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“Forgiven and forgotten,” he said, sending a rush of gratitude spreading through Mia’s chest. She hadn’t screwed things up yet. Now she just had to make sure she kept her head in the right place, no matter what kind of bad news her family and friends had to share.
She and Sawyer walked up the porch steps hand in hand, Mia’s determination to put the past behind her growing with every step. If Paul was up for parole, then she would get her butt on a plane and go testify to all the reasons he should stay in jail for every single day of his five-year sentence. She wasn’t a helpless victim, or isolated the way she’d been before. She had wonderful friends, a loving family, and a man who cared about her, maybe even loved her.
She could handle whatever this meeting was about, and come out swinging on the other side.
“Lay it on me.” Mia stopped in front of the vacant wicker loveseat, but didn’t sit down. She wanted to take the news standing up, and prove to herself it wasn’t going to knock her off her feet. “Just tell me no one has cancer. Anything else I can handle.”
“No one has cancer,” her dad said.
“Congratulations, that’s probably the saddest anyone has ever sounded saying those words, Dad,” Mia said, but her joke fell flat and no one smiled. “Come on, y’all. What’s up? Is Paul up for parole? If that’s it, it’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, but I can handle it.”
“He’s not up for parole. He’s out, baby,” Gram said, knocking the breath from Mia’s chest.
She’d always been a big believer in ripping off the Band-Aid, but she wasn’t prepared for this. The words hit her like a fist in the stomach, sending panic and pain spreading throughout her midsection. Her knees began to tremble and she sat down hard on the loveseat.
“But they said they’d call,” she said, voice strained. “They said I’d know if he was up for parole, and I would be able to testify, or at least write a letter. How could this have happened?”
Mia’s mom pulled in a shaky breath, drawing Mia’s attention to her face and the smudged eyeliner beneath her eyes. She looked like she’d been crying not too long ago, and like she might start up again at any second. “I’m so sorry, Mia. I was only trying to help.”
“Help how?” Mia asked. “What the heck is going on?”
Jenny sniffed and her gaze dropped to her lap. “When the woman called from Victim’s Services last month, I said that I was you. I just…did it without thinking, because I wanted to protect you. You’ve been doing so much better. I didn’t want you to know Paul was up for parole. So I sent in a letter opposing his release like the woman told me to, and I thought everything would be fine.” Her mother’s eyes widened, as she obviously fought back tears. “I thought that would be enough to keep him in prison, baby. I never imagined he’d go free in a year. After what he did, I…”
Mia watched her mother’s mouth continue to move, but she could no longer make out what Jenny was saying. The realization that Paul was free—not up for parole, not potentially free, but out on the street where he could start hunting for clues to where she’d gone—crashed through her consciousness with the force of a tornado, destroying her ability to think clearly, filling her head with a terrifying roar as it sent the splintered pieces of her safe haven scattering in the wind.
Paul knew that she was from Lonesome Point. He would guess that she’d gone back home after graduation. He could be on his way now. Hell, he could behere, waiting for her outside her shop when she went home tonight. Sawyer had found out about the shop with a simple Internet search. Paul could do the same. She’d been a fool to put her picture up online, a fool to come back home in the first place. She should have run, and kept on running, even if Paul was in jail at the time.
He was never going to stop. He’d made that clear when he violated the restraining order, and stalked her across campus. When he’d shown up at her part time waitressing job and her internship and her apartment and everywhere else the law had forbidden him to be. He didn’t care about the law, he cared about making sure Mia never belonged to anyone else the way she had belonged to him.
“You can’t move in,” Mia blurted out, aware that she’d interrupted someone, but not sure who or what they’d been saying. She only knew she had to keep Sawyer safe from Paul.
“You can’t move in,” she repeated, turning to Sawyer, who had sat down beside her at some point in the past few minutes, while she’d been in shock. “If Paul comes here and sees me with you, he’ll kill you. I know he will. You’re not safe as long as he’s out there.”
“It’s okay. He can’t leave California,” Sawyer said, squeezing her hand. “He’ll have to report to his parole officer on a regular basis. He won’t be able to go more than—”
“He won’t care,” Mia said. “He doesn’t care about the rules. That’s the reason he’s in jail in the first place, Sawyer. Please, I—”
“Now, let’s all try to take a step back and calm down,” her father said. “The woman we talked to today said that Paul would be living in a halfway house, and be very closely monitored. He’ll only be allowed to be in the home, or at work, for the first few months. And the first time he’s not where he’s supposed to be, when he’s supposed to be there, he’s going back to jail. He knows that.”
“They said he’s been doing better since he was released from the psychiatric ward,” her mother added. “He’s on medication for mental illness and the caseworker seemed to think it had really made a difference. She seemed to think he was on the road to rehabilitation.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up from Mia’s chest, where her heart was pounding against her ribs like a hammer. “I can’t believe this is really happening.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you all think this is going to be okay.”
“We don’t, Mia,” Tulsi said gently. “I mean, I hope the caseworker’s right, but you’re smart to be concerned. And careful. I, for one, don’t think you should stay in your apartment for a while.”
“That’s why she called me.” Bubba’s knee was bobbing up and down the way it did when he was really worried about something. “Tulsi can’t have you stay with her without putting Clem at risk, but there’s nobody at my place, but me, and I’m not afraid of this son of a bitch. You can come back and crash on my futon, and I’ll sleep in a sleeping bag in front of the front door.”
Mia was having a hard time thinking clearly right now, but she knew she couldn’t stay at Bubba’s, either. Paul wouldn’t stop to sort out that she and Bubba were just friends, and wouldn’t care if he did. Back in grad school, he hadn’t cared how many times Mia swore there was nothing between her and a male friend but friendship, he still felt threatened. At first, Mia had been flattered that he loved her so much that he thought every man in the world was going to fall in love with her, too. But eventually she’d realized that Paul’s attempt to isolate her had been part of his need to control the object of his obsession, and had nothing to do with love.
“I’m not scared of this guy, either,” Sawyer said. “I’ll move in tonight, and install a security system in your apartment tomorrow morning.”
“Now, wait just a second,” Mia’s dad said, a hard edge creeping into his voice. “We’re capable of watching out for Mia. And honestly son, I’m not sure how I feel about you moving in with my little girl three weeks after you’ve started dating.”
Mia took a breath, but before she could tell her dad now was not the time to explore his old-fashioned side, Sawyer said—
“Respectfully, sir, I’m more concerned with keeping Mia safe than your feelings.”
A scowl swept across her father’s face, but before the thunder building in his expression could start to roll, Mia stood up and held out her hands in the universal sign for “slow the hell down.”
