Chapter 7 - CELESTE’S FIRST LIE
Celeste asked to meet privately.
Lena refused privacy.
We met in her office with both attorneys present.
Celeste wore no veil, no diamonds, and no expression I recognized from family dinners.
“I did not put anything in Sophie’s jacket,” she said.
“Did you remove something?” Lena asked.
Celeste’s eyes shifted.
“No.”
“Why did you delete the ballroom footage?”
“I was panicking.”
“Before or after your brother attacked a child?”
Celeste stood.
The meeting ended in six minutes.
Her attorney called later and asked whether cooperation might reduce exposure.
Detectives had recovered a service-elevator image showing Celeste carrying Sophie’s denim jacket after the ambulance left.
She had told police the jacket remained beside Evelyn—beside me—until officers collected it.
That was her first provable lie.
My mistake came the following afternoon.
I saw Celeste leaving the courthouse and confronted her in front of reporters.
“What did you take from Sophie’s pocket?”
Celeste began crying.
Cameras captured me stepping toward a bride whose wedding had been “destroyed.”
The clip spread before evening.
Lena was furious.
“You gave them a new picture.”
“She knows what happened.”
“Knowing does not authorize you to corner her publicly.”
Preston used the clip in family court to renew his request for contact.
The judge denied it again but warned me that public confrontation could harm Sophie.
I apologized to the court.
Not to Celeste.
That night she sent me one photograph from an encrypted address.
It showed a dark case beside a hotel ledger in the bridal suite.
A man’s cuff-linked hand rested near it.
The message beneath the image read:
May you like
He told me it was empty.
Before I could reply, the account disappeared.
