Chapter 6 #3
By then, Ella and Noah had eaten breakfast, gone for a walk, and come back with coffee from the café near the park. The morning felt almost luxurious in its deliberate selfishness. Noah kept her hand in his coat pocket the whole way home, his fingers locked around hers.
When they entered the kitchen, Lara was there, standing at the island with her phone in her hand.
She looked startled to see them.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were upstairs.”
“No,” Noah said. “Walk.”
Lara nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
There was a strange quality to her voice.
Ella noticed it before she noticed the wedding binder open on the island. Not the main section. The back pocket.
The sight of it hit her hard enough that the coffee in her hand sloshed against the lid.
Lara saw her looking and paled. “I wasn’t doing wedding stuff.”
Noah’s face changed.
Lara pushed the binder toward them quickly, as if distance could prove innocence. “I swear. I needed the landlord’s phone number. I wrote it on one of the spare pages in the back, remember? Noah said I could use it for apartment notes.”
Ella walked to the island.
The binder was open to a sheet of paper covered in Lara’s handwriting: landlord number, utility company, moving checklist, measurements for the apartment. No wedding notes.
No place cards. No seating chart.
No violation, technically.
Ella put her coffee down with more care than necessary.
“Okay,” she said.
“I know I shouldn’t have touched it. I didn’t think.” Lara’s voice sped up. “I wasn’t trying to?—”
“Then why is there an email from Bethany open on your phone?” Noah asked.
The room went silent.
Ella looked at Noah first.
He was not looking at her.
He was looking at Lara’s phone, still lit in her hand.
Lara looked down as if she had forgotten she was holding it. “What?”
Noah’s voice was calm. Too calm. “Bethany’s name. On your screen.”
Lara turned the phone toward herself.
For one second, something crossed her face that Ella could not read because it was gone too fast.
Then Lara exhaled shakily. “Oh. God. No. That’s not—I got copied on an email from her this morning. I was trying to figure out why.”
Ella’s stomach tightened.
“Copied how?” Noah asked.
Lara tapped the screen, then seemed to think better of handing the phone to him. She placed it on the island between them instead.
Ella looked down.
Bethany’s email was visible.
Hi Lara, Ella, and Noah,
Just confirming final notes from the revised seating chart and floral table count. Lara, thank you again for clarifying the adjustments. Please see attached.
Ella read the first line twice.
Then the second.
Lara, thank you again for clarifying the adjustments.
Her body went very still.
Lara was already shaking her head. “I didn’t clarify anything.”
Noah picked up the phone. “Then why is she thanking you?”
“I don’t know.” Lara’s voice had gone thin. “I don’t. Maybe from before? Maybe she’s using an old thread?”
Ella reached for her own phone.
Her hands were steady in a way that frightened her.
There was the email in her inbox too, unread beneath two promotional messages and one note from her mother. She opened it.
Same words.
Same attachment.
She opened the PDF.
The seating chart was not the draft they had left on the dining table.
Tasha was back at table nine.
Lara was at the head table.
Not beside the head table. Not near it.
At it.
Ella felt the room tilt.
Noah moved closer. “What is it?”
She handed him the phone.
He looked.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
“I didn’t do that,” Lara said.
Noah looked up. “Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bethany says you clarified adjustments.”
“I didn’t.”
Ella heard Carolina’s voice in her head.
Send me everything. Even the things you think are stupid.
Her thumb moved before her brain did. Screenshot. Email. Attachment. Seating chart.
Lara saw.
A strange hurt crossed her face. “Ella.”
Ella looked up.
“What?” she asked.
The word was not loud.
Lara’s eyes filled. “You think I did this.”
Ella did not answer.
Because yes.
Because no.
Because she did not know.
Because the not knowing was becoming unbearable.
Noah set Ella’s phone down on the island. “I’m calling Bethany.”
Lara’s breath caught. “Noah?—”
He looked at her.
She stopped.
Good, Ella thought, and then felt a small shock at the coldness of it.
Noah called. Put it on speaker without asking.
Bethany answered brightly. “Noah, hi.”
“Hi, Bethany,” he said. “We’re looking at the seating chart you sent.”
“Wonderful. I know it was a lot of back and forth, but I think we finally got there.”
Ella gripped the edge of the island.
Noah’s voice stayed even. “Can you tell me who sent the final adjustments?”
There was the light tapping sound of Bethany checking something. “Let me see. The notes came through yesterday evening from Ella’s email.”
Ella’s heart stopped.
“What?” she said.
Bethany paused. “Ella?”
“Yes. I did not send you seating changes yesterday.”
Another pause, longer this time.
“Oh,” Bethany said carefully. “I’m looking at the message now. It came from your email address. Lara was copied. It said Lara had helped you finalize table placement and that she could clarify if needed.”
Ella turned slowly toward Lara.
Lara’s lips parted.
“No,” she whispered.
Noah’s face had gone hard in a way Ella had never seen directed at anyone inside their home.
“Forward that message to me,” he said.
“Of course,” Bethany said, alarmed now. “I’m so sorry if there was a misunderstanding.”
“Forward it to both of us,” Ella said.
“Absolutely.”
Noah ended the call.
The room was silent except for the refrigerator humming.
Lara shook her head once. “I didn’t do that.”
Ella’s phone buzzed.
The forwarded email arrived.
From Ella O’Donnell’s address.
Sent yesterday at 8:42 p.m.
Ella had been upstairs with Noah at 8:42 p.m. Or had she? They had gone upstairs after dinner. What time? Eight? Eight-thirty? Lara had been across the hall. Ella’s laptop had been downstairs in the office.
The message was short.
Hi Bethany,
Please use the attached revised seating chart. Lara helped me finalize the adjustments and can answer any questions if I’m tied up with work. I’m trying to take a little off my plate before I turn into a full bridal gremlin.
Thanks!
Ella
Ella stared at the words.
Full bridal gremlin.
She had said that.
Not in an email.
To Lara. Maybe to Noah. A joke after the venue meeting, when she had said chair rentals were turning her into a full bridal gremlin.
The phrase was hers.
The email sounded like her.
That was the worst part.
Noah read over her shoulder. His face changed, not toward suspicion of Ella, but toward something darker.
“Ella,” Lara said.
Ella lifted her eyes.
Lara looked terrified now. Truly terrified. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”
“Who else knew that phrase?” Noah asked.
Lara looked at him as if he had slapped her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You. Ella. Me. Maybe your mother.”
“Who else had access to Ella’s laptop?”
“Noah,” Ella said sharply.
He turned to her.
The sharpness had not been meant for him exactly, but for the shape the question had taken. For the room becoming a place where evidence pointed and everyone could point back.
“No,” she said, quieter. “Don’t do that like a trial.”
His face softened immediately. “Okay.”
Lara was crying now, silent tears slipping down her face.
“I know this looks bad,” she said.
Ella laughed once.
It sounded awful.
Lara flinched.
Noah put a hand on the island between them. “Did you send the email?”
“No.”
“Did you use Ella’s laptop?”
“No!”
“Did you change the seating chart?”
“No!”
“Then how did Bethany get it?”
“I don’t know.” Lara wiped her cheeks angrily. “I don’t know, Noah. But I didn’t do it.”
Ella looked back at the email.
From her account.
Her phrasing.
A seating chart that moved Lara closer and Ella’s friend farther away.
A helpful note. A funny note. A believable note.
She felt suddenly, violently tired.
“I need to call Carolina,” she said.
Lara closed her eyes.
Noah said, “Good.”
That surprised Ella enough that she looked at him.
He met her gaze. “Call Carolina.”
He believed her.
Or at least he believed something was wrong.
For the moment, that was enough to keep her standing.
Carolina answered on the first ring.
“I’m sending you an email,” Ella said.
Her voice sounded flat. Far away.
“What happened?”
“Seating chart. From my account. I didn’t send it.”
Carolina went quiet.
Not shocked quiet.
Ready quiet.
“Send it,” she said.
Ella forwarded everything. The Bethany email. The attachment. Screenshots.
Carolina stayed on the line while she did.
Noah stood on the other side of the island, watching Lara. Lara stood near the sink, arms wrapped around herself, crying soundlessly.
It felt unreal. Too still for the size of what was happening.
Carolina came back after a minute. “Where were you at 8:42 last night?”
“Upstairs, I think.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Was your laptop open?”
“In the office.”
“Password protected?”
“Yes.”
“Does anyone know your password?”
“Noah does.”
Noah’s eyes flicked to hers.
“I know it,” he said. “Lara doesn’t.”
Lara shook her head quickly. “I don’t.”
Carolina’s voice sharpened. “Is Noah there?”
“Yes.”
“Speaker.”
Ella put her on speaker.
“Hi, Noah,” Carolina said. It was not a greeting. It was a warning with syllables.
“Hi.”
“Do not ask Ella if she forgot sending that email.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good. Continue not doing that.”
Lara made a small sound.
Carolina said, “Lara there?”
No one answered.
That was answer enough.
“Excellent,” Carolina said. “Then everyone gets to hear this. Ella, open your sent folder. Search Bethany.”
Ella did.
The email was there.
Sent at 8:42 p.m.
Her stomach dropped even though she had known it would be.
“It’s there,” she said.
“Open account activity.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I do,” Noah said.
He came around the island and reached for the laptop bag near the office door, then stopped. “May I?”
The question almost broke her.
“Yes.”