Page 167

The folders covering Nora’s table fill in everything Celeste chose to leave outside our home, and for once I can see the boundary she was protecting instead of wondering why I never crossed it.

“She never told me,” I say.

Nora stops sorting photographs. Emma’s hand closes around mine beneath the table.

“I knew she volunteered and worked with the financials, but she kept the women’s identities out of our house.”

Nora closes the folder in front of her. “Most of us assumed you knew everything.”

I shake my head, and Nora studies the photographs before continuing.

Nora studies me before choosing her next words. “I don’t think she was hiding a life from you.”

My fingers stop against Patricia’s photograph, and Nora catches the reaction before I decide how to answer.

“She protected people’s privacy. A lot of the women she helped were ashamed when they first arrived, even though they had nothing to be ashamed of. Celeste understood that better than most. If somebody trusted her with a story, she treated it like it belonged to them.”

Emma looks at the folders spread across the table. “She told Bane enough to explain where she was going without telling him anything that wasn’t hers to share.”

“Exactly.” Nora’s expression softens. “She talked about you all the time, by the way.”

That catches me completely off guard. “She did?”

“She complained that you worked too much.”

Emma turns toward me with a smile she makes no effort to hide. “I’m leaving that one alone.”

Nora laughs and reaches for another photograph. “She talked about the girls constantly too. Every new picture ended up getting passed around the shelter until everybody had seen it.”

The idea of Celeste sitting at this same table somewhere years ago, showing strangers photographs of Babs and Biddy while helping them rebuild lives I never knew existed, hits harder than any revelation about money.

I move one photograph aside and find another beneath it, then another, each attached to a life Celeste knew well enough to help without ever bringing the details home to me.

Nora closes the folder before I reach the bottom. “She helped me through nursing school, too.”

“The scholarship.”

Her eyebrows lift. “You found that?”

“Her notebook.”

Nora nods. “The fund covered tuition, but I still couldn’t manage transportation and childcare while I studied. Celeste handled both without telling me until the arrangements were already made. I got angry with her.”

Emma smiles. “Why?”

“Because I thought I owed her.” Nora’s expression changes as she looks toward Celeste’s photograph. “She told me the best way to repay her was to build a good life and help somebody else when I could. I was volunteering by the time I first saw you. Mostly evenings because I worked during the day. You came in to look at the security system after somebody’s ex showed up in the parking lot.”

The building comes back to me once she mentions the security system: two dead cameras, a damaged lock on the side entrance, and a director worried that somebody’s ex had already learned where one of the women was staying.

“You replaced the lock yourself,” Nora continues. “Then you came back with new cameras three days later, and when they told you the shelter couldn’t afford the equipment, you said you’d already paid for it.”

Emma looks at me. I keep my attention on Nora.

She smiles faintly. “I knew who you were because Celeste had shown me pictures years earlier. I almost introduced myself, but you looked…” She pauses. “You looked like you were trying very hard to keep moving. I heard later that you started visiting other shelters too. One organization passed your name to another whenever a security problem came up.”

“That’s how I thought it spread.”

Emma leans forward. “You said you introduced the investor.”