Page 168 of Letters From A Stalker

“Someone looking over your shoulder for a couple of years?” She tests me anyway.

“If that is what it takes.”

Mara nods and reaches for her wine. A minute passes before she asks the other question.

“Anything from Julia?”

I look down at my plate. “No.”

“Have you contacted her?”

“No.” There is no need to tell Mara how many times I have thought about it or how often her name still sits behind my teeth.How easy it would be to type an email I would never send or ask a question Mara would answer if I pushed hard enough.

I haven’t. I won’t.

“She asked me to disappear,” I say. “So that’s what I’m doing.”

Mara’s expression softens. “You think she’ll ever forgive you?”

I lean back and stare toward the dark window over her sink. “I hope she does.”

“For you?”

“No.” The answer comes before she finishes asking. “For her.”

Mara waits.

“I don’t expect her to speak to me again. I’m not sitting around thinking forgiveness means she eventually comes back.” I look down at my hands. “I just don’t want what I did to become another thing she has to carry forever.”

“And you?”

A humorless smile touches my mouth. “What about me?”

“Do you think you’ll forgive yourself?”

That one takes longer.

“No.”

Mara sighs softly. “Kai.”

“I’m not trying to be dramatic. Maybe that changes eventually, but right now I don’t particularly think it should.”

She reaches across the table and covers my hand briefly. “That’s what therapy is for.”

“Apparently everyone is committed to making sure I continue paying Bennett.”

“Consider it reparations to the profession.”

That actually gets a laugh out of me. It feels strange enough that I stop afterward. Mara notices but doesn’t say anything.

We finish dinner talking about safer things. Connor’s newest obsession. A parent-teacher conference. The fact that Mara has apparently agreed to foster a dog for two weeks despite having previously claimed animals make her house smell like a barn.

When I finally decide to leave a little after nine, she follows me onto the porch. “You’ll tell me when the Committee date comes?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you say the safe-house thing is?”