CHAPTER ELEVEN

I return to the house to find Celeste and Evelyn sitting on the couch. Evelyn has her arm around the young woman and looks at her with a mixture of sadness and sympathy.

Celeste stares mutely out at the ocean, toward the vanishing point. I give Evelyn a look, and she nods and gets to her feet. “I’m going to shop for some food for lunch, okay?”

Celeste doesn’t reply. Evelyn looks at me again, then leaves the house. When she does, I try to talk to Celeste.

“Hey. What happened earlier? Why are you so upset at Lisa?”

Celeste’s jaw tightens a little, but she doesn’t answer. I try a little firmer hand.

“I know you’re upset right now. I understand that this is very difficult for you. I’ve lost both of my parents, and my sister disappeared without a trace when I wasn’t much older than you. But your outburst earlier wasn’t acceptable. I’m not upset with you, but I need to understand why you behaved like that.”

Instead of answering me, Celeste asks, “Did your sister travel to the vanishing point?”

An image flashes through my mind of the forest path where I last saw my sister alive. The trees seem to stretch until oblivion on either side.

“Not exactly,” I reply. “But she found a vanishing point of her own.”

Celeste takes a deep breath and pouts. “I hate Lisa because she’s a bitch. She shouldn’t be in my house. I hate her, and I want her to go away.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a bitch.”

“Why is she a bitch, Celeste? What has she done to make you feel this way?”

Tears come to her eyes. “She treats Dad like crap. Dad will work really hard on something, and she’ll call it junk or tell him that no one will ever buy it. Dad argues with her, but she’s the one with all of the power. If she won’t sell his stuff, then he can’t make money off of it, so he has to do a lot of stuff he doesn’t really like just to keep her happy.”

It seems Lila might have been honest after all, or at least correct. “Has he tried selling to different dealers?”

"No." Her lower lip trembles now. "I keep telling him to just ignore her and find someone else, but he won't. He thinks she's a brilliant woman, and he does whatever she tells him to do. But she's stupid. I mean, look. All of these statues in the living room? She said no one would ever want these in their home but Dad. Can you believe that?"

I absolutely can, but I don’t tell her that. Instead, I say, “She’s trying to do her best to make money with this work. It’s a difficult thing to do. She’ll make mistakes sometimes, but—”

“Why are you defending her?” she snaps. “Do you like her?”

Her voice is rising in pitch. I need to be careful not to push her over the edge. “No. I don’t care for her.”

“Then why are you defending her?”

“Because I want to find your father, and I want to take care of you. If we fixate on Lisa because we don’t like her or because she argued with your father, then we might not see the truth when it arrives.”

“How are you gonna find Dad?”

I look away. “I don’t know. But I do know that if we build our understanding of reality based on emotional assumptions we’ll set ourselves up for disappointment."

She takes a long, slow breath and looks past me back out at the ocean. For a while, she says nothing but just stares at the rocks that form the neck where Fairy Cove meets the ocean proper. I let her process what I’ve told her and process her own emotions.

When she speaks again, she doesn’t mention Lisa. “I keep having a nightmare about Dad drawing a portal in his paintings and walking through it.”

“The Vanishing Point?”

“No. Maybe? I don’t know. I can’t see exactly what he’s painting. It’s just… blurry. But I see him painting, and I call out to him, but he can’t hear me. He starts to walk through, and I try to run to him, but I can’t move. Then he disappears.”

“Nightmares are common after traumatic events like this one,” I tell her. “If you’d like, I can make you some chamomile tea tonight before bed. I find it helps sometimes with my own nightmares.”

She shakes her head. “I’ve been having this nightmare for the past five years.”

“The offer of tea still stands.” I smile at her and take her hands in mine. “Don’t lose hope. I know you’ll worry, and that’s all right, but don’t lose hope. There’s no blood and no sign of your father’s body. No sign that he was injured and nothing in the ocean that suggests he came to harm. I have a feeling that soon enough, he’ll come back to us safe and sound.”

She doesn’t say anything. Her hands are limp in mine. She stares at the ocean, and I watch her face slowly soften as she slips into another fugue. There’s not much more I can do right now. I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to stare at the vanishing point for so long, but I’ll only make things worse if I try to force her to look away.

I prepare to stand, but before I do, she gets abruptly to her feet and brushes past me, nearly knocking me over. I regain my balance and watch wide-eyed as she rushes up the stairs.

I follow, alarmed. I worry that she might run into Victor’s studio. The window is still unrepaired, and in her current mental state, I fear she might harm herself.

“Celeste? Wait!”

“I’m going to draw!” she shouts back.

I follow her to the third floor and hear her run into her room, slamming the door shut. A moment later, I hear rustling and soft thumping. I open the door to see her quickly arranging paper and pencils on the floor. She looks up at me, and her lips pull back in a feral snarl. " Get out!”

I don’t need to be told twice. I close the door and remain where I am, heart thumping in my chest. I hear soft scratching and muttering coming from the room. The poor girl. She is on the edge of insanity. I have no love for therapists, but she may be beyond my capacity to help.

I return downstairs just as Evelyn comes in through the front door. She looks around and frowns. “Where’s Celeste?”

“She’s drawing in her room.”

Her frown deepens. “What happened? You look terrified.”

“She… She’s having… Well, she was calm and quiet, and then she became very agitated.”

Evelyn sighs. “Yeah, I figured that would happen.” She shakes her head and begins to unload the groceries. “It’s really unfortunate how that sort of thing runs in families.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Mental illness. Not that I’m saying she’s crazy, but… well, Victor’s always had manic-depressive tendencies. I’m not a psychologist, but that sort of thing where he goes from sitting and staring at nothing for hours to a burst of energy like that happens all the time.”

“Has it happened with Celeste before?”

“Not like this. I think that Victor running off triggered her.”

“You think he’s run off then? You don’t think he was taken?”

“I don’t think so. Who could have taken him? I would have heard someone come in. Not that I could have stopped anyone, but I would have known.”

Unless you were the one responsible.

"I just feel bad for her," she says. "I don't know what she's going to do. Her grandparents don't talk to her, and I'm going to have to find new work if Victor doesn't come back. I'm paid through the end of the month, but after that, I'll need to find another job. I assume you will, too."

I will be all right financially, thanks to my inheritance, but I can't stay in the house indefinitely. It will eventually move into foreclosure or probate or whatever the equivalent is when the owner is declared legally dead.

I feel a touch of suspicion when she mentions leaving soon. The reason she gives is perfectly valid, but so is receiving a financial windfall due to her late employer’s “generosity.” And she may have killed him for reasons other than money. It might be worthwhile to have Sean pay her home a visit or delve more deeply into her financial situation.

For now, I say, “I’ll look into therapists for her. She’ll need professional help to cope with Victor’s loss if he doesn’t return.”

She shakes her head. “Therapists never help. My uncle had a therapist when he got sick, and all the therapist did was ask him about his feelings. There was never any growth or improvement. She just took his money, gave him happy pills and came back next week when nothing worked.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

"Yeah, it sucked. I'm just glad I didn't get it, too. There are five men and two women in my family with schizophrenia. I'm one of the lucky ones who didn't inherit it."

“I don’t think Celeste is schizophrenic.”

Evelyn sighs and folds her arms. “I hope not. But she talks a lot about things that aren’t there, and a lot of times, her lips will move like she’s talking, but no sound will come out. She’s a lot like Victor, and lately, Victor’s been so much worse.” She shakes her head. “I’ll be honest, Celeste is the only reason I stayed. I like Victor, but I was sure that one of these days, he was going to lose his shit and hurt me. Instead, he lost his shit and hurt himself.”

That sparks a memory. I push it away. It’s not a pleasant memory.

"I think I'll leave anyway if he comes back," she says. "The two of them need more help than I can give them."

She starts water for pasta and says, “I’ll have spaghetti and meatballs ready for lunch in an hour. It’s a heavy meal, I know, but it’s simple and one that a child should enjoy.”

“Thank you. I’ll fetch her in an hour.”

“Don’t hold your breath. When they’re like this, God himself couldn’t snap them out of it.”

I head upstairs with more questions than answers. I text Sean to look deeper into Evelyn, but my gut tells me that she’s not responsible for what’s happened here.

I fixate on Celeste’s discussion of a portal. It could just be her mind playing tricks on her, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a truth hiding behind her nightmare. Could Victor have a secret place somewhere? Could he be hiding in plain sight? Or could his killers have been lurking in the shadows to strike unseen before fleeing back to that same shadow?