Chapter 6
Celestine refused to call it kidnapping.
I refused to argue vocabulary.
She took a newborn from his mother under false pretenses and hid him.
The label would not change what happened.
She sat across from me without the engagement ring.
She had removed it herself.
Interesting.
“Did you ever love me?”
She laughed through tears.
“That’s cruel.”
“It’s a question.”
“Yes.”
I believed her.
That made everything harder.
“Then why?”
Because love was not the only thing she wanted.
She wanted the marriage.
The family position.
The certainty.
For years Arthur taught both daughters that security came from attaching themselves to powerful structures.
Amabel became useful through service.
Celestine through marriage.
Different roles.
Same lesson.
Then Amabel became pregnant by the very man Celestine planned to marry.
The hierarchy collapsed.
Celestine panicked.
“At first I only wanted her to leave.”
“And the baby?”
“I didn’t know.”
“When did it change?”
“When Father said the child would always matter.”
There.
Arthur understood power better.
Children become symbols even when parents do not want them to.
Julian could someday become leverage for people who disliked Celestine.
Arthur feared that.
Celestine absorbed it.
“So you made him disappear.”
“I thought he’d have a good life.”
“With someone else.”
“Yes.”
“And Amabel?”
“She’d recover.”
I stared.
That sentence told me everything.
Celestine had convinced herself other people’s pain was temporary if her own future remained intact.
Then she whispered:
“I never hated him.”
“No.”
I believed that too.
May you like
“You treated him like a problem anyway.”
That was worse.
