Chapter 13 - What Bellamy Knew
Six weeks after the fall, Bellamy asked to speak with Nina. She arrived at the office carrying a cracked phone and wearing the hunted expression of someone who had run out of easy excuses.
Her attorney sat beside her. She would not discuss the case without him, which struck me as the first sensible decision she'd made.
Bellamy said she and Sloan had discussed filming a “dramatic stumble” that would make Merritt agree to leave the bridal party. Sloan wanted a video she could share afterward as proof I'd been difficult about the wedding. Bellamy thought Sloan would bump me, not send me down a staircase.
“Why say it was perfect?” I asked.
Bellamy stared at her hands. “Because I was trying to make it sound funny. I could see you weren't moving. I knew it wasn't funny.”
She admitted she'd recorded part of the aftermath and posted a carefully cropped photograph later. Her attorney had advised her to preserve the phone and communications, and she had agreed to provide them through the proper process.
Nina asked whether anyone had instructed her to film the fall.
“Sloan,” Bellamy said. “She kept saying Merritt would be too embarrassed to make a scene.”
I sat back. The evidence didn't make Bellamy innocent; it made the sequence understandable. They had expected me to absorb the embarrassment, retreat, and carry their version of events home like every other injury I had swallowed.
Before she left, Bellamy stopped beside my chair.
“I should've called for help,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied.
May you like
She waited for something more. I had nothing else to give her.
That afternoon Nina received confirmation that Arlo had turned over the original camera files to investigators. The angles supported what I remembered. The next question wasn't whether I had fallen. It was what everybody had intended, and what they had done afterward.
