Page 20 of Letters From A Stalker

“Everybody relied on you,” I continued. “You became the person who kept things moving while everyone around you was allowed to fall apart.”

“Someone had to handle things.”

“That seems to be a rule you live by.”

Her eyes lift toward mine. “It’s practical.”

“It’s also convenient for everyone except you.” That lands differently.

Her shoulders pull inward, and she crosses one arm over her stomach while the other keeps the bottle close to her body, gathering the sweater around herself as though fabric might shield her from attention. The movement is so familiar that my own memories rise before I can stop them.

My mother, standing in the kitchen with a bruise darkening beneath her jaw, stirring dinner with one hand while holding the other arm across her stomach. She smiles when I ask what happened and tells me that she walked into the cabinet, then apologizes because the food has gone cold. It disappeares as fast as it came but it stayed long enough to remind me that women who learn that being useful is safer than being needy always seem to move the same way when someone looks too closely.

That’s when something dark shifts beneath my barely retrieved control. No one should have allowed Julia to fucking learn it.

“Did anyone take care of you?” My voice comes out steady.

“Tessa was there.”

“hat’s good, but it isn’t answering the question I asked.” I push.

Her eyes lift defensively. “Then I don’t understand the question.”

“Who made sure you slept? Who checked whether you ate the food Tessa brought? Who sat with you after the identification, when the calls stopped and there was nothing left to organize?”

Her lips part, but no answer comes out. The silence stretches between us until the truth becomes impossible to avoid, and when she finally speaks, her voice is quieter than before.

“I was fine.”

“No, you weren’t.”

5

Kai

The words again leave me more firmly than I intended. Julia’s head lifts, and anger sparks behind her eyes with enough heat to transform her expression.

There you are, little ember.

“You don’t know that.”

“You were waiting for the police to identify your father’s body while continuing to work, barely eating, and sleeping beside your phone. You were functioning. That isn’t the same thing as being fine.”

“I didn’t fall apart.”

“Is that the standard you use?”

“It’s a useful standard.”

“For whom?”

She stares at me, and I can almost see the answer forming before she rejects it.

“Julia,” I say more gently, “you don’t have to make yourself small in here.”

Confusion replaces the anger brewing inside her. “I’m sitting in a chair.”

“You folded your arm over your stomach and pulled your sweater around yourself the moment the attention became uncomfortable.”