A Woman Named Celeste
Chapter 03 - A Woman Named Celeste
The visitor arrived at four forty in the morning, wearing an expensive raincoat over pajama pants. Her hair had been pulled into a hasty knot. She looked like a woman who had driven too fast through empty streets and then sat in her car trying to decide whether to go inside.
"My name is Celeste Bellini," she told Rachel. "I'm Vanessa's sister. I need to speak to you before anyone brings police into this."
Rachel was sitting beside Daniel's bed, counting the intervals between the soft beeps of the monitor. He had not woken yet. She followed Celeste into a family waiting room, but left the door open. Luca, who had returned with a cup of tea, remained in the hall without pretending not to listen.
Celeste was thirty-six, with none of Vanessa's theatrical composure. She looked steadily at Rachel. "I have a little girl. Her name is Alice. She's sixteen months old."
Rachel's heart gave a painful, foolish leap. "You live at the east cottage."
"For this week. My house is being renovated, and Vanessa insisted it would be easier to stay on the estate before the wedding." Celeste twisted her wedding ring. "Alice was adopted. My husband and I were told her mother relinquished her at birth."
"I never relinquished anyone."
"I know what you're saying. I didn't know it yesterday." Celeste opened her handbag and removed a sealed envelope. "Daniel came to the back gate. I was there when Vanessa called me afterward. She said a disgruntled former employee was trying to extort the family. Then I saw the message on his phone. He said the birth certificate didn't match the hospital's records."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"Because I was afraid." Celeste said it plainly. "You don't understand what it's like to be told that the child you've rocked to sleep every night might have been stolen. I looked at Alice and thought, if I make one phone call, someone may take her away."
Rachel knew that fear. She had lived its aftermath. But Celeste's honesty made her harder to hate. Neither woman spoke for a while. In the corridor, a machine dispensed ice with a dull clatter.
"What do you want from me?" Rachel finally asked.
"For now? A lawyer and a test done properly. Not a hair pulled from my daughter's brush by one of Luca's men. If Alice is yours, we must find a way to tell her the truth without tearing her world apart."
Rachel pressed both palms against the edge of the chair. "I don't even know whether she's mine. That's the cruelty of it. I look at a photograph of a child in a yellow coat and feel guilty for loving her."
Celeste began to cry. Not elegantly. She pulled a tissue from the box and kept trying to speak through it. "She loves pears. Hates getting her hair rinsed. Says 'more' for almost everything. I thought I knew every important thing about how she came to us."
Luca entered only after Celeste motioned to him. "Vanessa didn't tell me a child was staying in the east cottage," he said. "She called it a private family arrangement."
"She doesn't know I'm here," Celeste answered. "Please keep it that way until I've spoken to counsel."
Rachel surprised herself. "No one is to frighten Alice. Whatever we learn, she's a little girl, not a parcel someone can collect."
Something eased in Celeste's face. She put the adoption file on the table, still closed. "This is a copy. There are documents naming a birth mother. The name is not yours. It's a woman called Anna West."
"Do you know her?" Luca asked.
Celeste shook her head. "But the address is an empty lot. I went there on my way to the hospital."
While Celeste waited for her car, Rachel found herself asking about the cottage instead of the child. Were the windows drafty? Was there a kitchen? Did Alice have a room of her own? Celeste described a bright nursery with a green rug and a shelf of picture books. She said Alice insisted on taking one mitten off whenever they went outdoors and always tried to feed the dog her breakfast.
Rachel listened with a hunger that frightened her. These were things she should have known, things that would never appear in a laboratory report. She almost asked whether Alice had been frightened when her teeth came in, but she couldn't bear an answer that placed another woman at the bedside. Celeste seemed to understand. She wrote down the name of the rabbit book on a scrap of paper and pushed it across the table. Rachel folded the paper twice and put it inside her wallet.
At seven, Rachel called a family law attorney recommended by Dr. Porter, a woman named Judith Ames whose first question was whether the child was safe. Judith advised them not to transfer custody or attempt private testing without consent and proper documentation. She would arrange an independent laboratory and contact the appropriate authorities. She also told Celeste to obtain her own counsel. No one would solve this in a parking lot with a handshake.
By nine, Daniel was awake enough to recognize Rachel. He tried to smile but winced instead. When she showed him the photograph, he reached for her hand. "I wanted to tell you when I had proof," he rasped.
"You could have told me you were looking."
His eyes closed. "I couldn't stand the thought of making you lose her twice."
Rachel wanted to comfort him. She wanted an explanation that would take less than an hour and hurt less than the truth. Instead she said, "We don't keep each other safe by deciding what the other one can bear."
Daniel nodded once. A tear ran into his ear.
In the afternoon, Judith telephoned with news that changed the direction of everything. The adoption application had been notarized eighteen months ago, before Alice's recorded birth date. It had been filed under an agency dissolved the previous spring. The contact listed for that agency was a lawyer who now worked for Victor Bellini, Vanessa and Celeste's father.
Rachel looked at the name on the final page. She knew it. She had seen it on the back of the memorial service program given to her after the hospital said her daughter was gone. Bellini Family Maternity Fund had paid for the tiny service.
May you like
Then Judith read aloud the purported mother's signature. Rachel's name appeared beneath Anna West's in cramped ink, as though someone had started writing the truth before remembering the lie.
The papers did not merely conceal where Alice came from. Someone had prepared to take her before Rachel ever went into labor.
