Celeste took her to the small pool behind the guest wing, not the one where people were still smoking. Two lamps lit the water. The guest room doors were shut; the cushions had been stacked beneath the covered chairs. Here, without the guests, the house looked as though it could belong to two people.
“I haven't brought anything,” Vivian said.
Celeste lifted a corner of her own dress. “Neither have I.”
“You're trying to make me be sensible.”
“I'm trying very hard to do the opposite.”
There were bathing suits in the guest room. There were always bathing suits, toothbrushes, slippers in two sizes. Vivian had made the list. She went inside and found a black one in a drawer, left her dress on the bed and looked at the phone she'd taken out of its pocket. No message from Nicholas. He was downstairs being charming, probably to Julia's husband now, who would experience it as proof that he hadn't been rude.
When she came back Celeste was already in the water. Her dress lay over a chair in an untidy spill of silk. Vivian had the sudden wish to touch it, to feel the warmth it had kept.
She put the bracelet on the table beside the pool and climbed down the steps.
The water was warmer than the air. Celeste swam toward her, stopped short, then pushed onto her back. Her mouth and nose made a small island in the light. Vivian let her feet leave the bottom. For the first time all day nobody could hand her anything.
“I found out something,” Celeste said.
Vivian kept her eyes on the line of the roof.
“About Frances's painting. Nicholas sold the original.”
The water moved against Vivian's ears. She knew. She had known for six months, since a collection update brought her the completed sale invoice from Nicholas's office, The Red Room named in full, followed by a commission and transport record for its replacement. A copy, made to occupy the place where Frances's Alma Voss had hung for seven years. There had been no Celeste signature on what Vivian saw, nothing to tell her the wife had agreed. Nicholas's message had been brief: he'd handle Frances; she needn't take it on herself. After that, the six-hundred-thousand-dollar advisory bonus had arrived. Vivian had taken it. When Frances asked about the painting, Vivian had gone on saying it was safe.
She put her feet down.
“When did you find out?”
Celeste stood too, the water at her ribs. “Recently.”
“How recently?”
“Does the day matter?”
“It might.”
“I was looking for something else. I found what he should have told me.”
Vivian turned toward the lamps. A small insect had become trapped inside the nearest glass shade, moving again and again toward the part that gave off light. She needed to look away from Celeste while deciding which truth she could afford.
“I've seen the sale material,” she said.
“I know. He told me you knew.”
It was so easy, the way Celeste said it. No anger, no accusation. Vivian had spent months imagining what she would say if Celeste discovered it, and in none of those versions was she allowed to stand waist-deep in warm water beside her.
“He said he'd deal with Frances.”
“Yes. That's what he does instead of dealing with things.”
“You understand it's her picture.”
“Of course I understand. I helped her hang it.”
Celeste moved to the edge and rested her arms along it. Vivian could see the water darkening the stone beneath her elbows.
“I thought we could put it right,” Vivian said.
“So did he.”
“No. He thought he could pay for it to stop being wrong.”
Celeste looked back at her. “And what did you think?”
Vivian had thought that partnership would give her the standing to insist on something, that she could finish building the life which would make her brave enough to protect it. She had used that thought every time Frances called. She could feel how shabby it would sound spoken here.
“I waited too long.”
“Then help me stop waiting.”
They stayed in the pool until a light went out in the guest wing. A door closed somewhere beyond the wall. The party was diminishing without Vivian's help. She could imagine Owen counting glasses while a guest argued pleasantly that one more was not an unreasonable request.
“What exactly is the five million?” she asked.
“A purchase. The part of your business we've occupied. Introductions, clients who are really our friends, the things you can't take away because everybody thinks they belong to us.”
“Some of them do.”
“Some of them don't. Let's stop being coy.”
Celeste pushed away from the edge. She crossed the little pool to Vivian, slowly enough that Vivian felt obliged to wait.
“I don't want to set up a rival office and have you going back and forth between us like somebody sharing custody of a dog. I want you out. Paid properly. Free to do whatever you like.”
“And Frances?”
“Separate. We pay her. You help us reach an arrangement she'll accept. You know her.”
“I know she wants her painting.”
“Then we have to begin somewhere worse than where we'd like.”
The answer had the weary practicality Vivian trusted in Celeste. She didn't offer to find the original tomorrow. She didn't insist that Frances would be delighted with a check. They could spend money and time trying to bring it back, perhaps fail, perhaps face a claim. Vivian had spent enough of her own life watching wealthy people buy difficulty for one another to know the difference between an impossible repair and an expensive one.
“There would be lawyers,” she said.
“Yours too. Independent. Not somebody Nicholas plays tennis with.”
“You'd fund that?”
“Yes.”
“That won't protect me if I've done something I shouldn't.”
“I know.”
Celeste said it without trying to comfort her. Vivian found the absence of comfort persuasive.
“You could tell her I failed to follow up,” she said. “That I let him assure me it was being settled.”
“You'll tell her what you can tell her.”
“I won't say I sold it.”
“I'm not asking you to.”
Celeste was close now, the dark fabric of her suit trembling where the water moved. She reached up and rubbed a mark beneath Vivian's eye with her thumb.
“Your mascara's gone.”
“You asked me to get in a pool.”
“I like you without the evening.”
Vivian laughed, once. “You're asking me to help negotiate with a woman I've lied to, detach half my business, and manage your departure. Is there a part where I'm allowed to be ugly?”
“I thought that was why you came swimming.”
They looked at each other. Celeste lowered her hand but didn't step back.
“Where would you go?” Vivian asked.
“I don't know.”
“You just said—”
“I know what I want to leave. I'd like that to be enough for tonight.”
In the guest room afterward, Vivian wrapped a towel around herself and watched Celeste search the drawers for a comb. The wet swimsuit lay on the tile beside the shower. They were behaving like women who had known each other twelve years, which they had. That did not account for the unfamiliar care with which Vivian was holding the towel closed.
“You could use my apartment,” she said.
Celeste stopped looking.
“The one near the bridge. It's furnished. Nobody's in it.”
“I've never seen it.”
“You were supposed to. You went to Aspen.”
“Then show me.”
“It's not this.”
“I know what an apartment is.”
Vivian sat on the bed. For years, whenever she bought something good for herself, she'd imagined showing Celeste. Sometimes she did; often she didn't. It had begun to feel easier to choose an object Celeste would like than to admit the pleasure of owning one she would not.
“There's a terrible chair,” she said. “I love it.”
“Then don't warn me.”
Celeste found the comb and came over. She stood between Vivian's knees, turned Vivian's face gently to one side, and combed the wet hair away from her cheek. It was an ordinary favor, paid back from upstairs. Vivian could feel the plastic teeth moving along her scalp.
“You don't have to do everything tonight,” Celeste said.
“Apparently you've done quite a lot already.”
“I've had time to think.”
“About me?”
Celeste's hand stopped. Her eyes met Vivian's. For a moment neither of them made the useful little joke.
“Yes,” she said.
Then someone tried the outer door.
It was only Owen, not entering, saying from the passage that Mrs. Wren's guests were leaving and one wished to say good night.
“Tell her I'm naked,” Celeste called.
“I'll say you're changing.”
“That's why I pay you.”
Vivian laughed into her towel. Celeste's expression loosened, and the room was warm again, possible again. She put down the comb and picked up her dress.
“Don't tell him we've talked,” she said.
Vivian looked at the bracelet on the table where she'd left it after the swim. Beside it, her phone had lit up with a message from Nicholas.
You disappeared.
She turned it facedown before Celeste could read it.
“I won't,” she said.