the family's property subsidiary to businesses controlled by Rafe. One of the transfers preceded the purchase of Nora's studio. Another funded a shell company in Vivienne's name. Rafe had bought a way to frighten Nora while pretending to protect the child.
"We can report the suspicious transactions, preserve the data, and cooperate with any inquiry," Anne said. "We can't make charges appear just because we'd like them to."
Dominic nodded. He had grown up expecting a telephone call to accomplish what ordinary people had to seek through law. Now he had to learn the patience of accountability.
His lawyer advised him to stop speaking directly to potential witnesses. That included Vivienne and Celeste. Dominic agreed. Later, alone, he opened the wedding photograph folder the event planner had sent for approval. In one picture Nora stood in the unfinished dining room holding a small bouquet of white anemones. She was laughing at a crooked place card. He had not noticed the photograph before. She seemed so freely herself that he had to put the phone facedown.
At six, Vivienne's attorney called. Vivienne had agreed to give evidence concerning Rafe's threats, but she was terrified of the damage to Rose. A private school was refusing to release a transcript until outstanding fees were settled. Dominic asked his lawyer to help establish a fund administered by someone neutral, with no requirement that Vivienne or Rose speak to him again.
He did not consider it noble. The child was his brother's. She should not have to earn ordinary security by choosing which adult had told the better story.
Then Anne brought him an internal audit note that had escaped the first review. Dated five years earlier, it summarized a background inquiry commissioned by Dominic's own office into Nora's restoration company. Someone had asked for details of Elias Mercer's employment and his connection to the Harbor Point fire. The request had been marked *personal — confidential*.
He recognized his initials.
He sat down slowly. He had forgotten neither the request nor what he had learned from it. He had merely put that knowledge in a drawer alongside things he disliked about himself and allowed Nora to build a life with him above it.
The phone rang. Lydia Chen's name appeared on the screen. He answered.
May you like
"Mr. Moretti," she said, "Nora has found a letter from her father. Before anyone gives a statement about that payment, she wants one question answered. When, exactly, did you learn who she was?"
Dominic closed his eyes. At last, a question had arrived that he could not survive by answering only halfway.
