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“We have to go,” I say.
“Why?” Millie cries and I shake my head. I can’t tell my ten-year-old that someone threatened her. That someone is stalking her with the intent to hurt her. To hurt me by hurting her.
All I ever wanted was to protect her. All I want is to protect her.
“We have to, Emilia.” I use the stern mom voice. She may not understand but this is what’s best. There’s no way the police can track this person down. I gave them the guy’s name I dated. The partial license plate. All the details of the phone calls and threats. They have nothing.
I will not take a chance and wait around here like a sitting duck.
Millie lashes out at me, yanking the clothes from my hands and hurling them across the room. She kicks the duffel bag off the bed and glares at me.
“I hate you,” she whispers, the words unnatural on her tongue. She’s never said anything like this to me before.
“Millie,” I try, and she jumps off the bed.
“You ruin everything!” She screams at me and sprints down the hall her footsteps fast and loud. I flinch when the door slams. Out the window I see her sprint across the yard, climb the ladder to the treehouse and then pull it up behind her.
Nothing has ever made me feel so awful to the core of my existence before. No words have ever made me feel so small than hearing my own child tell me she hates me. That I’m ruining her life.
Just like Pris said.
Realization sits hard on my chest and I gasp with the sudden understanding.
“Dad!” I call bursting through the bedroom door and running straight into him. He steadies me and I know he’s been standing outside the door this whole time.
“I know who it is,” I say, and he takes a moment before he catches on.
“The person threatening you?”
“Yes,” I say with a rush of exhilaration, sliding my phone from my back pocket. There are six missed calls from Xan. Dad and I hunch over my phone as I scroll through years of social media posts to the one I’d almost forgotten about. Dad stares at the image of a rolling river and confusion urges me to explain.
“It’s a call out post. I made this post a year and a half ago about a copycat designer. There was a company that popped up called Rugged & Roam. They ripped off my name, they used my business model, they completely rode my coat tails and I called them out for it after I realized that they were also lying.”
“Lying about what?” Dad is still clearly confused.
“I source my jewelry from nature. I trek all over the damn countryside to gather pebbles and wood and anything else that I can source in an ethical way to make my jewelry. Some of my customers came to me concerned about this person and their shitty quality product and how they were pretending to be me. I wrote this post.”
I hold the phone out for Dad to read.
Hey explorers, it’s been brought to my attention that my products are so sought after that I have copycats. Yay, me. Looks like I’ve made it.
But one copycat concerns me more than others because the lies of @ruggedandroam are not only making me look bad, but taking advantage of you lovely ladies. The quality is bad, but the company is built on lies. She probably buys bags of river stones from the dollar store to make your ‘one of a kind’ pendant.
At Wild & Free I am not only dedicated to a beauty and quality, but ethically sourced limited edition jewelry is what you pay for, so it’s always what you’re going to get.
Dad leans back his lips pursed in thought.
“So, you think this is the person stalking you.”
“It has to be. After I posted this she went on the attack. My followers mobbed her even after I told them not to.” I scroll a little further to my post about trolling and call for them to stop going after her. “She disappeared after that but almost immediately the trolling on my own site began. The nasty emails. The Facebook groups dedicated to finding out who I am. The low reviews and what I thought were bots. It all started after this.”
Dad sighs. “None of this makes any sense to me. Bots, trolls, followers?”
“It’s her Dad. It has to be. She’s figured out who I am. She knows I’m here. I have to leave.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“I do. She lit my motorhome on fire with me in it!” My voice raises and I click on the message from this morning. “She took a picture of my daughter and said she’s next.”
