12. Louella
— ? —
Louella
Walking down the aisle with Hector’s arm beneath my hand was an exercise in theatrical masochism.
Smile for the photographer. Smile for the guests. Smile like your heart isn’t actively trying to claw its way out of your chest while the man who shattered it guides you toward an altar where you’ll both pretend to be civilized.
The inn had recovered from the storm with suspicious efficiency, generators repaired, pipes fixed, flowers replaced, every trace of last night’s chaos erased as if it had never happened. If only the same could be done for the debris between Hector and me.
“You look beautiful,” he murmured as we processed.
“Don’t.”
“I’m allowed to state facts.”
“You’re allowed to stay silent and keep walking.”
We reached the altar and separated. I took my place beside Camille, arranging my face into an expression of appropriate bridal-party joy.
The dress I’d chosen, pale blue chiffon with strategic draping, hid everything it needed to hide.
No one would look at me and guess that beneath the silk, I was carrying a secret that could reshape both our futures.
Genevieve sat in the third row, because of course she did. Cream-colored suit, pearls, the expression of a woman who owned the world and expected everyone to acknowledge it. She caught my eye and smiled, a thin, triumphant curve that said she knew a thing I didn’t.
And beside her, in a seat I hadn’t expected her to occupy, was Elizabeth.
Her dress was white. Actually white, at someone else’s wedding, which was either a stunning breach of etiquette or a deliberate provocation. She’d paired it with a hand resting ostentatiously on her belly, a bump that seemed larger than physics should allow, given her supposed timeline.
She was showing off. Playing the expectant mother for an audience she hoped would take her side.
The ceremony passed in a blur. Nora and Charlie exchanged vows while I stood three feet away and tried not to remember my own wedding, the vineyard, the sunset, the promises we’d made before everything went wrong.
Hector was on the other side of the altar, and I felt his eyes on me throughout, a physical weight I refused to acknowledge.
When the minister pronounced them married, I applauded on cue. Smiled for the photos. Let myself be positioned and repositioned by the photographer until every configuration of the bridal party had been captured for posterity.
Then we moved to the reception, and the real performance began.
***
The dessert table was supposed to be a refuge. Tucked in the corner of the tent, far from the dance floor and the clusters of conversation, it seemed like a reasonable place to hide while I figured out how to survive the next three hours without screaming, crying, or committing felony assault.
I was studying a tray of petit fours when Elizabeth slid in beside me.
“The chocolate ones are better than they look,” she said, as if we were friendly acquaintances making small talk. “Though I suppose you’re being careful about what you eat these days.”
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “Elizabeth.”
“Louella.” She selected a macaron, turned it over in her fingers. “I know you’re pregnant.”
My blood went cold.
“Hector told his mother,” she continued, her smile sharpening. “This morning, apparently. The family grapevine works quickly, especially when the news is this interesting.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t insult us both.” She took a delicate bite of the macaron. “Genevieve is already planning, you know. How to make your baby less significant. How to position my child as the true heir. It’s remarkable, really, how quickly she can pivot when the situation requires it.”
The rage was building, hot and acidic, climbing up my throat. “Your child. The one you can’t seem to prove exists? The one whose paternity test you’ve refused three times?”
“Details.”
“The details are that you’re a liar and a fraud, and whatever scheme you and Genevieve have cooked up is going to collapse under its own…”
“Elizabeth.”
Hector’s voice cut through my sentence like a blade. I turned to find him standing behind us, his expression carved from granite.
“Step away from my wife.”
Elizabeth’s composure wavered. “We were just talking.”
“You were just leaving.” He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t move, but the quiet in his stillness was more threatening than any shout. “Now.”
She hesitated. I watched her calculate the odds, weigh the audience, consider her options. Then she smiled again, that poisonous curve, and turned to melt back into the crowd.
But Hector wasn’t finished.
“Actually,” he said, loud enough to carry, “stay. Everyone should hear this.”
The conversations around us stuttered. Heads turned. Across the tent, I saw Genevieve go rigid.
“Hector,” I said quietly. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done months ago.” He stepped into the center of the cleared space, into the spotlight that had been illuminating the dance floor. “I apologize for interrupting the celebration, but there’s a truth I need to say. A truth the people in this room deserve to know.”
Silence. Absolute, breathless silence. Even the band had stopped playing.
“For the past several months,” Hector said, “I’ve been the subject of accusations. That I was unfaithful to my wife. That I fathered a child with my former assistant. That I betrayed the vows I made four years ago in front of many of you.”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. I saw Nora’s face go pale, saw Charlie reach for her hand.
“Those accusations are lies.” Hector’s voice was steady, clear, every word precisely placed.
“I never slept with Elizabeth Silva. I have footage, obtained by my investigator, proving that on the night in question, I was drugged at a hotel bar and returned to my own room alone. She followed me afterward and staged photographs to support a false narrative.”
Elizabeth made a sound, protest, or shock, or the beginning of a denial. Genevieve was already moving through the crowd toward her, her face thunderous.
“The footage shows exactly what happened. She followed me up to my room after I’d already gone up alone, and everything she built after that was a lie.”
“That’s not true.” Elizabeth’s voice was shaking now. “He’s lying, he’s trying to protect himself…”
“Am I?” He turned to face her, and I saw a thing I hadn’t seen in years, the shark behind the polished surface. “Then take the paternity test. You’ve refused three times. If you’re telling the truth, prove it.”
Silence again. Elizabeth’s face had gone white beneath her careful makeup.
“I thought not.” He turned back to the crowd.
“The only confused person here is anyone who believed her lies. I made mistakes. I neglected my wife, I let my family’s expectations take priority over my marriage, I failed in ways I will spend the rest of my life regretting.
But I never betrayed my vows. And I’m not going to let a fraud destroy what’s left of my family. ”
He crossed the space between us and took my hand.
“Louella is the only woman I have ever loved,” he said, his eyes holding mine.
“I hurt her. I abandoned her emotionally when she needed me most. I don’t deserve her forgiveness, and I may never earn it.
But I’m going to spend every day trying.
Not because I expect anything in return, but because she deserves to know that she was never the problem. I was. I was always the problem.”
My throat was tight. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, could only stand there while the man I’d married publicly dismantled every lie that had driven us apart.
The crowd erupted, whispers, exclamations, the raised voices of people processing a scandal in real-time. Elizabeth was crying now, mascara streaking down her cheeks, while Genevieve stood frozen beside her like a statue caught in headlights.
Hector led me away from the chaos, onto the dance floor, where the band had started playing again, a slow and sweet melody, the kind of song that belonged at endings rather than beginnings.
“Dance with me,” he said. “Please.”
I should have refused. Should have walked away, maintained my boundaries, protected the walls I’d built so carefully over the past few weeks.
I stepped into his arms instead.
“I never told my mother about the baby,” he said quietly, his mouth near my ear.
“Elizabeth overheard me on the phone with Ray Mercer. He was asking about complications to the divorce, whether there were any developments she should know about. I mentioned the pregnancy because I was trying to figure out how to protect you. How to keep my mother from using it against you.”
“And why should I believe that?”
He spun me under his arm, then pulled me back, closer than before. “Because I’m going to prove it. Every day. Every single day, until you do.”
Over his shoulder, I watched Genevieve’s face transform. The shock was fading, replaced by a colder look, a calculating one. She was already planning. Already strategizing. Whatever vulnerability her son’s declaration had created, she was already figuring out how to exploit it.
The war wasn’t over. It was barely beginning.
But for one moment, spinning in the arms of a man I still hadn’t forgiven, I let myself believe that maybe, somehow, we might find our way back to each other.