A year after Trivia Night, Celeste is still picking up the pieces.
She'd doing the hard work in therapy, and her counselor wants her to speak out about domestic abuse.
That’s why she's currently waiting to be called to the mic at an event dedicated to domestic violence.
She's seated next to a nervous-looking counselor. She thinks about all of her many, many mixed feelings: how she still loves Perry, how she yearns for his approval, how she misses him.
The boys aren't doing so hot in his absence. They have behavioral issues.
She's moved away from Pirriwee Public; the boys are in a new school with a kind, attentive teacher.
Madeline is still berating herself—she thinks she should have known about Celeste's abuse.
Celeste is too kind to tell her that that's ridiculous; Celeste made sure that no one could figure out that she was being abused.
Bonnie didn't go to jail. The death was termed involuntary manslaughter and Bonnie just needed to do a lot of community service. Madeline said that Abigail, ever the fangirl, helped out.
Celeste has made sure that Ziggy got a trust fund, padded with Perry's cash. It's the least she can do, and besides, she still believes that Perry was—weirdly, almost impossibly—a good dad.
Okay, it's go time. Celeste is being announced, along with another victim of domestic violence that's there to speak.
Oh—the nervous-looking counselor isn't a counselor at all. He's a victim. And he looks like he's going to pass out from terror.
Celeste needs to hold it together, and to speak bravely.
If not for herself, then for him…and all the many other victims of domestic abuse out there.