Page 155 of Letters From A Stalker

I stare at that for longer than the rest. Then I close the email without choosing anyone. The idea of sitting in another therapist’s office makes my stomach turn. Therapy helped, it really did. That is the worst fucking part. Kai helped me. There is no comfortable way around that truth. He gave me language for things I had spent years blaming myself for. He sat across from me while I told him about eighteen and did not let me minimize what happened. He challenged every apology I offered for simply existing in the room. He taught me to notice how quickly I made myself responsible for everybody else. And while he was doing all of that, he was watching my house. Both things are true. I don’t know what the hell to do with that.

The envelope arrives Saturday morning. Not black. For some reason that matters more than the color of the envelope should matter to anyone. I find it in the mailbox with two pieces of junk mail and a utility statement, cream paper inside a plain white envelope with my full name written across the front.

Julia Hayes.

Not Little Ember. I know the handwriting anyway. For a second I can’t breathe. He promised no more letters. Then I remember what I actually said.

No coming near my house. No watching. No bike. No checking on me through Mara.

I never specifically said no letters. Of course the psychiatrist would find the one technical opening I left behind. Anger comes fast enough to steady me. I take the envelope inside, drop everything else onto the kitchen counter and stare at it as though it might explain itself if I wait long enough. I nearly tear it in half without opening it. Then curiosity wins, which pisses me off even more. I read the entire thing standing at the island.

By the time I reach This is the last letter I will ever send you, I already know I should stop.

I read on. About his mother, about the way she used to disappear while still moving through the world, insisting she was fine because people preferred the easy answer. I read the distinction he makes immediately, almost desperately, that I did not remind him of his mother. The expression did. The vacancy. The lie wrapped inside “I’m fine.” I read about the night he followed me after I dissociated. I read where he admitted that the first time he followed me was out of concern, but everything after was a conscious choice. That he stayed when he should have left, how he returned when he had no right, wrote because he wanted me to know someone had noticed me and then kept writing because he liked the woman who answered.

I sit down somewhere around the part where he admits he didn’t want to lose Thursdays. That line hurts more than it should. My fingertips rest against the edge of the paper while I stare at his handwriting and remember every Thursday afternoon I spent wondering why the hour passed faster than it should. Apparently he wondered too. That doesn’t make anything better, it only makes it sadder.

By the time I reach the end, my anger has become something less useful — not forgiveness, nowhere near it. Grief, maybe. For Ghost. For Kai. For whatever I believed I had with both of them before one tattoo ripped the wall down between them. I read the final lines again despite myself.

You once asked whether I would ever let you see me.

I wish I had understood then that the mask was never the thing keeping you from doing that.

Goodbye, Little Ember.

—Kai

My vision blurs.

“Asshole.” The word shakes when I say it.

I fold the letter once, then unfold it because I hate that I’m treating it gently. I should throw it away or fucking burn it. Tear it into pieces small enough that there is no handwriting left to recognize. Instead, I put it in the drawer with the others. That makes me angrier than almost anything else, the fact that the drawer was still his, that I made it his and that all of his previous letter held space there. I stand with one hand against the closed drawer and wonder what it would take to forgive someone for something like this.

Forgiveness feels enormous, impossible and much too close to absolution when the betrayal is still fresh enough that I can feel it in my body.

My phone buzzes across the counter.

Tessa:

I’m bringing wine, carbs and the trashiest movie I can find tonight. This is not a democracy.

I stare at the screen. Then at the drawer.

Tonight, I tell her.

Tessa arrives at seven carrying two bottles of wine tucked under one arm, a paper bag of takeout in the other and enough candy balanced against her chest that I have to take something from her before she drops half of it on my porch.

“You do realize there are only two of us, right?”

“There are only two of us so far,” she says as she steps inside and nudges the door closed with her heel. “If tonight becomes emotionally catastrophic, I reserve the right to call for reinforcements.”

Normally I would ask what kind of emergency support requires three bags of sour candy and two bottles of Cabernet, but she turns around before I get the chance and actually looks at me. The joke disappears from her face.Her eyes travel over my old sweatshirt, the hair I haven’t bothered doing anything with and probably whatever is sitting behind my eyes after spending most of the day alternating between wanting to burn Kai’s letter and reading it again.

She sets the takeout bag on the kitchen island without looking away from me. “What happened?”

She just stands there studying me with the unnervingly direct expression of someone who has known me long enough to recognize when every version of “I’m fine” is complete bullshit. I turn toward the kitchen before her face can make mine collapse.

“Can we eat first?”