The Woman Under the Frosting
Chapter 05 - The Woman Under the Frosting
Celeste called twelve times the next morning. I didn't answer. By afternoon, clips of the cake incident had spread across social media. One showed my mother lifting the cake and bringing it down over Celeste's head. Without the earlier footage of the chocolate spill, Mom looked like the aggressor.
Commenters called her unstable. Some praised her for defending me. Most treated our family's humiliation as entertainment.
I sat at our kitchen table in jeans and an oversized sweatshirt, staring at strangers debating whether my mother was a hero or a criminal.
"Stop reading," Mom said.
"They don't know what happened."
"Neither did we, completely. Not yet."
She was right. Jonah had saved the full event video, with original timestamps and several camera angles. At my request, he secured copies without uploading them. Miriam urged us to avoid an online war while she investigated the property documents.
Celeste finally came to the house that evening. She had cleaned the frosting from her hair but left a small scrape visible near her chin. She stood on the porch holding a bouquet of white roses.
"Audrey, please."
I opened the screen door but kept the main door closed.
"I wanted to apologize," she said.
"For what?"
"The scene. Everything got out of hand."
"You poured chocolate onto my wedding dress."
She looked down. "Daniel said you needed to understand how stubborn you were being about the property."
I stared at her. "So you helped him?"
"I was trying to protect you from making a mistake."
"By embarrassing me in front of everybody?"
Her eyes filled. "You don't understand what he promised."
The words hung between us.
"What did he promise you?"
She shook her head.
"Celeste."
"A job," she said. "With the development company. More than I've ever earned. I thought the wedding would still happen. I thought you'd sign afterward."
"And the cake?"
Her cheeks flushed. "That wasn't part of the plan."
I thought about seventeen years of friendship—roommates, birthdays, hospital visits, long phone calls when Dad died. She had traded all of it for a salary and a story about my being too sentimental to manage my own inheritance.
"You could have asked me for help," I whispered.
"I didn't want charity."
"You chose betrayal instead."
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
May you like
I shut the door gently. Through the window, I watched her place the roses on the porch and walk away.
I didn't feel victorious. I felt the quiet, sick emptiness of losing someone who had known nearly every version of me.
