Chapter 6 #4
He brought the laptop, set it on the island, and turned the screen toward Ella, not himself. She logged in. He guided her through settings, security, recent activity. Carolina stayed on speaker, issuing occasional instructions with lethal calm.
Recent login: same device. Same home network.
Noah exhaled slowly.
Lara whispered, “That doesn’t make sense.”
Ella looked at her.
Lara’s face was wet. Pale. “It doesn’t. I didn’t—Ella, I didn’t.”
Carolina’s voice cut through. “Ella, do you ever leave your laptop unlocked?”
Ella started to say no.
Then stopped.
Sometimes.
At home. In the office. If she was only running downstairs for coffee. If Noah called. If a client note needed finishing and she planned to come right back.
“Yes,” she said.
Noah closed his eyes briefly.
Lara shook her head harder. “No.”
“Lara,” Noah said.
She looked at him.
His voice was low. “Stop.”
The word landed.
Lara stared at him as if she did not recognize him.
“I didn’t do it,” she said, but now it sounded less like an argument and more like a plea.
Ella felt something inside her go very quiet again, but this time it was not fear.
Carolina said, “Forward me the original from the sent folder. Full headers if possible. Also, Ella, change your email password now.”
“I will.”
“Now.”
Noah said, “I’ll step away.”
“No,” Ella said.
He stayed.
She changed it with him beside her, Lara across from her, and Carolina on the phone like a blade laid flat on the table.
When it was done, Lara wiped her face and drew herself up with visible effort.
“I’m going to my room,” she said.
Noah looked at her. “No.”
Everyone froze.
Lara’s face drained.
“What?” she whispered.
“No,” Noah repeated. “Not until we talk about this.”
“I have nothing to say except I didn’t do it.”
“Then we’re going to sit here until we understand how it happened.”
A few days ago, Ella would have worried about his tone.
Now she felt only the strange, floating sensation of a floor appearing where she had expected to fall.
Lara looked at Ella. “You believe I did this.”
Ella swallowed. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. “I believe I didn’t.”
That was all she had.
Lara’s tears started again.
Carolina said, “Ella, I’m coming over.”
“No,” Ella said quickly.
“Yes.”
“No. Not yet.”
There was a pause.
“Are you safe?” Carolina asked.
The question startled the room.
Noah straightened. “Of course she’s safe.”
Carolina’s voice did not soften. “I asked Ella.”
Ella looked at Lara.
Lara looked wounded by the question. Maybe rightly. There had been no threat of violence. No raised hand. No danger of that kind. The threat in the house was stranger, softer, harder to prove.
“I’m safe,” Ella said.
“Do you want me there?”
Ella looked at Noah.
He nodded once. Not threatened. Not insulted.
Her throat tightened.
“Not yet,” she said. “But stay near your phone.”
“Always.”
They ended the call.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Noah turned to Lara.
“I need your phone.”
Lara’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Your phone.”
“Noah.”
“If you didn’t send it, there’s nothing to find.”
“That is such an awful thing to say.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yes.” His voice roughened for the first time. “I know this is awful. I know all of it is awful. But someone sent an email from Ella’s account and made it look like she chose to move her best friend away from the head table and put you there. So yes, Lara, I need your phone.”
Lara stared at him.
Then she laughed once, brokenly. “You think I’m insane.”
“No,” he said.
“You do.”
“No. I think something has gone very wrong in my house, and I have been too slow to see it.”
Ella gripped the edge of the island.
Lara’s face crumpled.
She placed her phone on the island.
Noah did not touch it at first. “Unlock it.”
She did.
The phone sat there open.
Noah looked at Ella. “Do you want to look, or should I?”
Ella shook her head. “I don’t want to look through her phone.”
“Neither do I.”
Lara’s voice was hollow. “Then don’t.”
Noah looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, “Email search. Bethany.”
Lara did it herself, fingers trembling.
A list of emails appeared. Bethany’s thread from that morning. Older threads from venue discussions where Lara had been copied. Nothing from last night.
“Sent,” Noah said.
Lara opened it.
Nothing.
“Deleted.”
Nothing.
Noah’s jaw tightened.
Lara pushed the phone toward him. “Satisfied?”
“No.”
Her face twisted.
“Because it still happened,” he said.
Ella turned away from them, suddenly unable to watch.
Her own phone buzzed.
Carolina: Keep the email. Do not delete anything. Photograph everything. Also, ask Noah who was downstairs at 8:42.
Ella looked at the message.
Then she looked at Noah.
“Who was downstairs at 8:42?”
Noah went still.
Lara did too.
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “We went upstairs after dinner.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know.”
Ella looked at Lara.
Lara’s lips parted.
“I came down for water,” she said.
The words were barely audible.
Noah turned to her.
“When?” Ella asked.
Lara shook her head. “I don’t know exactly.”
“At 8:42?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I was thirsty.”
Noah’s face changed.
Lara saw it and took a step back. “No.”
“Lara.”
“No. I came down for water. I didn’t go into the office.”
“You walked past it.”
“So? I walked past a room. That isn’t proof of anything.”
“No one said proof,” Ella said.
Lara turned on her. Not violently. But with a sudden flash of hurt so sharp it looked like anger.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “It’s in your face.”
Ella flinched.
Noah moved immediately, placing himself not between them exactly, but closer to Ella.
Lara saw that too.
The room seemed to crack around the movement.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Noah looked pained. “Lara.”
“No. I see.”
“I’m not?—”
“You are.” Her voice shook. “You’re standing with her.”
Ella stared at her.
The words were not accusation enough to be unreasonable. Of course Noah should stand with Ella. Ella was his fiancée. That should have been the whole obvious structure of the world.
But Lara said it like betrayal.
Noah’s face went very still.
“I should have been doing that all along,” he said.
Lara looked as if he had taken something from her hands.
For one moment, Ella almost felt sorry for her.
Then Lara looked at the wedding binder, the laptop, the phone, the room full of things that were not hers, and said quietly, “I need to leave.”
Noah’s voice was careful. “Where will you go?”
Lara laughed again, small and bitter. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Ella said before she meant to.
Lara looked at her.
Ella hated how tired she sounded. “Yes, it matters. But you can’t keep staying here like this.”
Noah looked at Ella, then back at Lara.
Lara drew in a shaking breath. “I’ll get a hotel.”
“You said—” Noah started.
“I know what I said.” She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “I’ll put it on a card. I’ll sell something. I’ll sleep in my car. I don’t know. But I can’t stay here while you both look at me like I’m some?—”
She stopped.
Some what.
Ella wanted her to finish.
Lara did not.
She picked up her phone and went upstairs.
Noah started to follow, then stopped himself.
Ella watched that stopping. The visible effort of it. The old instinct interrupted.
He turned back to Ella.
“What do you need?” he asked.
The question was so simple.
The answer was not.
Ella looked at the laptop, still open to her account activity. The wedding binder. The blue coffee mug in the sink. The house she had wanted back and now did not trust.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Noah came closer. “Okay.”
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know if she did it.”
His silence lasted one beat too long.
Ella looked at him sharply.
“I think she did,” he said.
The sentence should have relieved her.
Instead, it frightened her.
Because now it had shape.
Because now the thing Carolina had refused to say was in the kitchen with them, breathing.
Upstairs, drawers opened and shut. A box scraped across the floor.
Lara was packing again.
Ella wrapped her arms around herself.
Noah stood beside her but did not touch her until she leaned, just slightly, toward him.
Then his arm came around her shoulders.
This time, when the guest room door slammed, neither of them moved.