Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Four days after the hotel, Abby met Evan in a café neither of them had visited before. He suggested the location because it sat midway between Sadie’s house and his office, but Abby was grateful that its tables held no memories of Makayla.
She arrived ten minutes early and chose a corner near the front windows. The lunch crowd had already thinned, leaving several empty tables and a barista wiping crumbs into one hand behind the counter.
Abby placed her phone beside a new notebook and immediately turned both objects until their edges aligned with the table. She had bought the notebook that morning because she could not bear to bring anything from the wedding-planning stack.
The meeting had been her idea. Hudson continued sending messages that contradicted the evidence she had already seen, while Makayla alternated between apologies and warnings that Hudson would lie about her. Abby wanted a record no one could revise later.
Evan entered a little past noon. His right hand was wrapped in a flexible brace, and bruising had spread from his knuckles toward his wrist.
He saw Abby before scanning the rest of the room. The recognition in his face was brief but immediate, and some tension Abby had carried into the café eased before she could question why.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said as he took the chair across from her. “A vendor called as I was leaving.”
“Two minutes isn’t late.” Abby looked toward his hand. “Did you have that checked?”
“Yesterday.” Evan rested the brace against the table. “Nothing is broken. The doctor said I should avoid punching anyone else for several weeks.”
The comment held wry attempt at humor, but his embarrassment was visible in the way he shifted his hand out of sight beneath the table.
“Hudson hasn’t called the police,” Abby said as she lowered her voice. “He has mentioned it in six messages, but I think he likes the threat more than he wants an investigation.”
“My attorney requested the hotel footage this morning.” Evan glanced toward the counter. “If Hudson reports it, I’ll cooperate.”
Abby nodded. She had learned more about attorneys, lease provisions, cancellation clauses, and evidence preservation in four days than she had expected to know in her lifetime.
“Do you want coffee?” Evan asked as he started to rise. “I can get it.”
“Tea, please.” Abby reached for her wallet, but he shook his head. “Evan, you don’t have to buy mine.”
“I know.” He waited beside the table rather than turning the exchange into an argument. “You can buy the next one, if there is one.”
The qualification made the offer easier to accept. Abby told him what she wanted, and he returned with her tea, black coffee for himself, and a plate holding two plain croissants.
“I didn’t know whether you had eaten,” he said as he placed the plate between them. “You don’t have to.”
“I haven’t.” Abby tore off one end of a croissant and realized she was hungry only after she tasted it. “Thank you.”
Evan opened the canvas bag he had carried into the café. Makayla’s iPad emerged first, followed by a folder and a slim external drive.
“My attorney copied everything,” he explained as he set the drive beside the folder. “Messages, photographs, transaction records, reservations, and the audio files. The originals are still on the iPad.”
Abby looked at the old company sticker on the case. The blue capsule continued smiling through every new piece of evidence.
“Have you listened to the voice messages?” she asked.
“Some of them.” Evan folded his hands around the coffee cup. “I stopped when I heard enough to know what they were.”
Abby respected the boundary, though curiosity immediately pressed against it. “Was there anything I need to know?”
“There are references to you.” His eyes moved to the notebook. “Most are about where you were or what Hudson had told you. There are also conversations about money.”
“Does Makayla know you copied everything?” Abby asked as she watched him return the drive to the folder. “I don’t want her claiming we altered it.”
“Yes. She wants the iPad returned because it belongs to her company.” Evan looked down at the sticker. “Her employer may be more interested in why she used it to arrange fake business travel.”
The possibility had not occurred to Abby. Makayla’s lies had extended beyond the people who loved her, leaving records inside a company that expected her to be visiting hospitals and physicians.
“Are you going to report her?” Abby asked.
“No.” Evan lifted his coffee but did not drink. “I’ll return the device through my attorney after we preserve what we need. Whatever her employer discovers afterward is between them.”
Abby heard the distinction. He would not protect Makayla from the consequences of her choices, but he would not manufacture new consequences to punish her.
“Hudson says you’re trying to destroy both of them,” she said as she opened the notebook. “He clearly thinks the best defense is a good offense. He keeps insinuating that you planned all of this because you wanted me.”
Evan’s cup stopped near his mouth. He lowered it without drinking.
“He said that at the hotel too.” His expression closed around the memory. “I assumed he was trying to provoke me.”
“He says it every time I refuse to come home.” Abby kept her eyes on the blank page. “He thinks if he can make this about you, then what he did is a defensible response, instead of a choice he made.”
“I’m sorry he’s using me that way.” Evan leaned back, increasing the distance between them despite the table already separating them. “If meeting me here makes things harder for you, we can handle the evidence through the attorneys.”
Abby looked up. “Do you want that?”
“I want you to feel safe.” He answered without hesitation. “What I want beyond that isn’t clear enough to be useful.”
“I feel safer with you right now than I do with either of them,” Abby said. The admission felt too intimate once spoken. “Hudson doesn’t get to decide who I’m allowed to speak to.”
Evan nodded and reached for the folder. “Then we make the timeline.”
Abby wrote the date of the oldest preserved message at the top of the page. Eighteen months and eleven days before the night at the hotel, Makayla had sent Hudson a photograph from the parking lot behind a restaurant near campus.
The restaurant had been one of their college favorites, the place where the four of them celebrated promotions and birthdays long after graduation made its cheap drinks less appealing.
“He complained about the service,” she said as Evan read the first exchange. “He said the place had become depressing.”
“Makayla came home with a takeout container from there.” Evan kept his voice even. “Looking back at the messages she sent me around that date, she’d said she had met you for dinner.”
Abby wrote the lie beside the date. The act of putting it on paper reduced a warm memory to a line of evidence.
They moved forward through the months. Some messages confirmed suspicions they had already formed, while others attached new meaning to events Abby had nearly forgotten.
Hudson had sent Makayla money. Makayla had used an overnight pharmaceutical conference to spend two days with Hudson at a four star resort, then complained to Evan that the company refused to reimburse her meals.
Three weeks before Hudson proposed, he and Makayla had met in the Covington family’s guesthouse. Abby had been shopping for his mother’s birthday present with Sadie, and Evan had been working through the night after a software failure.
“She brought me lunch the next day,” Evan said as he studied the date. His voice remained controlled, but his thumb pressed into the cardboard cup. “She told me it was because she missed me.”
Abby wrote nothing for several seconds. “Hudson came to my apartment with flowers.”
“Do you remember what kind?” Evan asked as he kept his eyes on the message. “Only if you want to tell me.”
“White roses.” Abby looked through the café window at pedestrians passing beneath the bare trees. “The same kind he brought to Sadie’s house.”
The repetition exposed how little Hudson’s gestures had cost him. He had not chosen flowers because they carried a private meaning between them; he chose them because they had worked before.
They reached the day of the proposal after nearly an hour. Hudson’s messages to Makayla began at six that morning, when he asked whether the garden looked ready and reminded her to keep Abby away until sunset.
Makayla had answered with photographs of the flowers, candles, and champagne she arranged for him. Later, while Abby stood upstairs with Julia waiting to be called into the garden, Makayla sent Hudson one final message: I can’t wait to get you alone.
Abby stared at the words until the letters lost shape. “She zipped my dress.”
Evan did not offer comfort before she asked for it. He remained across from her, his expression carrying the same injury she felt.
“And we got engaged,” he said. “Two months later.”
Abby remembered Makayla’s engagement party and the speech she gave about finally finding a man who chose her every day. Hudson had stood beside Abby with one arm around her waist, smiling while Makayla thanked Evan for loving her without conditions.
“And they met up after that?” Abby asked, though the dates already answered.
“Yes.” Evan turned to the next page in the folder. “They met four days after she accepted my ring.”
Abby placed the pen on the notebook. “I don’t know which of them believed their own promises more.”
“Makayla believes whatever reduces her fear in the moment.” Evan’s gaze remained on the page. “Hudson seems to believe wanting something gives him the right to have it.”
“That sounds accurate.” Abby looked at him. “You understand her better than I understood Hudson.”
Evan’s mouth tightened before he continued. “I thought her fear of losing everything explained why she needed constant reassurance. I didn’t realize she was building a second life in case the one with me failed.”