Chapter 8 #2
This is Noah Greenwood. Effective immediately, no wedding-related changes are authorized unless they come from both Ella O’Donnell and me in the same email thread, or from Ella by phone using the number you have on file after verbal confirmation.
Please remove Lara Collins from all communication threads and disregard any prior instruction listing her as a point of contact.
Ella has not delegated decision-making authority to anyone else.
Ella read it once.
Then again.
Her throat tightened.
Noah watched her. “Too much?”
“No.”
“Too legal?”
“A little.”
“I was angry.”
“I like angry.”
That earned a small, tired smile.
“I didn’t send it yet,” he said. “I wanted you to see it.”
“Send it.”
He did.
The whoosh of the email leaving felt absurdly satisfying.
Carolina’s voice came from the couch, muffled under her arm. “Did I hear boundaries?”
Noah looked toward the living room. “Go back to sleep.”
“I thrive on boundaries.”
Ella leaned against the island and laughed softly.
Noah finally picked up his coffee. “Lara texted at six.”
Ella’s laugh died.
He turned the phone toward her but did not hand it over.
Lara: I know you said not to text. I’m sorry. I barely slept. I checked my email again and the message is gone now. I don’t know what’s happening. Please just tell me Ella is okay.
Ella stared at it.
The message is gone now.
Of course it was.
A vanishing email. A screenshot. A concern.
Please just tell me Ella is okay.
Carolina appeared in the kitchen doorway wrapped in a blanket like an irritated prophet. “Absolutely not.”
Noah looked at Ella. “I didn’t answer.”
“Good,” Carolina said.
Ella looked at Lara’s text until the words blurred.
“She keeps saying my name,” Ella said.
Noah’s brow furrowed.
“She keeps saying she’s worried about me. Like I’m the problem everyone has to manage.”
His face tightened. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She turned away before she could see too much of his guilt.
Carolina shuffled to the coffee maker. “What’s the plan today?”
“I don’t have a plan,” Ella said.
“Wrong. We always have a plan. Even if the plan is eggs and revenge.”
“No revenge,” Ella said automatically.
“Fine. Eggs and documentation.”
Noah closed the laptop. “I’m going to talk to Lara in person.”
Ella’s body went cold.
“No,” she said.
He looked at her immediately. “Not alone.”
“No.”
“I need to look her in the face.”
“No, you want to.”
The sentence stopped him.
Carolina raised her eyebrows over her coffee mug but did not interfere.
Ella gripped the island. “You want to see if she’s still the person you think she is.”
Noah’s expression flinched open. He did not deny it, which she appreciated and hated.
“I want to understand,” he said.
“I know.”
“I also need to tell her to stop.”
“You already told her.”
“She isn’t stopping.”
“Then what makes you think seeing her will help?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
Ella’s voice shook. “Because she cries better in person?”
Pain moved across his face. “Ella.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” He swallowed. “Don’t be. That was fair.”
“It was mean.”
“It was fair.”
Carolina sipped coffee. “It was both. Many useful sentences are.”
Noah leaned both hands on the counter and looked down.
Ella could see the fight in him. Not against her.
Against himself. Against twelve-year-old Lara with scraped knees, twenty-four-year-old Lara at his father’s funeral, thirty-five-year-old Lara crying in his dining room over a man who had packed her belongings in cardboard.
Against every version of her that had existed before this one.
He said, slowly, “Then I don’t see her.”
Ella closed her eyes.
He continued, “Not unless you agree.”
Carolina pointed at him with her mug. “There may be hope for you.”
Noah did not smile.
Ella touched his wrist. “Thank you.”
He turned his hand palm up and caught her fingers.
For a while, that was all they could manage.
At nine thirty, Margaret called Noah. He put it on speaker at the dining table because that had become the new rule: no more private corridors.
“Good morning,” Margaret said, and there was a tightness in her voice that made Ella straighten. “I received a rather strange message from Lara.”
Noah closed his eyes briefly.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“She said she was worried Ella might be sending messages she didn’t remember sending. That she wasn’t herself.”
Carolina muttered something under her breath that involved fire.
Margaret continued, “She said she didn’t want to alarm me, but she thought perhaps the stress had become too much.”
Ella’s hand went numb around her coffee cup.
Noah’s voice went dangerously quiet. “When?”
“Early this morning. I didn’t see it until now.”
“Did you answer?”
“I said I would be speaking with you and Ella directly.”
Ella looked down at the table.
Margaret’s voice softened. “Ella, are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I do not believe that message.”
The pressure in Ella’s chest loosened enough to hurt.
“Thank you.”
“I am also very angry,” Margaret said, with such chilly precision that Carolina mouthed terrifying.
Noah said, “Mom, don’t engage with her.”
“I have no intention of engaging. I am telling you because secrecy appears to be the soil this thing grows in.”
Ella looked at Noah.
He looked back.
Margaret was right.
That was the worst and best thing about it.
After the call, Carolina opened her notebook again. “Pattern update. Lara is now triangulating concern about Ella to Noah and Margaret.”
“I hate the word triangulating,” Ella said.
“I hate the behavior more.”
Noah rubbed his jaw. “She’s isolating the frame.”
Both women looked at him.
He grimaced. “Sorry. Work language.”
“No,” Carolina said. “That’s good. Explain.”
“If Lara can make the question ‘Is Ella okay?’ instead of ‘What is Lara doing?’ then everything gets interpreted through concern about Ella’s state of mind.
” Noah’s voice roughened as he spoke, like understanding itself was scraping him raw.
“The emails. The screenshots. The boundaries. Even us checking things becomes evidence that Ella is spiraling.”
Ella sat very still.
Hearing him articulate it should have empowered her.
Instead, it frightened her more.
She stood. “I need a shower.”
Noah rose halfway. “Okay.”
She went upstairs alone.
In the bathroom, she turned the water hot and stood under it until the mirror fogged.
The shower had always been one of her favorite places in the house.
Old claw-foot tub, white curtain, ridiculous water pressure.
Noah had once said the shower pressure was the reason he bought the house, and Ella believed him.
Now even the shower did not feel fully private.
She remembered Lara answering Bethany’s call while Ella had stood wet-haired in a towel. Lara holding Ella’s phone in the hallway. Lara saying, I hope that was okay.
The memory crawled over her skin.
Ella washed her hair twice.
When she came out, wrapped in a towel, the bedroom door was ajar.
She knew she had closed it.
She stopped on the bath mat, water dripping down her spine.
Had she closed it?
Yes.
No.
She saw herself pushing it until it clicked.
Or maybe that was last night. Or another morning. Or an image her mind supplied because she wanted certainty.
“Ella?” Noah called from downstairs.
She did not answer.
The bedroom was empty. The hallway was empty. Carolina was downstairs with Noah. Lara was at a hotel.
Still, the open door made her heart pound.
She dressed quickly, choosing clothes from the closet without thinking: jeans, gray sweater, socks. When she reached for her perfume on the dresser, it was not there.
Ella stared at the spot.
A small square in the dust where the bottle should have been.
No.
She opened the top drawer. The second. Checked the bathroom shelf. The nightstand. Her purse. The laundry basket for some reason, because logic had become less important.
No perfume.
The bottle was not valuable. Not expensive. But it was hers. Fig and cedar and something amber Noah liked enough to lean in whenever she wore it.
She stood in the middle of the bedroom, towel damp on the floor behind her, heart pounding harder.
“No,” she whispered. “No.”
Noah appeared in the doorway. “El?”
“My perfume is gone.”
He stopped.
“I know it was here.”
“Okay.”
The carefulness of his voice made her want to scream.
Not because he was wrong to use it. Because carefulness sounded too close to handling.
“It was right there.” She pointed to the dresser. “Right there.”
“I believe you.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
His face tightened. “Like what?”
“Like you don’t believe me. Like I’m panicking.”
“You are panicking.”
“I know I’m panicking.” The words snapped out. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“No.” He stepped into the room slowly, hands visible, as if approaching a frightened animal. “It doesn’t.”
Carolina appeared behind him. “What’s missing?”
“My perfume.”
Carolina’s gaze went to the dresser, then the drawers open around Ella, then the bathroom. “When did you last use it?”
“Yesterday. No. Thursday. I don’t know.”
Noah said, “I remember smelling it yesterday.”
Ella looked at him.
“Before the hotel thing,” he said. “You came downstairs from work, and I remember because I thought you smelled like you.”
Like you.
Her throat closed.
Carolina moved into the room. “Everybody stop moving.”
Ella almost laughed. “Why?”
“Because searching while panicked is how things get weirder.” Carolina looked at Noah. “You check obvious places only. Dresser, bathroom, nightstand. Don’t start looking in cereal boxes.”
Noah nodded.
“Ella, sit.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Then stand still.”
Ella stood still.
They searched.
No perfume.
Carolina checked under the bed, then paused.
“What?” Ella asked.
Carolina reached beneath the bed and pulled out a small white shopping bag.
Ella’s stomach dropped.
It was from the boutique downtown. The one that sold candles, soaps, little decorative things no one needed and everyone wanted. The bag was folded at the top.
Carolina opened it.
Inside was Ella’s perfume.
Wrapped in tissue.
Beside it was a receipt.
Carolina unfolded the receipt.
Her face went cold.
“What?” Noah said.