Chapter 10 - The Messages
The screenshots looked real.
My name at the top.
My old profile picture.
A conversation about invoices, payments, and keeping things quiet until after the wedding.
One message supposedly from me read:
Daniel has plenty. Nobody’s getting hurt.
I stared at it until the words blurred.
“I never wrote that.”
Mara nodded.
“Then we challenge the source.”
“But look at it.”
“I am.”
She turned the laptop toward herself.
“A screenshot is something someone wants us to see. We need the underlying conversation.”
I gave her permission to arrange a review of the relevant records on my phone.
Rachel’s attorney was asked to preserve the device containing the alleged exchange.
We also supplied months of ordinary messages between Rachel and me.
School pickup.
Mom’s birthday.
A recipe.
Requests I usually answered too quickly.
Then I noticed the date on one of the supposed conversations.
February twelfth.
I opened my calendar.
That was the day Emma had a follow-up appointment for her wrist.
I had asked Rachel to pick up a prescription afterward.
She had replied that she had a new number because her old phone was damaged.
I found the actual message.
The number in the fake screenshot was her old one.
That didn’t settle everything.
But it gave the investigators something concrete to compare.
Mara forwarded the information.
For the first time, Rachel’s polished version had a loose thread I could point to.
That night, Daniel came to Carla’s apartment to deliver printed records.
He stood awkwardly near the door, carrying a bakery box.
“I didn’t know what to bring.”
Carla took it.
“Carbs were correct.”
Emma stayed behind my shoulder.
Daniel crouched, leaving space between them.
“I owe you an apology.”
She blinked.
“For what?”
“For not seeing how people treated you and your mom.”
“You didn’t call me useless.”
“No. But I heard enough unkind things before Saturday to know something was wrong.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t try to make himself sound better.
That mattered.
After Emma went to the kitchen, he handed me an old email.
Rachel had sent it six weeks before the wedding.
In it, she warned him that I was struggling financially and sometimes became confused about agreements.
“She was preparing you,” I said.
He nodded.
Then I read the last line.
If Hannah ever contacts you about the company, please come to me first.
May you like
Rachel hadn’t panicked and invented a defense.
She had been building one for months.
