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But what does he do, just stand here?
I swallow emotion, confusion, and force myself forward toward another box. Something small and square-ish gleams on the top of it, a set of keys or a keychain, maybe. But when I get close enough to make out the details, I recognize it.
The air in my lungs leaves in a single whoosh.
I struggle to breathe, to move.
I recognize it because it belonged to you. Your jersey. Your number 17. The specialty keychain I had made for you after you won the championship. I gave it to you the night we decided to start a family. And when you died, I took to carrying it around, carrying a piece of you around, a reminder…
Until one day it disappeared. The day I came out of the alley and crashed into Gabriel. I assumed I’d dropped it.
Apparently I had.
And Gabriel picked it up.
Meaning… I try to temper the rising panic threatening to choke me. Gabriel knows who I am.
He’s known all along.
I drop the keychain back down and grab for the nearest stack of boxes, holding on for dear life.
No. It can’t be.
The blood drains from my face, my body, right into my swirling stomach.
But it is. It absolutely is. This is the keychain I had made for you, a one-of-a-kind gift I commissioned from an artist. It even has the small mistake—some of the red paint bleeding into the blue. The maker was going to sell them, but they never made it to production because of the accident. And it’s in Gabriel’s storage unit.
I reach for it again, press the familiar smoothness into my palm. It practically burns a hole into it. A part of me is glad to have this—this piece of you from before everything went bad.
But most of me is confused. Terrified. My thoughts won’t move, won’t work, like my brain is frozen. Fight or flight or… frozen. I try to breathe. Try to get my body in motion again.
He—he has had this keychain all along? I picture him exiting the storage unit less than an hour ago, catching sight of me. Suggesting a nonexistent Verizon store. Playing me. I swallow, look down at the number. It’s clear as day it had to be yours. The same team, the same number. Which has to mean he knows who I am. He knows I’m your widow. But why would he want to know the widow of the man who killed his wife and child?
The answer comes to me fast.
This whole time, I’ve felt as though I’m the one stalking him.
But maybe he’s been the one stalking me?
The cloying sensation I recognize as a looming panic attack threatens to drop me to my knees, and suddenly, I have to get out—out, out, out. And I don’t want this. I toss the keychain, and it clanks on the cement floor. Somehow I make it out of the storage unit. But the second I exit the door to the sidewalk, the echo of footsteps fills my ears.
I don’t see him pounding down the sidewalk, don’t see anyone, and it’s entirely possible the footsteps are my imagination. Or someone turning down a nearby walkway or alley. But I don’t care. I have to get away.
By the time I’m at my apartment, my breaths come in heavy pants. I’ve been walking regularly, but not running. Not sprinting. I haven’t had reason to. I’ve always disliked running, often using the old line, “I only run if someone’s chasing me.”
And tonight, literally or figuratively, someone is chasing me.
Gabriel.
I force myself to sit down on the living room couch, to flick on the reading lamp, to try to think rationally. But my lungs squeeze tight, and my mind races with the ramifications. This changes everything. I flash back to those early days, following him from a distance. Watching him duck in and out of the storage unit, then head to campus. Grab lunch with all the different women.
How long has it been since I dropped the keychain?
And why didn’t he confront me? Months and months have passed.
The night Gabriel walked in on my date with Robert. When he just happened to show up in my office, acting as though he didn’t know me. I thought it was coincidence after coincidence. But it wasn’t.
And the following—how many times have I thought someone was following me? Oh God, my apartment break-in. The book on stalking! The Hello Kitty!
