They’d discovered that her toast had more drugs mixed in the peanut butter, but Karl must have made sure he didn’t touch that part when he pulled it off to test it.
Thankfully, she had done little more than drink the coffee.
If she had eaten anything else, she wouldn’t have been able to escape with Clay.
She knew he’d come for her. She believed in him. Believed in them.
He needed time and she’d give it to him.
“We all want to make sure you’re better,” Brooke said. “It was a scary thing to have happened.”
“I’ve been there,” Reenie said. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I might take you up on it, but right now I’m happy to be in a place I feel safe and secure. I’m not sure I can go back to my home again.”
She’d have to find somewhere to live. She’d be able to go back and pack her things with other people, but staying there alone would never happen.
There was no way to escape being violated there. Physically or emotionally.
It could have been so much worse than it was and she was holding onto the fact it hadn’t happened.
“You don’t have to,” Clay said.
He said that now, but in a few days he’d get sick of her.
“I just got more information,” Ford said. “I thought you’d like to know what we discovered about Karl.”
“There is a big part of me that never wants to say his name again, let alone think of him.”
“You’re not going to heal fully if you do that,” Clay said. “I know that. You taught it to me.”
Her bottom lip trembled slightly when he said that. Breaking out in tears would only panic everyone.
Gale got up and gave her a tissue to blot her eyes.
“I’m glad,” Meredith said. “And you’re right. I should know.”
“Karl Green has a history of mental illness. We found several prescriptions in his house. It looks as if he stopped taking them recently. We contacted his mother who said that Karl has had anger issues and a tendency toward violence most of his life. He’d seen several specialists and as long as he stayed on his meds he had some control, along with what she’d instilled in him through discipline and training.”
Things Karl had let slip. She wondered if that only made matters worse in Karl’s life and then knew it hadn’t mattered.
“I had no idea,” she said. “He’s always been so nice and helpful. Nosy, sure, but I never thought he was dangerous.”
“You’re not the first person he’s stalked. Though his mother said Karl often made women up in his head. She’s kept her distance since he lost his temper and hit her when he was twenty-one.”
“That’s horrible,” she said.
“She blames herself, but knew it was best that she stayed away though she did talk to him a few times a month. His past restraining order was in college. He lived in an apartment with two other people and was stalking another student. She left the college once the order was in place. That’s when he lost it with his mother and hit her. He blamed her.”
Meredith shook her head over this. She never would have figured any of it.
“What was he doing to her? The same things?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Clay said. “Right, Ford?”
“Clay is right. Times were different then. He had a history of mental illness prior, but it escalated when that happened. Maybe if he stayed on his medication, things would have been different. Something triggered it.”
Her shoulders dropped. “He said he was going to move. He bought that house for us, but then he thought I’d move before he could take me there and he couldn’t risk it.”
