Then she went to the desk and picked up her phone and scrolled, for a long time, through a list of contacts she almost never opened, until she found the one that said LAUREL HOUSE—ALTOONA. It was eleven-twenty at night. She pressed it anyway.
A night aide answered. A young man, sleepy. He did not know who she was.
"I'm Danny Vargas's sister," she said. "Daniel. Daniel Vargas. I just—I wanted to know how he is."
"Oh." A rustle, as if he were sitting up. "Oh, okay. He's good. He's asleep. He had a good day. They took the van to the candy factory, the whole group, and he got to watch the machines make the peanut butter cups. He likes the machines." A pause. "Are you the one who sends the flowers?"
"Yes."
"He keeps the cards," the aide said. "In his train book. He's got like ten of them in there. He takes them out and puts them back. Always the same order."
She thanked him and hung up and sat on the edge of the bed in her clothes until after three.
* * *
The boardroom of Halden Beauty was on the thirty-ninth floor of a glass tower in the Seaport, and at nine o'clock on Monday morning it held eleven people: nine board members; Frances Moll at the head of the table in her white silk blouse, her reading glasses on a chain; and Gerald Pike, who had presented first, at eight, and who now sat at the far end with his hands folded over his stomach and the satisfied expression of a man who has done his best and expects it to be enough.
Celeste stood at the front of the room with the clicker in her hand.
She had slept two hours. She had done her makeup in the bathroom mirror at six with a steady hand—foundation and concealer and powder and a precise line along each lid—the way she had done it every morning for thirty years, putting on the face of a woman who had never needed anything. She looked, she knew, flawless.
"Seen," she said, and clicked, and Wren's face filled the screen.