The alarm system has been activated, and now any break of any seal—door or window—goes out to the detail and the dispatcher. No middleman. Nowell-checkphone call before the troops come storming in.
None of this settles my nerves.
I go to the kitchen and pour a glass of Mitch’s scotch, the good stuff, which feels like magic when it hits my blood.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I stare at the burner phone and think through the day that’s passed and the day that’s about to come. If Wade believed I had any intention of meeting him alone, he would have used this phone, which isn’t being monitored. He would have asked to meet in a place he could control. He knows that I’m awake, here or on the sofa, thinking about him and his motives and why he’s letting me go through with this bullshit.
It’s hard to think through rage. It causes a physical reaction that produces chemicals. Rage begs and pleads for a reaction, and the body responds. It’s primitive.
I drink the scotch to fuck with the reaction. That’s how I think of this battle being waged inside my head—with irreverence and determination. I will not succumb to any of it. Not the rage or the fear. Wherever the guilt over Clay Lucas is hiding, I let it stay there. The shooting and whatever else it’s done to me locked away with it.
In one of my classes, I presented a case study on stalking. I told the students that, at the end, I wanted an answer to the questionwhy?It’s the one crime that is certain to fail.
Our case involved a woman who broke up with a man. There were no children, and they had only been together a few months. The man could not accept her decision. It began with text messages. Dozens of them each day. Protestations of love. Analyses of her emotional flaws, why she couldn’t accept his love.I’m not like the men before, the ones who’ve hurt you.Warnings about her future if she didn’t take him back. How she would never find love again. How she was a piece of trash and lucky to have him. He used the same words Wade has used in his messages to me.Bitch. Cunt.The transition from “love bombing” to violent threats happened over a matter of days, the communications and actions starting with all love and ending with all hate, the ones in between mapping the shift within his mind. He didn’t want to hate her. He didn’t want to hurt her.
Next came the sightings. He was outside her apartment. Outside her office building. Outside the grocery store, then inside, an aisle away, making sure she saw him and knew how close he was.
She told the police. Got a restraining order. There was nothing they could do. There were no stalking laws back then, and there is nothing uniform today. Even the states that have them do little in terms of enforcement.
What did this man think would happen when he broke into her apartment, left a rose on her pillow? Then a dead mouse? Then a pile of dog shit? He found ways in, no matter what she did. He dedicated his life to her every movement. Just like Wade getting into my house, spying on my children.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t give in.My heart still races as I see the pattern.
I asked my students, does he believe this woman will take him back? That threats and coercion will lead to genuine affection? If this is the motivation, it is delusional.
Or is he simply unable to control his behavior? Is his obsession with her so big that he cannot turn away from it? That he has to satisfy it any way he can?
Or is this about power and control? Does he know that every time he stalks her, he is causing a reaction—fear that disrupts her life? Does this replace the satisfaction he felt when they were together? Has he accepted the rejection and moved on to revenge?
And, in any of these scenarios, how will it end?
I made them answer before we got to the conclusion of this one story. When he was outside her door demanding to be let in. When she called the police and begged them to come. When they arrived, walked him to his car, waited until he drove off, and then left. And finally, when he returned half an hour later, broke down the door, and stabbed her to death in her bed.
Most of the students concluded that he was mentally ill. No sane person would believe that stalking behavior would lead to love, and his final act was certain to (and did) land him in jail for the rest of his life.
In that case, they were right. The stalker was eventually diagnosed with a delusional disorder. But the research on stalkers and outcomes varies wildly. There are few predictors of the outcome, and the psychology of the stalker is usually not fully understood until the behavior stops—one way or another.
I down the rest of the scotch and stare at the phone. What is happening here? There has to be a cause for this. Who was this man before the shooting? What did the shooting do to him? I cannot make assumptions. I have to gather evidence and apply possibilities and likelihoods, without assuming one is right and the other is wrong.
This unsettles me. The not knowing. The unsolved puzzle, the missing pieces I have to work now to find. I have to be clever enough to find them, even as the rage begs and pleads.
That’s what this is now. A game of wits. Maybe this is one of the pieces. Wade is enjoying this game with me. Maybe it’s giving him back the power he lost when he stood on the other side of a loaded gun. Maybe he is having the response Dr. Landyn warned me about—that he soothed himself with delusions about fate, that we were meant to be together. Whether it’s true or not, he believes I saved his life, and now he craves a connection with me, even if the only form that takes is through this game he’s playing.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...The word reignites more rage inside me as I hear it with every thought that searches for an answer.
I pour a second glass of scotch.
It’s after one when I return to bed and crawl beneath the covers. Mitch finds my body with his and wraps us up together again, like people do when they love one another. I take from it what I can, the warmth. The safety in this moment.
Five hours later my eyes dart open, and a deep, shocking breath rushes in. I wake from sleep like I’m waking from the dead.
I listen to my house—to the radiator popping and Mitch snoring and something ticking, his watch on the dresser or the clock in the bathroom. Antiquated sounds from an old house, old fixtures and accessories, an older man than the one I married. I listen and feel at peace. For a moment.
Fran finds us, beside herself that we are both still in bed. She jumps in between us and snuggles all the way under the covers until she disappears. I hear her giggle when Mitch tickles her feet. He’s good at this. At keeping things normal. At pretending. Just the sight of them triggers the same fear in him that it does in me after what happened at their school.
My baby giggles and squirms and seeks refuge by climbing up and over me to the other side where her father can’t reach her. She pleads for me to help, and I run my hand softly on the inside of his ear, which makes him yell “Stop!” because that’s the most sensitive place on his body.
And I don’t know why, or maybe I do, but I wonder if Briana knows this about him. If they made love that way, exploring every inch of skin with their hands, mouths. Or if they just fuckedhalf-dressedover a desk or against his truck or her car. It’s a horrible thought. Four years have passed. But it has been unearthed because of Wade. Because he asked me things and I told him things that day on the outskirts of town, and now he’s inside my head, making me think about what’s inside of his. And from there, what’s inside of anyone’s.
