Chapter 3
Celestine slapped the table.
Not Sibella.
The table.
“I would never have taken that money.”
Sibella cried harder.
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Because you were refusing treatment.”
There.
A second layer.
Celestine’s cancer had returned three months earlier.
Treatable.
Difficult.
Expensive.
She had money.
Less than people assumed.
Her late husband’s estate had been damaged by years of debt nobody knew about.
She could afford some care.
Not all.
I would have helped.
She refused to ask.
Why?
Pride.
Not toward me personally.
Toward everyone.
Celestine had spent thirty years being the woman who organized charity dinners for other families.
She could not tolerate becoming the woman whose name sat on someone else’s assistance list.
So she began skipping parts of her care.
Sibella found out.
Panicked.
Then looked at the account I already funded for Nerelle.
A monthly amount large enough to cover much of her mother’s need.
One transfer.
Temporary.
She told herself Nerelle could wait a week.
Then Celestine needed another.
Then another.
By the third week, telling me became harder because now she had to admit what she had already done.
So she built a justification.
Nerelle was younger.
Nerelle’s doctors had said her condition was responding.
Nerelle worked for a wealthy household.
There would be another way.
Celestine was older.
Treatment windows mattered.
She was family.
Every sentence turned preference into necessity.
“What about the fundraiser?”
I asked.
Sibella wiped her face.
That was the ugliest part.
The charity dinner had originally been planned before Celestine relapsed.
Nerelle agreed to have her portrait used because the campaign was supposed to support household workers undergoing serious illness across several estates.
Not just her.
Good idea.
Then Sibella discovered the portrait brought donations.
People connected to a young housemaid continuing treatment while still trying to work.
The campaign grew.
And somewhere along the way Sibella stopped seeing Nerelle as the person who inspired it.
She saw her as the face that made wealthy people write checks.
“What did tonight’s money cover?”
I asked.
Sibella looked at me.
“Not Mom.”
Interesting.
The donor fund itself remained mostly intact.
Transportation.
Meals.
Childcare support.
Temporary lodging for patients receiving care away from home.
The money I personally sent for Nerelle was what Sibella diverted.
Technically separate.
Morally worse.
She could tell herself the fundraiser still helped people.
Meanwhile the woman whose face decorated the ballroom had lost the care I had promised her.
Then Celestine said:
“Take me off everything.”
Sibella stared.
“Mom—”
“No.”
May you like
Her voice was calm now.
“You don’t save me by deciding someone else can be abandoned.”
