She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [49]
Experience had taught Celeste that her daughters knew how to keep their mouths shut, and she flaunted the affair, not even attempting to hide it from them. Yet, they’d both grown to love Steve. “We’d grown up knowing not to let anyone into our hearts, because they always left,” says Kristina. “But Steve passed every test. We knew he loved us.”
The girls, it seemed, lived in two worlds—one with Steve and the other with Celeste’s secret life, where nothing was out of bounds. One night she took Justin and Kristina to a concert given by Jerry Jeff Walker, an aging rocker from Austin’s cosmic cowboy days. Celeste drank and became belligerent, screaming at the stage, attempting to get Walker’s attention. Justin thought she seemed determined to hook up with the artist, who ignored her. Afterward, she drove to Jimmy’s house. When he didn’t answer the door, she said a car parked on the street meant he was occupied with another woman. In front of the teens, she raised her skirt and peed on his grass.
That same month, in California, Celeste’s adoptive mother, Nancy, and her husband, Al, were talking about moving. “Al and I wanted to live somewhere less expensive,” says Nancy. “Celeste said, ‘Why not live in the lake house for the winter?’”
Before Thanksgiving, the twins drove to California with Celeste to pick up the grandmother they’d once been told was dead. Although she’d played no part in their lives, Nancy fawned over them, telling Jennifer, “You’re my favorite grandchild.”
“She was strange,” says Kristina. “She kept talking about how she loved us.”
The girls took turns driving Nancy in one car while Celeste, Al, and the other twin drove a second car and a rental truck heavy with Nancy and Al’s possessions. The girls took advantage of the time alone with the woman who’d raised their mother to ask questions. Kristina wanted to know what Celeste was like as a girl, if she’d had problems growing up. Jennifer asked if Celeste had really graduated from high school early and gone to Pepperdine. Nancy snapped at them and said it was none of their business.
In Austin, Nancy and Al moved into the lake house while they looked for a home, and they spent the holidays with Celeste, Steve, and the twins at the Toro Canyon house. But Celeste quickly tired of them, complaining to friends that she wished Nancy had never come. At Tramps she told Denise, “I hate that she’s here. I just want her to leave.”
That Christmas, Celeste told Steve she wanted a new diamond solitaire, like a ring she’d seen on a woman at the country club, a flawless eight-carat stone. “Buy it for me,” she cajoled. Under the tree Celeste had professionally decorated for $3,000, waited a small box with her name on it. But it held a gold necklace, not the diamond ring.
“That fat fuck is going to regret this,” she told the twins.
While she fumed about the ring, Celeste seemed unconcerned about something else that happened late that year: Steve was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. His risk factors were climbing. His mother had died of heart disease at sixty-seven, his father at seventy-five, and he was following quickly in their footsteps. Dr. Handley questioned him about his drinking habits. Steve said that he drank only two or three cocktails a night. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the drinks Celeste served him contained pure grain alcohol. On his chart, Dr. Handley noted the troubling results of Steve’s blood tests: His kidney function was decreasing, often a result of high alcohol consumption.
One evening late that year, Becky called from Dallas and Steve got on the telephone.