“I’m so sorry, Piper,” Kiersten said softly, shaking her head. “That sounds awful.”
“It was awful for the thousands of innocent people stuck for hours in a traffic jam of epic proportions. People were late for work, late to pick up their kids, late for colonoscopies and open-heart surgeries. Cabinet secretaries were late for meetings with the president. Then everyone was late to get home again, all because of me.”
“Sounds like a lot of angry commuters.” She’d been on the Beltway often enough to see how people reacted to traffic jams.
“Not just anger,” Piper said softly. “Threats. Violent threats. Against me personally. There’s one guy in particular, Hawkeye Slaughter. He talks about all the ways he’d like to torture and kill me on X.”
Kiersten’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously?”
Piper tapped her phone and began to read in a monotone voice.“I want to peel your skin off, layer by layer while I listen to you scream. I will destroy your life the way you destroyed mine, you evil, fascist bureaucrat.”
Kiersten’s hand rose to her mouth. “Oh Piper,” she whispered.
Piper pressed her lips together, forcing herself to remain steady. Strong. Composed.
Talking about it with a normal person like Kiersten suddenly drove home how abnormal this was ... and yet she knew so many people who lived with similar threats. Election workers. Public health officials. Diplomats. Members of Congress. Judges. Cops. It was part of being a public servant in the age of rage, in the era of the internet.
Piper tried to muster a smile. “Most of the time, nothing comes of these threats ... but this guy is smart ... and he has money ... and a lot of followers ... and sometimes ...”
“Sometimes things happen?” Kiersten asked.
Piper nodded.
Kiersten let out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re paranoid.”
Piper shrugged. “I made a bad call. And these are the consequences.”
“But it sounds like the kind of mistake anyone could make,” Kiersten protested. “I mean, the crazy guy in the van said he had abomb.”
Piper shook her head. “But he didn’t. I failed to accurately assess the threat.”
“So how do you fix the problem?”
“I’m working with a therapist.” Piper tossed a highlighter into a plastic pencil case. “She keeps telling me to do the opposite of what my mind tells me to do. But trust is just really hard for me.”
Kiersten frowned. “Why, exactly?”
She sighed. Only her husband and the people from her hometown knew the whole story. She’d never shared it with the girls or anyone else. “My mom died when I was nine. Breast cancer.”
“Oh Piper, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. Kiersten should be a therapist. She had the same patient, nonjudgmental tone as Trina, her federally mandated shrink. “I was an only child, and I was raised by my dad, who happened to be the county sheriff.”
“Is that why you went into law enforcement?”
“Partly. Yes.”
“What’s the other part?” Kiersten sat on a dining room chair, giving Piper her complete attention.
Piper took a seat across from her. “After my mom died, we needed to find a sitter who could take care of me after school and whenever my dad got called out in the middle of the night for an accident or a burglary. We had this neighbor, Mrs. Claussen, and she became my babysitter.”
Images flooded her mind when the name crossed her lips. Mrs. Claussen’s liver-spotted hands. The silver chain around her neck holding her “spectacles,” as she called them. Memories of warm cookies, cold milk, and kindness.
“She was wonderful,” Piper said with a small smile. “Her kids were in their early twenties, married but without kids of their own, so she sort of treated me like the granddaughter she one day hoped to have. I stayed at her house next door when my dad worked nights or weekends or holidays, plus after school. Anytime he was at work, I was next door at Mrs. Claussen’s house. She was like a grandmother to me.”
“She sounds lovely,” Kiersten said.
Piper nodded. “She was. But Mrs. Claussen was married to an abusive husband.”
