Page 93 of Letters From A Stalker

“I still owe you coffee.”

“You don’t owe me anything either.”

“I want coffee.”

She gives me a satisfied little smile. “That’s better.”

I laugh because apparently the entire universe has enrolled in Kai Blackwood’s treatment plan without my consent.

“How about Saturday morning? I’ll come over, and since it’s finally cool enough that neither of us will melt, we can sit outside.”

“I’d like that.”

“Then Saturday.”

She lifts the watering can slightly in agreement. “I’ll make something.”

“You always make something.”

“And you always eat it.”

“I have never complained about this arrangement.” I say, smiling as I start turning towards my house, feeling lighter than I did when I got out of the car.

Then I see the porch. My steps slow. There is something resting against the front door. Black. My entire body recognizes it before my mind catches up. For a moment, every emotion I have spent the last week refusing to examine seems to arrive simultaneously. Fear comes first because apparently some part of my brain remains appropriately interested in survival. Relief follows so closely behind it that I nearly resent myself, then curiosity and underneath both, something warmer that I refuse to name while standing ten feet from evidence that a stranger has been on my property again.

I glance toward Mrs. Pritchard. She has turned back toward her plants. If she noticed anyone near my house earlier, she would have said something, wouldn’t she? The thought makes me look toward the street. Nothing unusual. Just another quiet evening in a neighborhood I have always considered safe. I walk toward the porch slowly. The envelope looks almost identical to the first. Thick black paper. Dark red wax. My private name written across the front in the same controlled handwriting.

Little Ember.

My heart gives one hard beat. He didn’t stop. The realization should frighten me, and it sort of does, but what frightens me almost as much is the immediate, undeniable relief that follows. I crouch and pick up the envelope. The paper is cold from the evening air. For one brief second, I look toward the trees again and wonder whether he is still close enough to see me holding it. The sensation I felt that first night doesn’t return. Nothing prickles along my neck. Nothing makes me feel observed. If he has been watching during the last week, he has gotten better at being invisible. That thought should probably send me directly back across the yard to Mrs. Pritchard. Instead, I unlock the door. Inside, I take more time than I did with the first letter. I close and lock the door, slip off my shoes and hang my coat beside it before setting my bag on the narrow bench beneath the hooks. The envelope remains in my hand through all of it. I don’t pretend I’m not going to read it. That particular lie has become insulting.I carry it into the living room, sit at one end of the couch and run my thumb across the wax seal.

The first envelope frightened me enough that opening it felt like an argument between curiosity and self-preservation. This one feels different. I am still nervous, just simply no longer afraid of the paper itself. The seal cracks beneath my thumb. Cream stationery waits inside. The first line sends that same strange little pulse through my stomach.

Little ember,

Then:

You wondered whether I was gone.

I stop.

“What the fuck?”

My eyes race over the sentence again. He cannot know that. Except the uncomfortable thing is that he doesn’t need to know. Maybe it is an educated guess. Maybe he assumed that after one letter I would wonder whether there would be another. Still, something about seeing the thought written back to me makes my skin tighten so I continue.

I wasn’t.

I have been closer than you think, watching the small pieces of you that nobody sees because you believe being alone means being unseen.

The living room suddenly feels warmer. I become aware of the windows without looking toward them.

I know how often you wander into your kitchen without needing anything. I know you open the refrigerator as if something new might appear between one visit and the next, and I know you choose the softest clothes you own the moment the rest of the world no longer gets a vote.

My lips part. Friday, or Saturday. Maybe both. He had been there. The thought makes my pulse jump, but another reaction follows when I realize what he noticed. Not something impressive. Not me dressed for work or leaving the house with makeup and styled hair. Me wandering around my kitchen doing absolutely nothing. The ridiculous intimacy of it unsettles me.

I read farther.

I watched you laugh with your friend. I watched you try not to look horrified while she destroyed perfectly good pizza dough, and I watched you fail.