Chapter 13
Isabetta apologized to Celandine eight months later.
Celandine refused the first request.
Accepted the second.
Neutral sitting room.
Door open.
I did not attend.
Later Celandine told me only because she found one part important.
Isabetta said:
“I treated your job like it made your fear convenient.”
Celandine answered:
“You hit nobody.”
Interesting.
Because Isabetta had not struck her.
She had used position differently.
Ordered.
Pressured.
Threatened employment indirectly.
The line was not physical abuse.
Still power.
Then Celandine asked:
“Why put your shoe on the dress?”
Isabetta thought.
“Because I hated it.”
Not Rosamund.
The dress.
Specific object.
Every pearl flower represented a wedding everyone remembered fondly.
Meanwhile Isabetta’s own engagement reception still felt like she was borrowing a room from a dead woman.
So when the lipstick stained the gown, panic turned into contempt.
Scrub harder.
The dead don’t need silk.
Cruel sentence.
Honest feeling beneath it.
Celandine asked:
“Do you still hate her?”
Isabetta answered:
“I don’t think I ever hated her.”
Then:
“I hated losing comparisons to someone who couldn’t answer back.”
Good.
Dead people are easy standards for everyone except the living trying to follow them.
Celandine did not forgive her.
Did not need to.
But afterward she told me:
“You compared them too.”
I stared.
“When?”
“Every time you said ‘Rosamund used to…’”
Damn.
Probably often.
I thanked her.
She looked suspicious.
“You’re getting too comfortable being corrected.”
“Don’t worry.”
I smiled.
May you like
“I still hate it.”
Better.
