Tonight it did nothing.
She took her tea to the couch and curled up under a blanket, trying to watch a mindless sitcom on Netflix. But she couldn’t focus. Couldn’t stop replaying the parking garage in her mind.
The figure watching her.
The footsteps behind her.
The way they’d known exactly where she was.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Lila:Date went amazing! Tell you all about it tomorrow. Lunch at The Brew & View?
Nora stared at the message, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Should she tell her? About the garage, the fear, the car outside?
Lila would just tell her she was stressed from work. That she needed to take a vacation. That her anxiety was getting bad again.
Nora typed back:Sounds good. 12:30?
Her response came immediately:Perfect! Sleep well!
She wouldn’t. Nora already knew that.
She turned on the TV louder, as if the noise could drown out her racing thoughts. But every creak of the building settling, every footstep in the hallway, every distant siren made her jump.
Around midnight, she gave up on sleep and pulled out her laptop. Maybe work would distract her. She had three more audits to review before the end of the month.
But when she opened her laptop, her heart stuttered.
The Morrison file—the one she’d been working on all day—was open.
Nora always closed her files. Always. It was a compulsion born from too many foster homes where privacy didn’t exist. Close everything. Lock everything. Leave no traces.
But there it was, open to the last page she’d been reviewing.
You left it open. You were in a hurry to leave. You forgot.
Except she never forgot.
She scrolled through the document, looking for...what? She didn’t know. Everything looked normal. Nothing deleted, nothing changed.
But something felt wrong.
She closed the laptop and set it aside, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. The apartment suddenly felt too big, too empty. Every shadow seemed deeper. Every sound seemed louder.
She checked the locks again. Door, deadbolt, chain. All secure.
Then she checked the windows. All locked.
Then she checked the locks on the door again, because she couldn’t remember if she’d really checked them the first time or just thought about checking them.
This was what her therapist called “anxiety spiraling.” When Nora couldn’t shut off the fear, couldn’t trust her own judgment, couldn’t stop checking and rechecking and checking again.
But what if this time, the fear was justified?
She sank back onto the couch and stared at her phone.
She could call the police. Report what happened in the garage.
But what would she say? “A person approached me in a parking garage and I ran away”? They’d ask if the person threatened her. If they touched her. If they damaged her property.
