Page 36 of No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding

Emma takes out her phone and opens the app. She taps, then looks up. “I blocked them.”

“What’s the handle?” I say.

“@Emmaswooden.”

“Ouch.”

“I don’t care about that. It’s the other things they know about...”

“Like what?”

She meets my eyes, then looks away.Not here, she’s telling me.Not in front of Fred.

“They knew I’d been cast in the movie before I did. Other things they couldn’t know unless it was someone very close to me.”

“I wish you’d told me about this,” Fred says, pouting.

“You had enough going on with Tyler.”

“That man has lost his mind. And did you see that karate move he tried to pull last night?” He rubs at his chin. “Maybehe’sdoing the Twitter thing?”

“Doesn’t seem like his style,” I say.

“It might just be lucky guesses,” Emma says tentatively. “You know how it can be with fans on the internet—all their theories. Sometimes they get it right.”

“But all of it combined...” I say.

“It is concerning,” Fred says. “Will you look into it, Eleanor?”

“I will.”

“Thank you.” He puts his hand on my arm and stares directly into my eyes, and I’m not going to lie: Fred Winter staring into your eyes is a powerful thing.

“You’re welcome,” I say, feeling foolish.

It’s a feeling I’m used to, though.

I’ll get over it.

And, like Mr. Bennet, probably sooner than I should.33,34

“Darling, I should go check on the next ferry. My parents are arriving on it.”

Emma’s mouth turns down at the corners. “I thought we said no parents.”

“My mother caught wind of it from that stupid Santa Monica Gossip, and she wouldn’t be denied, I’m afraid. I figured it was better to have her in the fold than out, you know how she is.” He pauses after saying this, a reminder that we all know how his mother is.

She’s an actress, too, and was big in the ’80s, starring in several soapy television shows where the women had big hair and bigger shoulder pads. Her career never recovered after she had Fred, though—something, I gather, that she’s made known to him.

“It’s not too late to have your parents come, Em,” I say in solidarity, though it probably is.

Thereisa storm coming.

And even Hollywood can’t keep endless ferries running into a hurricane.

Mrs. Wood isn’t going to be happy to have been left out of the wedding, but that’s a relationship I don’t have to manage.

There are, occasionally, advantages to having dead parents.

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