Page 135 of Letters From A Stalker

I nod because I helped organize the documentation two weeks ago, which means I know significantly more about the case than my job description technically requires. Their client, Melissa Kendall, has a temporary order preventing her estranged husband from contacting her after several increasingly aggressive incidents, but he has apparently discovered that court orders become much more entertaining when treated as suggestions.

“He hasn’t contacted her directly since the order,” Daniel explains, lowering his voice beneath the restaurant noise, “but now his sister is sending Melissa messages every couple of days about him. Nothing overtly threatening, just constant bullshit about how devastated he is, how she’s destroying the family, how the kids need their father and how he wants her to know he forgives her.”

I put my fork down. “He forgives her?”

Daniel’s mouth twists. “Apparently generosity survives restraining orders.”

“Charming.”

He pushes several printed screenshots toward me. “I can make the argument that he’s using his sister to contact her indirectly, but right now we don’t have anything where he actually says, ‘Tell Melissa this.’ The sister could claim she’s acting on her own.”

I read the messages once, then again more carefully. There is a pattern in them that bothers me immediately.

“Don’t lead with the content.”

Daniel pauses with his glass halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“The content lets them argue the sister is just emotional and inserting herself into somebody else’s divorce.” I tap the timestamps with one finger. “Look at when she messages.”

He leans closer.

“The first one is fourteen minutes after Melissa refuses his request through the parenting app. The second comes nine minutes after she rejects the schedule change. This one is twenty minutes after her attorney tells his attorney she won’t withdraw the protection request.” I move to the next screenshot. “She may not have written that he instructed her, but she somehow knows every time Melissa says no to something he wants before she starts sending messages about how unreasonable Melissa is.”

Daniel stops chewing. I can practically watch the argument reorganizing itself behind his eyes.

“Establish coordination through timing rather than trying to prove an instruction we don’t have,” he says.

“And subpoena the sister’s communications with him before the hearing if you can. If they’re texting immediately before she messages Melissa, you’ve got more than coincidence. Even if the judge doesn’t find a technical violation yet, you can ask to have the order clarified to specifically prohibit third-party contact about anything except genuine child-related emergencies.”

Daniel stares at me for another second. Then he sets his fork down very carefully.

“So when are you taking the bar?”

I groan. “Not this again.”

“Yes, this again.” He leans back against the booth, his expression settling into the same one he has worn the other times we’ve had this conversation. “You realize I’m getting tired of asking.”

“And yet you keep doing it.”

“Because every few weeks you do something like that and remind me your law degree is being used to correct my punctuation and bully vendors.”

“I do many important things.”

“You do, which is why I’d like you to do them while billing at an attorney rate.”

I smile despite myself and reach for my drink. “Right now I have enough going on. Therapy is taking more energy than I expected, work is busy, and studying for the bar isn’t exactly something I can squeeze between answering emails and trying to become emotionally functional.”

Daniel’s teasing eases at that, his expression becoming more thoughtful without turning unnecessarily serious. “I know, and I’m not telling you to do it next month. I’m telling you not to make *someday* into the place you put things until they disappear.”

I look at him over the rim of my glass. “That sounded annoyingly wise.”

“I bill four hundred dollars an hour for sentences like that.”

“I’m not paying.”

“You already bought me fries.”

“I absolutely did not.”