Chapter 8 #4
“I know. I know you told me not to. I didn’t meet her alone. I opened the door with the chain on. But Noah, she looked dreadful.”
Ella stood.
Carolina looked at her sharply.
Margaret continued, “She said she didn’t know who else to go to.”
Noah’s face twisted.
“She said she was afraid to leave the perfume at the hotel because it felt like evidence, and she didn’t want someone to say she had hidden it.”
Ella’s skin prickled.
“What did you do?” Noah asked.
“I took it.”
“Mom.”
“I know,” Margaret said, with such grim dignity that under any other circumstances it would have been funny. “I did not invite her in.”
Noah’s shoulders lowered a fraction.
“And?” Carolina asked.
Margaret inhaled unsteadily. “She said something before she left.”
Ella’s voice came out thin. “What?”
Margaret was quiet.
Then: “She said Ella has everything. The house. The wedding. You. All of us. And somehow She’s still the one being thrown away.”
Noah looked at Ella.
For a moment, she could see Lara standing on Margaret’s porch with Ella’s perfume in her hand, saying the thing she had perhaps been saying under every helpful act for weeks.
Ella has everything.
Noah’s voice was barely audible. “Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. She left.”
“Did she drive?”
“Yes.”
“Was she safe to drive?”
The old reflex had spoken. The concern. The habit. It was not even wrong, exactly. Lara was upset. People upset enough to show up crying at Margaret’s door might not be safe to drive.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Ella.
She nodded once.
She could not speak.
He said into the phone, “Mom, text me if she comes back. Don’t answer the door. I mean it.”
Margaret agreed.
The call ended.
Noah set the phone down carefully, as if any sudden movement might break something.
Ella waited for him to say something.
He stood there, looking at the phone, caught between fear and anger and grief, and the silence went on long enough for Ella to understand that even now, after everything, a part of him was still leaning toward the woman crying on the porch.
Ella picked up her own phone.
Noah looked up. “What are you doing?”
“Packing a bag.”
His expression changed. “Ella.”
“Not leaving leaving.” She heard the shakiness in her own voice and hated it. “Carolina’s right. I need one night where this isn’t all around me.”
Carolina was already standing. “Good.”
Noah stepped toward Ella. “Please don’t go because I asked if she could drive.”
Ella looked at him.
“That is not why I’m going.”
“Then why?”
“Because I watched you hear her say she resented me for having your life, and you still worried about whether she got home okay before you asked whether I was okay hearing it.”
The words hit him visibly.
He stopped.
“I am worried about you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m more worried about you.”
“Maybe.” Her voice softened, which hurt worse than anger. “But with Lara, you still move before you think.”
He looked devastated.
Ella could not hold it.
Not for him. Not right now.
She went upstairs.
He did not follow.
Carolina did.
In the bedroom, Ella pulled a small overnight bag from the closet and placed it on the bed. Her hands shook as she packed underwear, leggings, a sweater, toothbrush, charger. Carolina stood by the door, silent for once.
“I don’t want to leave him,” Ella said.
“You’re not leaving him. You’re leaving the blast radius for one night.”
Ella laughed weakly. “That sounds dramatic.”
“It is dramatic. Drama is appropriate when people start planting perfume.”
Ella looked at the dresser, at the square in the dust where her half-empty bottle had been.
“I think I hate her,” she whispered.
The words shocked her.
Then relieved her.
Carolina came closer. “Okay.”
“I do. I hate her.”
“Okay.”
“I feel bad.”
“You can feel bad tomorrow.”
Ella nodded, crying now. “Okay.”
When they came downstairs, Noah was in the entry.
He had her coat in his hands.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said.
“I know.”
“But I understand why you are.”
She took the coat.
His eyes were red.
“I failed that moment,” he said.
Ella’s throat tightened.
“I heard Mom say Lara was crying, and some part of me went there. I’m sorry.”
She nodded because she did not trust herself with words.
“I’m going to spend tonight changing every lock, every password, every contact chain. I’ll box anything of hers that’s still here. I’ll call the hotel and tell them not to put her through to us. I’ll do whatever makes it safer for you to come home.”
Home.
The word hurt.
“I need it to be my home when I come back,” she said.
“It will be.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not because you make it that way for me. With me.”
He absorbed the correction.
“With you,” he said.
Carolina opened the front door.
Cold air moved into the hall.
Ella stepped onto the porch, then turned back.
Noah stood inside, framed by the warm light of the house, holding himself still with visible effort.
She loved him.
She was furious with him.
Both truths stood on either side of the threshold.
“You did not lose me because Lara lied,” Ella said quietly. “You’re losing ground because I keep telling you the truth, and part of you still looks over my shoulder to see if you can believe that.”
Noah’s face broke.
Ella turned before she could go back and comfort him for it.
Carolina put an arm around her and led her to the car.
The door closed behind them.