Page 133 of Love Notes & Lifelines
The next series of pictures are of Stella with the girls, but there’s something off about them, and I’m immobile. In this shot, Ruby’s on her hands and knees in the ocean, but the angle of the camera makes it appear that Stella is far away and not paying attention.
“She’d never do that.” I don’t know if anyone can hear my words, or if I even spoke them. Six more photos flash on the screen, each more damning than the next.
“You know this is illegal, right?” Leo shouts, but Danica continues as though she didn’t hear him.
“Seems you’ve been so into the nanny that you never stopped to pay attention to the safety of the girls you claim to love.”
Danica’s voice sends my rage boiling over and I charge her. Leo pulls me back and keeps dragging me until I’m far enough away that I can’t squeeze my hands around her cunty little neck.
Tabby shuts her up when she smashes Danica’s miserable face into our cake and holds it there. When she finally lifts her head, purple pieces slide down her face, and I pause.
“It’s a beet cake. She’s fine,” Leo mutters. “That is what twenty years of bullying a person will do when they finally snap.”
I twist to find Leo watching Tabby with a shit-eating grin on his face. And if this were any other time, if it weren’t my woman in the middle of this fuckery, I’d smile too.
Gus, a retired fisherman, pulls Tabby off her with a low word of warning for Danica. But the woman has no off button.
“That’s someone you all think should be raising my nieces?” Danica screeches. Daisie stalks her slowly with her tail pointed straight in the air. She’s never once bitten anyone, but she’s showing teeth, and nothing would surprise me now.
Stella’s voice is still echoing in the sound system until Leo runs, rips it from its stand, and tosses it into the ocean, but the images continue to flash on the screen. Anger shows in every hard line of Leo’s body, such a change from his normal attitude of even-keeled and cool calmness.
He stalks toward Danica, but she sidesteps him while wiping vibrant purple cake from her face and keeping one eye on Daisie.
“None of this is real,” she shouts. “I know you’re only marrying the homewrecker to fool the judge, but I won’t allow it. Those girls are mine. Did you all know that Stella has a type? Her name is homewrecker for a reason.”
She’s completely delusional.
“What the hell are you doing, Becker?” Elijah tugs on my elbow, and I’m so off-balance that I stumble into him.
I blink to bring him into focus.
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Jesus Christ.”
I’m taken aback. “What are you talking about? I need to get her to shut the fuck up.”
“But you’re not moving, and what you should be doing is supporting your fiancée who has already been through humiliation like this once and almost didn’t survive it.”
I spin to find Stella and my vision tunnels. Everything fades away except the all-consuming anguish on her face. Fear hasnever felt so visceral. Stella breaks before my very eyes, and I feel the shatter of every crack.
Danica’s shrieks cloud my head, but it’s the painful vacancy in Stella’s gaze that renders me useless.
Elijah’s right.
Stella shakes her head and points at a picture on the screen. One that makes it appear Emmy’s about to step into a busy street on her own, and new fear takes over my body.
I know this is nothing but lies, but the pain on Stella’s face tells me she might not see this for what it is.
“That— It’s not— I didn’t,” she chokes on a sob, then turns her back on me. It’s like shutting down the sun at midday, and I move on instinct to reach her.
Danica grabs my forearm, stopping my attempt to reach Stella, and it’s all I can do not to hurl her into the ocean with a cement block tied to her ankles.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, but if you fight me,” she hisses, “I will destroy everyone you love.”
She presses a button in her hand and the photo on the screen changes, freezing me in place and making it hard to breathe.
Stella and Danica sit together in a coffee shop. Stella’s hair is slightly shorter and Danica’s laughing at something.
