The man named Phil was first, mumbling something about an early morning. The couple from the real estate office followed. The tennis women gathered their wraps and their purses and did not look at Celeste, and two of them said goodnight to Grant in quiet careful voices, as if he were a widower again, and one of them, on her way past, stopped beside Skyler and opened her mouth and then closed it again and kept walking.
The young woman from the couple with the boat was the last. Her name, Skyler learned later, was Tess, and she had met Celeste exactly twice. She stood at the top of the stairs while her husband went to get the car, and then she turned around and came back across the deck and crouched down in front of Skyler, the way Grant had.
"I saw it," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything. I should have said something. I was just—" She shook her head. "Grown-ups are cowards sometimes. That's not an excuse. I just wanted you to know that I saw it, and it was wrong, and if your dad needs anybody to say so, to anyone, I'll say so." She looked up at Grant. "I mean it. Celeste has my number. Well. I guess you can get it from the caterers."
Grant thanked her. She squeezed Skyler's good hand, once, and left.
Celeste had not moved. She stood in the middle of the deck in her green silk dress with the settlement agreement still lying on the brown paper in front of her, untouched, a little spot of butter soaking slowly into one corner of the top page. The caterers were trying very hard to be invisible. The oyster man was packing his ice into coolers with his back turned.
"You humiliated me," Celeste said. Her voice was shaking. "On my birthday. In front of everyone I know."
"Yes," said Grant.
"You went through my computer. You spied on me. You have no idea what it's been like, alone in this house with her, every time you're gone, the way she looks at me, the way she—"
"She's eleven, Celeste. She looks at you like a kid who's hungry."
"I'm not signing that."