Seeing their grief felt like a punishment to Celeste, but a punishment for what? For staying with their father? For wanting him to die?
Bonnie did not have to do jail time. She was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act and sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. In handing down his sentence the judge noted that the defendant’s moral culpability was at the lower end of the scale for this type of offense. He took into account the fact that Bonnie did not have a criminal record, was clearly remorseful and that, although it was possibly foreseeable that the victim would fall, this was not her intent.
He also took into account the testimony of expert witnesses who proved that the balcony railing was beneath the minimum height requirements of the current building code, that the bar stools were not appropriate for use on the balcony, and that other contributing factors included the weather, the consequent slipperiness of the railing and the intoxication of both the defendant and the victim.
According to Madeline, Bonnie had performed her community service with great pleasure, Abigail by her side the whole time.
There were letters going back and forth from insurance companies and lawyers, but it felt like something between all of them. Celeste had made it clear she wanted no money from the school and that she would be donating back any payouts she received to cover higher insurance premiums as a result of the accident.
The house and the other properties had been sold, and Celeste had moved the boys into the little apartment in McMahons Point and had gone back to work three days a week at a family law firm. She enjoyed the fact that she didn’t think about anything else for hours at a time.
Her boys were trust-fund kids, but their trust funds weren’t going to define them, and she was determined that Max and Josh would one day be asking, “Do you want fries with that?”
She’d also set up a trust fund of equal value for Ziggy.
“You don’t need to do that,” Jane had said, when she’d told her, over lunch at a café near Celeste’s apartment. She’d looked appalled, almost nauseous. “We don’t want his money. Your money, I mean.”
“It’s Ziggy’s money. If Perry knew Ziggy was his son he would have wanted him to be treated exactly the same as Max and Josh,” Celeste had told her. “Perry was—”
But then she’d found herself unable to speak, because how could she say to Jane that Perry was generous to a fault, and scrupulously fair. Her husband had always been so fair, except for those times when he was monstrously unfair.
But Jane had reached across the café table and taken her hand and said, “I know he was,” almost as if she did understand everything that Perry was and wasn’t.
Susi stood at the lectern. She looked nice today. She’d cut back on the eye makeup, thank goodness.
“Domestic violence victims often don’t look at all like you’d expect them to look,” said Susi. “And their stories don’t always sound as black-and-white as you’d expect them to sound.”
Celeste searched for her friendly face in the audience of emergency department doctors, triage nurses, GPs and counselors.
“Which is why I’ve asked these two lovely people here today. They’ve very generously given up their time to share their experiences with you.” Susi lifted her hand to encompass Celeste and the man sitting next to her. He had placed one hand on his own thigh to try to stop his leg from jiggling up and down with nerves.
My God, thought Celeste. She blinked back a sudden rush of hot tears. He’s not a counselor. He’s someone like me. It happened to him.
She turned to look at him and he smiled back at her, his eyes darting about like tiny fish.
“Celeste?” said Susi.
Celeste stood. She glanced back at the man in the sweater, and then over to Susi, who nodded encouragingly, and Celeste walked the few steps to stand behind the wooden lectern.
She searched the audience for that nice-looking woman. Yes. There she was, smiling, nodding a little.
Celeste took a breath.
She’d agreed to come here today as a favor for Susi, and because, sure, she wanted to do her bit to make sure health professionals knew when to ask more questions, when not to let things go. She’d been planning to give them the facts, but not to spill her soul. She would keep her dignity. She would keep a little piece of herself safe.
But now she was suddenly filled with a passionate desire to share everything, to say the bare ugly truth, to hold nothing back. Fuck dignity.
She wanted to give that terrified man in the uncool sweater the confidence to share his own bare ugly truth. She wanted to let him know that at least one person here today understood all the mistakes he’d made along the way: the times he’d hit back, the times he’d stayed when he should have left, the times he’d given her another chance, the times he’d deliberately antagonized her, the times he’d let his children see things they shouldn’t see. She wanted to tell him that she knew all the perfect little lies he’d told himself for all those years, because she’d told herself the same lies. She wanted to enfold his trembling hands between her own and say, “I understand.”
She gripped both sides of the lectern and leaned in close to the microphone. There was something so simple and yet so complicated that she needed these people to understand.
“This can happen . . .”
She stopped, stepped away slightly from the microphone and cleared her throat. She saw Susi standing to one side with the held-breath expression of a parent whose child is performing in public for the first time; her hands were held slightly aloft, as if she were ready to run onstage and scoop Celeste to safety.
Celeste put her mouth closer to the microphone, and now her voice was loud and clear.
“This can happen to anyone.”