Chapter 7 #2
Upstairs, the vacuum started. Ella looked toward the ceiling. “He’s cleaning the guest room,” she said.
“Good.”
“He believes me.”
“Good.”
“I think he thinks she did it.”
“What do you think?”
Ella opened her eyes. The question moved through her carefully.
“I think someone used my account.”
“Yes.”
“I think Lara had motive.”
“Yes.”
“I think she had opportunity.”
“Yes.”
“I also think she looked genuinely terrified.”
Carolina sighed, not impatiently. “Those things can all be true.”
“I hate that.”
“I know.”
The vacuum stopped. Furniture shifted overhead.
Ella lowered her voice. “What if I’m wrong?”
“About which part?”
“About her. About everything. What if I let this become some story because I was jealous and stressed and Carolina kept saying ominous things in entryways?”
“I have never once been ominous in an entryway.”
“Carolina.”
“Fine. Twice.”
Despite herself, Ella smiled.
Then Carolina said, “You’re not wrong about the effect. Start there. Even if Lara never deliberately moved one object or touched one email, the effect was that you started feeling like a guest in your own house. That matters. Intent doesn’t erase impact.”
“She said that too.”
“Of course she did. She’s fluent in therapy talk. That’s part of why this is so slippery.”
Ella was quiet.
Carolina softened. “You don’t have to convict her today. You just have to stop making yourself available for more damage.”
Ella nodded, though Carolina could not see it.
After they hung up, Ella sat at the dining table and made a list.
Not a dramatic one. Not Evidence Lara Is Trying to Become Me, because even writing that in a notebook would have made her throw it across the room.
She wrote:
Things to check:
Email sent to Bethany
Shared calendar edits
Vendor contacts
Dress shop appointment
Seating chart version history
Noah’s mom communication
Bracelet jeweler
Then, after a pause, she added:
Things I need back:
kitchen
living room
guest room
wedding binder
phone
calendar
sleep
The last one made her throat tighten.
Noah came downstairs an hour later carrying a trash bag and a laundry basket. He had changed out of his sweater into an old T-shirt, and his hair was damp at the temples.
“I found this under the guest bed,” he said.
Ella’s stomach clenched.
He held up her steamer.
For a second, she could not speak.
“The steamer?” she said stupidly.
“Yeah.”
“But I found it in the basement.”
“I know.”
They looked at each other.
Noah set the laundry basket down carefully. The steamer lay on top of the stripped sheets, cord wrapped neatly around the handle.
Ella walked closer but did not touch it.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“No.”
“I found it in the basement before the shower.”
“I remember.”
“So either I put it back under the guest bed after that, or Lara used it again and put it there.”
Noah’s expression tightened.
“Or you did,” Ella added, because fairness was a reflex with claws.
“I didn’t.”
“You don’t know that. You forget things.”
“Not this.” He looked at the steamer. “I haven’t touched it.”
Ella stared at it until the white plastic blurred.
“Why would she put it under the bed?”
“I don’t know.”
“To make me find it later? To make me think—” She stopped.
Noah waited.
To make me think what?
That objects moved. That her memory was unreliable. That Lara was careless. That Lara was innocent. That nothing was safe. That everything could be explained.
Ella pressed both hands to the edge of the laundry basket.
“I hate this,” she whispered.
Noah’s face twisted. “I know.”
“She’s gone, and I still hate this.”
“I know.”
The doorbell rang.
Both of them flinched.
Ella laughed once, sharply. Noah turned toward the entry.
“I’ll get it.”
“No.” Ella straightened. “I will.”
He looked at her.
“I can answer my own door,” she said.
His eyes softened with something like pride and grief.
“Yes,” he said.
She went to the entry and opened the door.
Margaret stood on the porch with a pastry box and a bouquet of yellow tulips.
“Hello, darling,” she said, then looked at Ella’s face and stopped. “Oh.”
Ella could not manage politeness.
“Lara moved out,” she said.
Margaret’s gaze moved past her to Noah, who had come to stand in the hallway.
“I see,” Margaret said slowly.
“She’s at a hotel until Monday.”
Margaret looked between them, then did the rarest thing Ella had ever seen Margaret Greenwood do.
She did not try to smooth the moment.
She simply nodded. “May I come in?”
Ella stepped back.
Margaret entered, set the pastries and flowers on the console table, and unbuttoned her coat. “What happened?” she asked.
Noah said, “Someone sent the venue a revised seating chart from Ella’s email.”
Margaret’s lips parted.
“Lara was moved to the head table,” Ella said. “Tasha was moved away from Carolina. The email said Lara helped me finalize it.”
Margaret went very still.
“I didn’t send it,” Ella added.
“I believe you,” Margaret said immediately.
Ella blinked.
Margaret’s face tightened. “Why would you think I wouldn’t?”
Because Lara was practically family, Ella almost said.
Because Lara knew which of your friends had knee surgery.
Because Lara fit the bracelet.
Because everyone keeps believing the calmest woman in the room.
She only shook her head.
Noah said, “We don’t know for sure that Lara sent it.”
Margaret looked at him then.
There was no softness in her expression. “But you suspect she did.”
Noah’s jaw shifted. “Yes.”
Margaret closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she looked older. “I’m sorry,” she said to Ella.
“You already apologized.”
“Not for this.”
Ella did not know what to do with Margaret’s apology.
Margaret took off her gloves finger by finger. “Lara called me last night.”
Noah went still.
Ella’s skin went cold.
“What did she say?” Noah asked.
Margaret looked at Ella, not him. “She was upset. She said she thought she had made you uncomfortable. That she was worried you had begun to see her as an intrusion.”
Ella waited.
“She said she understood,” Margaret continued. “She was very gracious.”
Noah’s mouth tightened.
“She also said,” Margaret went on carefully, “that wedding stress seemed to be affecting you more than you wanted to admit. She was concerned about your mental health.”
The sentence landed with a soft, poisonous sound. Ella looked down at the floor. Concern. Lara used it like silk rope, squeezing the air out of her.
Noah said, “Mom.”
“I am not agreeing with her,” Margaret said sharply.
Noah stopped.
Margaret looked stricken now. “I thought she was trying to protect you both from embarrassment. I see now that was foolish.”
Ella’s voice came from somewhere far away. “What else did she say?”
Margaret hesitated.
Ella looked up. “Tell me.”
“She said you had been forgetting things. The fitting time. The dress. That you were taking screenshots of ordinary messages.” Margaret swallowed. “She said she worried documenting everything was making you more anxious, not less.”
Noah’s face went hard.
Ella’s body went hot, then cold.
“She told you I was taking screenshots?”
“Yes.”
“I never told her that.”
Margaret’s expression changed.
Noah said, very quietly, “How would she know?”
The question stayed in the hallway with them.
Ella remembered Lara standing in the office doorway with a brownie. Lara’s eyes flicking to the sticky note on the laptop. Ella sending Carolina the screenshot. Had Lara seen the phone? Had she guessed? Had Ella mentioned it? She searched her memory and found only fragments.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Margaret touched the back of the chair beside her, as if she needed the support. “Ella, I’m sorry.” The apology was becoming unbearable.
Ella turned away. “I need air.”
Noah moved. “I’ll come.”
“No.” She stopped him without turning. “Please. Just give me a minute.”
He stayed.
Good.
Bad.
She did not know anymore.
Ella stepped onto the porch without a coat. The cold hit her bare arms and made her inhale sharply. The afternoon was too bright, all hard winter light and pale sky. Across the street, someone’s dog barked at nothing.
Her phone was in her hand.
She did not remember picking it up.
She called Carolina.
“What happened?” Carolina asked immediately.
“Lara told Margaret I was mentally ill. And taking screenshots. Paranoid”
A pause.
Then Carolina said, “Oh, she can go to hell.”
The bluntness was so Carolina that Ella almost laughed. Instead, tears came, sudden and hot.
“I didn’t tell her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think I told her.”
“I know.”
“What if I did? What if I’m forgetting? What if I keep saying she somehow knows things, but I’m the one giving them to her? What if I am having a mental health crisis?”
“Ella.”
“I feel crazy.”
“You are not crazy.”
The sentence was firm. Immediate. But Ella could not absorb it. Not all the way.
Inside the house, Margaret was speaking quietly. Noah answered, too low to hear. Their shapes moved behind the front window, blurred by reflection.
“I need you to start from what you know,” Carolina said. “Not what you fear. What you know.”
Ella wiped at her face. “I know the email came from my account.”
“Good.”
“I know I didn’t send it.”
“Good.”
“I know Lara told Margaret about the screenshots.”
“Yes.”
“I know I didn’t knowingly tell Lara.”
“Good.”
“I know she keeps ending up closer to Noah, the wedding, the house, his mother, the vendors, everything.”
Carolina was quiet.
Ella wrapped her free arm around herself. “I know I want her gone.”
“She is gone.”
“No,” Ella said, looking back at the house. “She’s not.”
Because Lara was still present, taking up room in her mind. The seating chart. Margaret’s worry. The steamer under the bed. The smell in the living room. The note on the pillow. The little phrase that had crawled into an email and worn Ella’s voice.
She was not in the house.
And still the house was full of her.
Carolina said, “Come stay with me tonight.”
Ella closed her eyes.