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Once I get within two blocks of Holly’s, a car rolls up beside me and slows to my pace. Just a madwoman on the loose wearing a towel, I keep my gaze straight ahead…and then I hear the sound of an electric window sliding down.
“Where you going Cookie? Are you running away from home?”
I keep walking, refusing to respond or look in his direction.
“You know, your home is my home Cookie. I was only paying a visit to my own house…as I’m entitled to do.”
Finally I break, but continue walking and facing forward. “I’ll call the police and get a restraining order on you Quade! You can’t barge into my residence, my bedroom, my bed…in the middle of the night! You have no right!”
“Oh! Cookie…I wouldn’t recommend you do that. You know, I ran into Frank tonight at dinner, and he invited me to join him…since you were missing in action. I really like my friend Frank and wouldn’t wanna cause him any grief in his little town. I really don’t think he’d appreciate my crazy ex wife trying to make life difficult for me. What do you think?”
Frank Vernon is the local Chief of Police, and has been buddies with Quade since high school. He’s got me over a barrel.
“Hey, Cookie, get in the car and let me take you back home. I promise I’ll leave you be and you can get back to sleep.” I continue walking as though he said nothing. “Cookie, come on, let me take you home. You look ridiculous out here.”
“I don’t care what I look like!”
“You know Cookie, it’s not gonna do you any good to tattle to Holly about this.” We’re now half a block away from her front door. “Leaving the house in my name is your problem Cookie. You could have taken me for all I was worth, but you were always so cooperative…so forgiving… so patronizing. Did you think I wasn’t a very smart man, Cookie? Did you think I was just going to share my home with you forever, without asking anything in return? Did you think I was going to fund your business from the ground up, and then let you walk all over me? Walk away from me? Ignore my texts?”
I’m now standing at the edge of Holly’s yard, breathing so hard I can barely keep the robe around my ribs. If I go to her front door, Quade can easily park and remove me before she can get downstairs. I could just stand here and have a screaming fit, even though he’ll tell Vernon I’m nuts. Quade was an upstanding community member for decades before moving, and he pulls a lot of weight in this town.
“If you come with me now, quietly, I’ll drive you back home and we can forget this ever happened.” I continue to stand, breathing, psyching myself to not have a panic attack. If I hyperventilate here and now, he’ll drag my limp body into his car and do God knows what with it.
“Cookie…I’ll strike a deal with you. How about…you get into my warm car, I’ll drive you home and you can go upstairs and get into your nice comfortable bed, you’ll be quiet about this incident…and I’ll let you keep your home and your business. Doesn’t that sound like a nice idea Cookie? Huh?”
I have to think fast…think fast. Quade could take away everything that means anything to me. But I cannot get into his vehicle. He’s insane. What if he tries something horrible? What if he takes me to the woods and leaves me in a ditch somewhere? What if he’s psychotic? He is psychotic! My sweet, placid ex husband has gone completely off his rocker and he’s a psychopath. The full reality of the situation sets in, as I stand in the night air…shivering in deafening silence.
“How about…how about I walk home next to your car. You can see me home and I’ll walk next to the car, okay?” I manage, finally making eye contact. Quade’s eyes are blazing with a look I’ve never seen before.
“Okay. Let’s go for a walk then.”
As I turn and head back into the shadows toward my neighborhood, I’m torn apart by the sensation of leaving Holly’s yard. The security of knowing she loves me and would take me in, and hold me while I break down and have a desperately needed cry…all of it dissipates as I walk the other way. As we traverse the long blocks, I begin to feel the bruising in my feet. I consciously soften my face to create the illusion of trust, or even slight friendliness. Anything to keep Quade from becoming riled and possessive again.
Once we reach the beginning of my driveway, I turn to him with a falsely grateful smile.
“Okay, I think I’m okay now. Sorry if I overreacted. I think I’ll be okay from here.”
In essence, I’m begging him to stay in his car and let me enter the house by myself. But he continues to follow, slowly, down the long, gravel lane. Seeing in my periphery that he’s watching me intently, I maintain my phony look of pleasantness.
“Thanks for seeing me home. I think I can sleep now,” I turn to him and say, as we reach the front of the yard.
“Oh Cookie…promise me you’ll get to sleep,” he says sweetly, his tired eyes reflecting an entirely new demeanor.
“I will…you too,” I say with a smile, as I turn and head down the walkway.
In a calm and collected manner I open the front door, then raise a hand over my shoulder to wave him off. To my relief, he puts his car in reverse and backs down the driveway. I watch rigidly until his lights disappear and then the panic comes. I exhale a deafening scream as I limply collapse into a ball on the foyer floor, and then I hear myself screaming and screaming, eyes dry and open, until it feels like all the contents of my insides have been expelled into the room. I snap to my feet in a frenzy, on my last shred of adrenaline, and scan out the windows for his vehicle. He could turn his headlights off and creep back up my driveway, but I have a deep feeling he’s done for the night. He looked so different at the moment he left, like he, too, was going to have to reckon with the aftermath of the damage he’d done.
Entering my bedroom to retrieve my phone, I feel a wave of weakness and nausea as I look around and see the glimmer of the broken lamp base on the carpet. How will I ever sleep cozily in this room again? I cross the hall and enter my office, which faces the front of the house. I leave the lights off, so I’ll have high visibility out the windows if Quade returns. I sit at my desk and futilely dial Holly, who turns her phone off at night.
“Fiona?” she answers to my surprise.
“Holly!” I can’t get another word out before my voice breaks into sobs.
“Oh my God, Fiona…what’s going on?” Through all our years of friendship, I don’t believe Holly has ever heard or seen me cry. I’m just not the crying type, especially in front of others.
“Holly…it’s…” I’m about to say ‘Quade’ when I realize he could have snuck into my house through the back, and could be lurking somewhere…watching my every move. I know I’m probably alone, but I also don’t know what he’ll do if he’s monitoring me and I slip up. “It’s just…I can’t sleep with this moon and…I’m just feeling emotional. I just needed to hear your voice and cry I guess.”
“Oh Fiona…honey, I’m so glad you called…gosh, I can’t believe I had my phone on. I couldn’t sleep either. The moon is huge and I’ve been lying in bed for hours.”
