I didn’t finish. I didn’t need to. In my desk drawer, my phone was vibrating so much one could have easily confused it for being an actual call. Jordan squeezed my hand.
“We take it one step at a time,” she said. “You go home and do whatever you can to relax. Pick up Ryan if you have to. I will reach out to TMZ and get this situation resolved as best as I can. Work can wait. You take care of yourself.”
“You’re sure?”
“I can order you to go home if you prefer,” Jordan said with a compassionate smile. “This is about your life, not your livelihood. OK?”
I smiled. And then I did something that may not have been “professional,” but still felt appropriate. I hugged Jordan.
“Thank you,” I said.
And just moments later, Jordan had walked me to my car, wished me well, and sent me on my way.
Unfortunately, if going home had meant to relax me, it seemed to have the opposite effect.
Suddenly, I became so paranoid that I could have passed for a conspiracy theorist. I felt sure that people were following me in their cars—oh, was that a Tesla following me? I think I’d seen that black Honda Civic trailing me a few times. What about…
None of them ended up actually following me, of course. But every time a car followed me for more than one stoplight, I found myself trying to get a closer look at the driver, trying to see if he fit the profile of Malcolm. I stared at every car that drove by, wondering if Malcolm was suddenly going to attack me.
This was all logically stupid, of course. If he’d gotten out of jail in Southern California and had learned about me being in the Bay Area the instant that the TMZ article had come out, he still wouldn’t have made it here yet, even if he had flown on a private jet somehow. I had at least until later this afternoon before I had to start worrying.
But panic didn’t listen to logic. Fear didn’t believe in logic. The true fear for your life, the truly devastating worry that someone was coming to, at best, manipulate you and emotionally abuse you, and at worst, kill you, didn’t care about rationality, likelihoods, or probability. It treated everything as an unmitigated risk until proven otherwise.
I pulled over halfway home, needing to calm myself. I still had not checked my phone since the article came out. I loathed the idea of reading all of the messages that had come through, but I knew I’d have to do it sooner or later.
I had so many messages I had to scroll down on my phone just to get through all of them. Former high school classmates I hadn’t spoken to in years, colleagues, Rachel, Nick, my parents…wait, Nick had…
I opened his message and read it closely.
“Hey, you probably saw TMZ posted the photo. I’ll work to get it removed. I’m sorry—I’ll do everything I can to keep your privacy.”
Well, I certainly appreciated that I had multiple people working to get the photo down. Nick and Jordan, of all people, had to know that it was a futile attempt; only money would work, and even then, even if TMZ took it down, there wasn’t going to be anything that actually removed it from the internet. Malcolm could find it no matter what.
I wanted to call Nick, find comfort in him, feel the security and safety of his arms. It was, somewhat tellingly, perhaps the safest place I could think of. Malcolm was by no means a scrawny guy, but in a fight between him and Nick, the winner was clear, even when you accounted for how biased I was in that assessment. Perhaps there was some bias in there, but in the time with Nick, I had grown to believe there would be no chance it would be a real fight.
But I hadn’t seen him in a month. And was running to the person who had gotten me into the spot where such a photo was taken really a good idea? Sure, maybe we’d have some privacy in our respective homes; maybe we could avoid the pressure of the outside world inside. But the minute, the second, one of us sat in the car of the other, waved to each other at one of his games, or otherwise were in physical proximity outside one of our residences…
It was so hard to decide if it was worth continuing with Nick when my emotions completely ruled how I felt, either in the fiery passion to be with him or the dreadful fear that doing so would allow Malcolm to cause unspeakable harm to my child and me.
I hovered my fingers over my keyboard, trying to think of the right words. But just before I pressed anything, a call came through from a number I didn’t recognize. Being in no mood to talk to anyone that I didn’t have saved in my phone, I immediately hit “Ignore” and went back to trying to type out a message.
But a couple of seconds later, I saw that the number had left a voicemail. My heart sank. My stomach dropped to the pits of despair as my paranoia kicked right back up to maximum levels. Malcolm had said something to warn me he knew and was coming for me.
Out of whatever you wanted to call it—morbid curiosity, a need to know, fear—I pulled up the voice mail, pressed play, and closed my eyes.
“…an automatic voice mail from the California Freedom Organization. Did you know our annual charity drive…”
The relief I felt was so intense and so swift that it almost hurt, like it was a hangover from the fear that I had felt. It didn’t feel good to oscillate so aggressively from extreme fear to extreme
