view we could actually use. You can move into that senior community near St. Agnes. Adrian already checked the fees.”
Nora looked at her son.
He flinched, but he did not deny it.
The room seemed to tilt slightly. Nora could hear the rain against the windows now, a soft relentless tapping. She could hear someone whisper, “How awful,” though she could not tell whether they meant Celeste or her.
“Adrian,” Nora said, and her voice sounded smaller than she intended. “Is this true?”
Celeste answered for him. “It’s practical.”
“I asked my son.”
The sentence surprised even Nora. It came out quiet, but it carried. A ripple moved through the nearest tables.
Adrian swallowed. His face had gone pale under the warm chandelier light.
“It’s too much house for you, Mom,” he said. “You’re alone.”
Alone.
The word landed with terrible accuracy. Henry had been gone for four years, and Nora had learned the shape of loneliness in ways no one saw. It was one cup on the breakfast table. One toothbrush by the sink. One side of the bed untouched. It was the sound of her own footsteps moving through the house he had painted, repaired, loved.
But that house was not empty.
It held Henry’s handwriting on seed packets in the garden shed. It held pencil marks on the kitchen doorframe where Adrian’s height had been measured every birthday until he pretended he was too old for it. It held the low window seat where Nora had sat beside Henry during his last winter, reading aloud when his eyes became too tired.
Celeste saw only square footage.
She stepped close enough that Nora could smell orange blossom perfume beneath the wine. She pressed the folded document against Nora’s wet dress.
“Sign it,” Celeste said. “Tonight. Then we can all enjoy the reception without your selfishness hanging over everything.”
Someone near the bar gave a small, approving murmur. Someone else whispered, “She should help them. They’re newlyweds.”
Nora turned her head and saw faces she knew. A cousin who had eaten at her table. Adrian’s former supervisor, whom she had once driven to the hospital after a fainting spell. Celeste’s parents, polished and watchful. Guests who had smiled over champagne fifteen minutes earlier now studied the floor, the ceiling, anything but her face.
No one stepped forward.
That was when something inside Nora became still.
Not numb. Not broken. Still.
She removed the document from her chest with two fingers and held it back to Celeste without looking at it.
“No.”
Celeste’s smile twitched. “Excuse me?”
“I said no.”
Adrian closed his eyes briefly, as if his mother had embarrassed him beyond repair.
Celeste let the paper fall at Nora’s feet. “Then you can leave. I won’t have this miserable energy at my wedding.”
The cruelty of it should have made Nora cry. Instead, she reached into her purse and found Henry’s silver frame. The edges were cool beneath her damp fingers. She took it out, looked once at his smiling face, then tucked it against her chest.
“My husband warned me about moments like this,” she said.
Celeste laughed. “Your husband is dead.”
The room inhaled.
Adrian’s head snapped up. For one second, Nora thought he might finally speak, might remember the father who had taught him
