Now, I stomp through the cabin and slam the door behind me. My body is full of pent-up rage, and I need to let it out.
So, I do something I haven’t done in a while. I put Cheese on her leash and start off for a walk, having no idea where I’m going or how long I’ll be gone.
When I first left the public eye — going to that first cabin out in the woods — I’d done this a lot. Walking the local trails. Backthen, I ran into people, thought nobody would recognize me if I pulled my ball cap low on my face. Thought it had been long enough since the trial, that the news would have died down.
It didn’t take long for them to find me there. And for the death threats to follow, just like they had when I was staying with Belle. She was newly engaged then, and I knew my presence in her life was only making things worse.
So, I left. And in the first cabin, it wasn’t long before they found me again.
This last time when I moved, I did everything right. And when I first got out here, I went for long, meandering walks. Getting to know the area. This time, I didn’t see a single other person. Nobody wanted to get this lost in the Cascades, and if they did, the likelihood of us running into one another was very, very low.
This time I dideverythingright. The only person who knows the exact location is Pete. I didn’t even tell Belle I was leaving the other place, because I knew she would want to see me. And seeing me would only mean I’d get discovered, and my shit would get dragged back into her life.
The courts found me innocent on charges of fraud. Officially, legally, my name was cleared. They never realized Elliot was behind it, that Hannah was his collaborator, but I wasnot guilty.
It didn’t matter in the court of public opinion, nor to the people who lost their jobs. Those who had lost hundreds of thousands in the stock market still thought I was guilty. People, suddenly without health insurance, thought I was another rich fucker using my money to get away with murder.
And a few of them werereallymotivated to find me, if only to tell me they thought I was a piece of shit. The press was delighted by my efforts to stay hidden and took it upon themselves to find me.
I push through a particularly thick section of brush and gesture for Cheese to follow along with me. She looks up at me with her big brown eyes, as though to say,You okay, man?
No, I am not okay.
Why didn’t I just delete the stuff on Lola’s phone?
This morning, when I woke up with her in my arms, I’d been so sleepily happy that I’d thought I’d get up and make her something for breakfast. When I got to the kitchen, I found the charred remains of what she’d tried to make the night before still sitting there.
Her phone was lighting up with an alarm that must have been going off for a while. I’d swiped to turn off the alarm and accidentally opened her phone.
In some ways, it’s her fault. What kind of psychopath doesn’t lock their phone?
Lola. Walking around Seattle with so much information about herself stored up in that thing, and she just left it wide open. If things had gone differently, maybe I would have given her a lecture on why it’s important to lock it. Ideally, with a PIN or password, rather than biometrics. The police can force you to scan your fingerprint. They can’t make you supply your PIN number.
Not that it matters.
Because when her phone opened, it went to the gallery, which it must have been on before she set it down. Maybe before she nearly lit the place on fire trying to add more wood to the stove.
And the first thing in the gallery was her cracking an egg into the pan. My pan. In my kitchen. A full, wide lens shot of my home.
At first, I was stunned. Then I kept scrolling. Pictures and videos, one after the other, of her time here. A video of my books. Her grinning over an empty plate in the dinner nook. So, so many shots from the front porch, the back porch, catching the trees in the light, and then, deeper into her camera roll, in the rain.
All this time, she’d been documenting. She knew I was pissed about the idea of her recording off the back porch. What in the world would make her think it was okay to recordinside my home?
In one of the videos, I can hear my own voice, cutting off as I come through the door.
She was hiding it from me. She knew I’d be pissed if I saw it. Secrets. A betrayal.
So, moving numbly, I gathered up her things. Placed them by the front door. Quickly and thoroughly put all my walls back in place.
By the time I was standing there, watching her car get smaller and smaller in the distance, I’d convinced myself that it was for the best. That Lola was never going to stay. We are two different people fromverydifferent worlds.
I couldn’t eat dinner that night; the rage was so potent. And every time I sat down for too long, my head filled with not justthoughts of Lola, but of Elliot and Hannah, too. The first time I thought something was wrong.
Loving Hannah, only for her to turn on me in the end.
No, there was never going to be a world in which Lola could stay at the cabin with me. And it was foolish for me to even entertain the thought.
CHAPTER 19
