“Celeste.”
The name landed in my kitchen like broken glass.
Celeste Vanguard was my daughter’s sister-in-law.
Marcus’s older sister.
She was the kind of woman who wore cream coats to hospital fundraisers and used soft words as weapons because soft words left fewer fingerprints.
The Vanguards had never said my daughter was poor.
They were too polished for that.
They called her sweet.
They called her simple.
They called her “a nice girl from a different background,” and every one of those words meant the same thing.
Maya had loved Marcus for three years.
She had stood beside him through residency interviews, packed lunches when he was too nervous to eat, and smiled through dinners where his family discussed charity like it was a hobby and treated her like a receipt someone had left on the table.
She signed holiday cards his mother sent late.
She remembered Celeste’s coffee order.
