Chapter 8 #2
Philip folded his hands. “Do you remember when this photograph was taken?”
Lara leaned forward to look. “Two days ago, I think. We were working the second act.”
“Where were you standing?”
“Near the prop table.”
“Why?”
A faint crease appeared between her brows. “I don’t remember. I may have been waiting for Robbie.”
Philip allowed the silence to lengthen. “Did you touch Olivia’s rehearsal bag?”
Lara’s eyes flicked toward Olivia and back. The movement was fast, but everyone in the room saw it.
“No.”
“Did you touch anything on the table?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Lara’s breath caught. She lowered her gaze, apparently struggling to understand why she had been brought into a room full of hostile people. “I might have moved a prop. We all use that table.”
“Did you handle a folded letter?”
The vulnerability disappeared so briefly that another person might have missed it. Olivia saw Lara’s attention sharpen, saw calculation move behind her eyes before the softness returned.
“A letter?”
“One was taken from Olivia’s bag during rehearsal.”
“I didn’t take anything.”
“That also wasn’t the question.”
Lara looked at Mason again. “I don’t know what this is.”
Mason remained beside the window, his expression unreadable.
Philip turned the enlarged photograph toward her.
For several seconds, Lara did not move.
Her reflected hand appeared in the glass behind her own photographed body, holding the folded sheet beside Olivia’s open bag. The evidence was imperfect, but the surprise on Lara’s face was not.
Then she recovered.
“I found it on the floor.”
The production manager exhaled.
Philip’s voice stayed level. “You just told us you didn’t remember handling a letter.”
“I didn’t understand what you meant. I found a piece of paper. I didn’t know it was private.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I put it back.”
Olivia spoke for the first time. “Where?”
Lara turned toward her. “Inside your bag.”
“It wasn’t there.”
“I don’t know what happened after that.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
The lie came without hesitation, but Lara’s eyes betrayed her. They moved once toward Mason, carrying the knowledge she had acquired from words never intended for her.
Olivia saw the precise moment Mason understood.
His face did not change dramatically. There was no theatrical recoil, no burst of anger. His hand tightened against the back of the chair beside him, and something in his expression closed with finality.
The letter had been from Mason to Olivia.
An intimate, imperfect attempt to reach her before either of them understood how much damage had already been done.
Lara knew what it contained because she had read it, and she had used that knowledge ever since, shaping her conversations with Mason around his guilt and his fear that Olivia no longer loved him.
Philip dismissed Lara from rehearsal pending a formal meeting with the producers.
She rose with extraordinary composure. Only when she reached the door did she look at Olivia without the protection of tears or confusion.
“You think this fixes everything,” she said quietly.
Philip stood. “That will be enough.”
Lara ignored him. Her gaze remained on Olivia. “You still don’t know what he said to me when you weren’t there.”
Mason stepped between them before Olivia could answer. “Leave.”
Lara searched his face, perhaps expecting hesitation, perhaps believing that one last appeal to their history would still reach him.
It did not.
She walked out and closed the door carefully behind her.
The restraint of that final gesture disturbed Olivia more than a slammed door would have. Lara had lost the room, the rehearsal, and perhaps the production, but she had not lost control. Not entirely.
Below them, the company continued working, unaware that their understudy had just been removed.
Philip began discussing calls to producers and revised rehearsal schedules.
The production manager started making notes.
Robbie would need to be told. Wardrobe would have to secure every costume.
Access records would be reviewed, and security would remain near the stage until the investigation was complete.
Olivia listened until the practical details blurred.
Mason came to stand beside her, close enough that she could feel his presence but not so close that he presumed comfort.
“What was in the letter?” he asked.
“You know what was in it.”
“I know what I wrote. I don’t know what she did with it.”
Olivia looked through the office window toward the stage below. “She learned exactly where we were weakest.”
His silence confirmed that he understood.
After a moment, he said, “I gave her most of that information myself.”
“Yes.”
He did not ask Olivia to soften the answer.
Philip left to call the producers, taking the production manager with him. The door closed, leaving Olivia and Mason alone in the cluttered office while rehearsal noises rose through the floorboards.
Mason looked at her injured wrist. “Dr. Harrow can see you at noon.”
“You called?”
“You asked me to.”
The reminder brought back the dark lobby, his careful hands, and the confession that had hurt because it was finally honest. He had let Lara want him. He had enjoyed being needed in a way that required nothing difficult from him.
Today, difficulty stood between them in every unsaid word.
Olivia gathered her script from the desk. “I’m still rehearsing.”
“I assumed you would.”
“And you are not staying to watch.”
A trace of pain crossed his face before he controlled it. “All right.”
She reached the door, then stopped. Mason had obeyed without trying to bargain his way into her company, and that small change unsettled the part of her that had prepared for another struggle.
“Come to the appointment,” she said. “You can drive me afterward.”
His relief was quieter than it had been the night before. He had learned enough not to treat a narrow opening as forgiveness.
“I’ll be there.”
Olivia returned to the stage alone.
The company looked toward her as she entered, questions pressing against the silence. Lara’s empty chair sat in the front row, her pencil still resting across the open script as though she expected to return at any moment.
Olivia walked past it without slowing.
She took her place beneath the work lights, waited for Robbie to give her the cue, and began the scene from the top.