Page 153 of Letters From A Stalker

There were a hundred moments when I could have stopped it. There were probably a hundred moments when I could have transferred your care and, much later, approached you honestly as myself if there was ever anything between us outside that room. I didn’t do that.

Part of that was because I knew transferring you would mean asking you to rebuild trust with another doctor when you had only just begun to trust me, and I told myself protecting your progress mattered. The uglier truth is that I didn’t want to lose Thursdays. And once you began wanting Ghost, I didn’t want to lose him either.

I kept thinking I would tell you. There was always some imaginary future night when I would take off the mask myself and finally give you the truth. Then you would smile at me, or fall asleep against me, or call me Ghost in that voice that made me forget every sensible decision I had ever made, and I would tell myself I could have one more night before I destroyed it. That was cowardice.

You should never have had to recognize a tattoo and trap the truth out of me. My biggest regret, among many, is that I did not respect you enough to confess before you had to discover it yourself. Nothing I say can repair the trust I broke, and I will not insult you by asking you to forgive me.

I also will not come near your house again. I will not ride past it, watch from the trees, appear somewhere you might be or ask anyone else to check on you for me. Ghost ends with this letter. Your care with me has ended as well. Mara will give you several options for another doctor and will handle any transfer you authorize. You will not need to speak to me or see me for any part of it.

What happened between us does not erase the work you did in therapy. Please believe that much, even if you never believe another word I say. You were the one who learned to say no without apologizing. You were the one who stopped making every other person’s feelings your responsibility. You were the one who started asking what you wanted, even when the answer frightened you. I may have been sitting across from you while you did those things, but they belong entirely to you. So does the boundary you gave me today. I will respect it.

I hope someday you can remember some part of what we had without feeling as though all of it was contaminated by what I did. I hope you find someone you can trust without having to wonder what they are hiding from you. More than anything, I hope I have not taken away the part of you that had finally begun believing trust could be safe. I am so fucking sorry if I have.

You once asked whether I would ever let you see me. I wish I had understood then that the mask was never the thing keeping you from doing that.

Goodbye, Little Ember.

—Kai

I read it twice. There are half a dozen sentences I want to change because they sound too much like an explanation, another three because they reveal things I have no right to place on her shoulders now, but eventually I understand there is no version of this letter that makes me feel better without asking Julia to carry some part of my guilt for me. That is not what it is for.

I fold the pages and slide them into an envelope. For the first time, I write Julia Hayes on the front instead of Little Ember. The name hurts more.

I seal it, put her address beneath it and place it beside my keys. I’m not taking the bike, won’t drive to her street. I’ll put it in the outgoing mail downstairs and let a stranger carry the last words I am ever going to send her.

This entire situation leaves a hollow ache beneath my sternum that seems to spread slowly through the rest of me. There will be no lamp tonight. No black envelope waiting for me to imagine her opening. No unlocked door, no sleeping beside her until her breathing deepens and leaving before daylight can expose what I was too much of a coward to show her.

Ghost is over. Dr. Blackwood is no longer hers either. All that remains is Kai, sitting alone behind a desk with a report already on its way to the Board, an appointment request sitting in another psychiatrist’s inbox and a goodbye letter addressed to the woman whose trust he managed to destroy while convincing himself he was protecting it.

For once, there is nothing left for me to fix. Only dealing with consequences I have finally decided not to run from.

29

Julia

Friday morning arrives with absolutely no regard for the fact that my psychiatrist turned out to be the masked man who had been stalking me, fucking me and betraying my trust in the most twisted way imaginable. There should be some kind of allowance for that. A federally mandated personal day, perhaps. Instead, my alarm goes off at six-thirty, my phone lights up on the nightstand with three emails that came in overnight, and somewhere down the street a garbage truck makes enough noise to suggest the entire neighborhood has agreed life will continue whether I participate in it or not.

I lie there staring at the ceiling until the alarm begins its second round. The other side of my bed is empty. That shouldn’t be the first thing I notice but it is, and I hate myself for it immediately. Not because I expect Kai to be there. I told him never to come near me again, and despite everything else he has done, there is a part of me that believes he listened. Ghost listened whenever I gave him a boundary. Apparently the irony of that is going to keep finding new ways to make me furious.

Still, my eyes move toward the place where he slept. I remember the weight of his arm over my waist and the quiet warmth of his body behind mine. I remember waking after the first night and finding him gone, then walking into the kitchen and seeing the note he left behind.

I liked holding you afterward.

My throat tightens.

“Fuck you,” I whisper into the empty room.

I’m not entirely sure which version of him I’m aiming at, but it has to be both. They are one and the same, at last.

I force myself out of bed. The shower is too hot, my coffee tastes wrong even though I make it exactly the way I always do, and I spend almost ten minutes standing in front of my closet before realizing I have been staring at the same three blouses without actually seeing any of them. Eventually I choose navy because it requires no thought.

I stand in front of a mirror. I am wearing makeup, my hair is done, my laptop is in my bag and I look exactly like the version of Julia Hayes who walks into work every morning with an answer for everything. I almost admire her. She is a phenomenal liar.

The drive downtown is uneventful, which feels offensive. Traffic moves, people change lanes badly. A man in the car beside me drinks something enormous through a green straw while singing with enough enthusiasm to make me wonder whether he has ever experienced betrayal in his entire life. I park in the garage beneath the building and sit behind the wheel for another minute after turning off the engine. Then I go upstairs because that is what I do, I go to work.

I answer emails, correct an error in a filing that would have become everybody’s emergency by lunch, sit through a meeting where two attorneys spend fifteen minutes disagreeing over wording they eventually change back to what I suggested in the first place, and return three calls without once thinking about Kai for almost twenty consecutive minutes. That may be a record.

Daniel appears at my desk before noon, takes one look at me and lowers the folder he is holding.