Chapter 25 - CELESTE’S LETTER
Celeste wrote Margot one letter when Margot was ten.
We did not give it to her immediately.
At thirteen, she asked.
We read it together.
Celeste wrote:
Before you were born, I treated your arrival as a governance event, a family succession problem, and an answer to your aunt’s grief before I treated you as Arden’s daughter.
Good start.
Then:
I told myself Arden could have another child because I needed to believe motherhood was replaceable.
Margot stopped.
“That’s what Aunt Camille said too.”
“Yes.”
They had shared the same moral trick.
Celeste continued:
Your birth did not take authority from me. Malcolm had already designed that authority to end.
Margot read that sentence twice.
“Why didn’t she just let it end?”
Stellan answered:
“Because she had been in charge so long that temporary felt permanent.”
Margot nodded.
“That happens with toys at school.”
We laughed.
Children reducing empires to classroom logic.
Useful.
Margot chose not to answer Celeste.
No meeting.
May you like
Not then.
Her choice.
