Ellie opened her car door, balancing a white cardboard bakery box on her forearm. Her green blouse was loose, fluttering in the July breeze as she stepped onto the grass.
“I brought the extra cupcakes,” she called out, her smile wide but her eyes shifting quickly toward Brad.
Brad laughed, a quick, sharp sound that seemed to jump out of his throat before anyone had made a joke. He rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand.
“Let me grab those before you drop them, Ellie,” he said, taking two long strides across the lawn.
As his fingers brushed the side of the box, Ellie looked up at him through her dark eyelashes. It was a brief, silent exchange, but Brad froze for a fraction of a second, his shoulders dropping in a way I had never seen before.
My hand went back to my wedding ring, turning the metal twice around my finger.
“We have plenty of room on the main table,” I said, stepping closer to them.
Ellie pulled at her shirt collar, her fingers tugging the fabric away from her neck as she turned her face toward me.
“Great, sweetie,” she said, her voice slightly higher than usual. “Let us get them inside before they melt.”
“You look flushed, Ellie,” Gloria said, joining us in the driveway and looking her up and down. “Is your air conditioning broken again in that little apartment?”
“It is just the humidity,” Ellie said, her smile returning quickly. “The drive from Westlake was brutal.”
“I thought your client was in Avon,” Brad said, then stopped, his hand tightening on the cupcake box.
“Westlake,” Ellie said quickly, her collar still clamped between her thumb and forefinger. “The office moved last month.”
Brad did not look at me, but his knuckles were white against the white cardboard.
“You never mentioned they were moving,” I said to Ellie. “We had lunch last Tuesday, and you said you were still subletting the space on Broad Street.”
