Chapter 8
Noah was already out of bed, phone in hand, face lit by the screen. Ella sat upright beneath the covers, cold all over despite the heat kicking on through the old vents.
“Lara says Ella emailed her,” Noah said.
Carolina’s gaze cut to Ella.
“I didn’t,” Ella said.
“I know.” Carolina came into the room. No pause. No hesitation. No little flicker of assessment that would have made Ella shatter. “Show me.”
Noah handed her the phone.
Carolina read the messages once. Then again. Her face did not change, but her jaw shifted slightly at the screenshot.
“You’ve been asleep?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Noah?”
“She’s been asleep,” he said.
Carolina looked at him. “You know that?”
His eyes sharpened. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Ella gripped the sheet in her lap. “I woke up when the phone lit up.”
Carolina held Noah’s phone out toward her, not forcing it closer. “Do you want to look again?”
“No.”
Then she did anyway.
The screenshot sat there, awful in its simplicity.
From: Ella O’Donnell
To: Lara Collins
Subject: Stop.
Sent: 2:07 a.m.
I’ve won but this isn’t over.
It sounded nothing like her.
But the seating-chart email had sounded exactly like her.
Because whoever was doing this—whatever was happening—had already proved it could wear her voice convincingly when it wanted to.
This email did not feel like a mistake. It felt like a different kind of performance.
Not Ella sounding like Ella, but Ella sounding like what someone else needed her to be.
Unstable.
Threatening.
The sort of woman Lara had been gently worrying about.
Carolina turned Noah’s phone over in her hand. “Do not respond.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Noah said.
“Good. Ella, get your phone.”
Ella looked toward her nightstand. Her phone lay there, face down, charging. She did not want to touch it. It looked suddenly unfamiliar, less like an object than an accomplice.
Noah reached for it, then stopped. “May I?”
Ella nodded.
He handed it to her.
Her fingers shook on the passcode.
Email.
Sent folder.
Nothing.
She stared at the screen.
“There’s nothing there,” she said.
Noah leaned close but did not touch the phone. Carolina stood at the end of the bed, watching.
“Search Lara,” Carolina said.
Ella searched.
No sent email at 2:07. No draft. No deleted message.
Her inbox held ordinary things: a promotion from the bridal salon, a reply from her mother about thank-you notes, three vendor emails she no longer trusted. No evidence of the message in Lara’s screenshot.
“It’s not here,” Ella whispered.
Carolina took a slow breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Noah said.
“Okay as in information, not okay as in fine.” Carolina handed his phone back.
“Either Lara fabricated the screenshot, or someone sent something in a way that didn’t land in Ella’s sent folder, or there’s another account or alias, or something I don’t understand because I am not an IT department at two in the morning. ”
Ella laughed once.
It was too close to a sob.
Noah sat on the edge of the bed beside her, still holding his phone. “Why would Lara send this to me?”
Carolina looked at him. “To make you afraid of Ella.”
The words landed flat and brutal.
Ella flinched.
Noah’s face went still.
Carolina did not apologize. “Or to make Ella afraid of herself. Or both.”
Noah looked at the screenshot again, and Ella watched the horror work through him. Not at her. For her. But horror all the same, and it made the bedroom feel too small.
“I need to call her,” he said.
“No,” Carolina and Ella said at the same time.
Noah looked at Ella.
She swallowed. “Please don’t.”
“I won’t accuse her. I just?—”
“No.” Ella’s voice broke. “Noah, please. If you call her, she gets to cry, and explain, and be afraid, and then I have to sit here while you listen to her. I can’t do that right now.”
He put the phone facedown on the bed immediately. “Okay.”
The speed of it steadied her.
Carolina nodded once, approving. “We document. We do not emotionally improvise with a woman who texts screenshots at two in the morning.”
Noah rubbed a hand over his face. “I hate this.”
“Good,” Carolina said. “Hate is clarifying.”
“Carolina.”
“What? It is.”
Ella stared at her phone.
No email.
No sent message.
Nothing.
The absence should have helped. Instead, it made the whole thing feel less anchored.
At least the seating-chart email had existed.
They could see it, forward it, trace it badly if not perfectly.
This was a screenshot of a thing that might never have happened, which meant Ella now had to defend herself against an image.
How did you prove you had not sent an email no one could find?
How did you prove you had slept?
Noah’s hand covered hers beneath the blanket.
“I know you didn’t send it,” he said.
Ella closed her eyes.
“Say it again,” she whispered before she could feel ashamed.
“I know you didn’t send it.”
She breathed.
Carolina sat on the chair near the dresser. “Unlock your email security again. Check recent activity.”
Ella did.
No login at 2:07.
No new device. No unknown location. Nothing except her own home network earlier, when they had all been gathered downstairs, and her phone just now.
Noah checked the shared calendar. Nothing. The vendor portal. Nothing new. His own email. No messages.
Lara did not text again.
At two forty, Carolina stood. “I’m making tea.”
Noah looked at her. “Now?”
“Yes, now. Human bodies are primitive. Warm liquid helps.”
“I’ll do it.”
“No. You stay with your fiancée.”
The words were not gentle, but Ella loved her for them.
Carolina went downstairs.
For a moment, the bedroom was quiet except for the heat and the tiny electric hum of Ella’s phone charger.
Noah sat beside her, shoulders bowed, both hands clasped loosely between his knees. He looked at the floor as if there were answers in the wood grain.
Ella watched him.
This was costing him. She could see that now. Not just the fear and anger on her behalf, but the deeper thing. Lara had been stitched into his life for so long he had mistaken the seam for skin. Pulling at it hurt. Believing the worst, or even suspecting it, was its own grief.
Ella felt that.
She did not want to carry it for him.
Those two truths existed side by side, uncomfortable and solid.
“Noah.”
He looked at her immediately.
“I’m sorry too.”
His face changed. “No.”
“I don’t mean for what she’s doing. Or for being upset.” Ella drew the blanket higher around her waist. “I mean I’m sorry this is happening to you too.”
For a second he looked as if the words had cut him.
Then he shook his head. “Don’t take care of me right now.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.” His voice roughened. “You’re sitting here after someone tried to make you look unhinged, and you’re apologizing to me because my friend might be the one doing it.”
“She is still your friend.”
His eyes lowered. “Was,” he said.
The past tense moved through the room quietly.
Ella did not know whether to believe it yet. Not because he was lying. Because grief sometimes negotiated after the fact.
Carolina came back with three mugs balanced in a way that defied both physics and common sense.
“Drink,” she ordered.
Noah took his. Ella took hers.
The tea was too hot and mostly tasted like leaves, but the mug warmed Ella’s hands.
At three fifteen, Carolina said, “We need a rule for tonight.”
Ella looked at her.
“No one answers Lara. No one calls Lara. Noah, if she texts again, you screenshot and put the phone facedown. Ella, you do not check your email every four minutes like the inbox is going to confess. Everyone attempts sleep.”
“That sounds impossible,” Ella said.
“Most healthy things do.”
Noah set his mug on the nightstand. “I’ll put my phone downstairs.”
Ella’s hand tightened around her tea.
He saw.
“No,” he corrected himself. “I’ll put it on the dresser. Face down. Do Not Disturb except Carolina and Mom.”
“And Ella,” Carolina said.
“She’s beside me.”
“And if she needs to call you from the bathroom after deciding to dramatically move to Portugal?”
Despite everything, Ella smiled.
Noah picked up his phone and changed the setting. “Ella, Carolina, Mom.”
“Good.”
Carolina stood. “I’ll be on the couch. I have one eye open and a deep distrust of everyone.”
“Comforting,” Noah said.
“It should be.”
When Carolina left, Noah turned off the lamp.
The darkness returned, but it was not the same darkness as before. It had been interrupted. Questioned. Made watchful.
Ella lay down slowly.
Noah lay beside her but did not reach for her right away.
She found his hand under the blanket.
His fingers closed around hers.
Neither of them slept for a long time.
At some point, just before dawn, Ella drifted.
She woke to gray light and an empty bed.
For one disoriented second, panic moved through her so fast she sat up.
Then she heard Noah downstairs.
Not his voice. The low, familiar rhythm of his footsteps. Kitchen to dining room. Dining room to kitchen. Cabinet. Mug. Sink.
Ordinary.
Her heart slowed.
She put on a sweater and went downstairs.
Carolina was asleep on the couch under two blankets, one arm flung over her face. Her hair had escaped its bun and spread across the pillow like dark seaweed. She had one sock on and one sock off. Even unconscious, she looked judgmental.
Noah stood at the kitchen island with his laptop open, phone beside it, coffee untouched.
He turned when Ella came in.
His face softened with such immediate relief that she realized he had been listening for her too.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“How long have you been up?”
“Since six.”
It was seven twenty.
Ella came to stand beside him. The laptop screen showed an email draft.
Not to Lara.
To Bethany, the dress shop, the florist, the venue coordinator, the caterer, the jeweler Lara had contacted, and everyone else whose names had become part of this ugly web.
“What is that?” Ella asked.
“A correction.”
She read.