Chapter 36 MAYA
MAYA
My father takes the stairs one at a time.
Left foot up. Right foot follows. His hand on the banister, gripping harder than he'd want me to notice.
I'm behind him, close enough to catch him, far enough back that he doesn't feel monitored.
Ray Reeves is a man who has been taking care of himself for sixty-one years and the indignity of needing help on his own staircase is costing him something I can see in the set of his shoulders.
"I'm fine, Maya."
"I know you're fine."
"Then stop hovering."
"I'm not hovering. I'm walking behind you. In my own house. Up my own stairs."
He reaches the top. Turns and gives me a look that is so precisely my father. The dry, patient expression so familiar, that something in my chest loosens for the first time in days.
I settle him in his bedroom. Extra pillows.
Water on the nightstand. His reading glasses, his book, the small brass bell my mother placed beside the lamp so he can ring if he needs something.
He looks at the bell with an expression that suggests he would rather have a second cardiac event than use it.
"Rest," I say.
"I've been resting for a week."
"Rest more."
I close the door softly and stand in the hallway for a moment, listening. The house settles around me. The specific sounds of a place I grew up in. The creak of the floorboard by the bathroom, the tick of the radiator in the hall, the faint hum of the refrigerator.
I go downstairs and quietly, without making it obvious, I check the windows. The front door has the new deadbolt I noticed when I arrived. The side door to the garage has a chain that wasn't there before.
My parents shouldn't have to live like this. They should be worrying about the garden and the community center and whether the neighbor's dog is getting into the compost again.
Daniel took that from them the way he took everything from me. Remotely, invisibly, through a screen, with the confidence of a man who has never been made to answer for anything.
I'm done running from him.
The thought has been forming for three days, since that day in the hospital where I read his card.
It solidified while I watched my father sleep in a hospital bed and listened to my mother describe months of harassment she'd been absorbing in silence.
It hardened into something structural the morning I woke up in my childhood bedroom and realized that every person I love has been paying the price for Daniel's cruelty while Daniel pays nothing.
My silence has been his accomplice. He relied on the fact that I was too humiliated, too afraid, too tired to speak.
I'm not too tired anymore. I'm something else entirely.
I make sure my parents are settled. My mother is in the kitchen, making soup. Her hands are steady on the knife, the carrots falling in even rounds, and the normalcy of it is comforting.
"I'm going to work in the living room for a while," I tell her.
She nods, already reaching for the celery.
I set up at the dining table. Laptop open. Notebook beside it. I start with what I know.
The profiles. I search for them the way you search for a wound, knowing it will hurt, doing it anyway because you need to see the damage clearly before you can treat it.
I find three active profiles across two platforms. My photos.
My name. Physical descriptions that are accurate enough to be recognizable and embellished enough to be obscene.
My parents' address, listed as my location.
I screenshot everything. Date, time, URL, platform.
I save each one in a folder on my desktop.
My hands are steady. My breathing is even.
I have looked at these images before, in the weeks after the release, when the shock was still fresh and every image felt like a new violation. Now they feel like evidence.
I search the comment sections. The forums. The aggregation sites where these profiles get shared and discussed.
I follow the threads. I take notes.
Powerful men don't fall from lawsuits. Not men like Daniel, with family money and retained attorneys and the specific legal insulation that wealth provides.
They fall from exposure. My plan is to also make Daniel visible.
The optics will be a pressure point for him.
If I bring him out into the light, if his name is also mentioned, then it will be safer to confront him.
Hours pass. The light in the living room shifts from afternoon to evening.
My mother brings me tea without being asked.
I drink it without tasting it. My notebook is full of names and dates and URLs and the rough sketch of a strategy that is probably naive and almost certainly incomplete but it’s the beginning of a plan.
The doorbell rings.
The sound is too loud. Too sharp. It cuts through the quiet house like a blade and I'm on my feet before the echo fades, my body running the old threat-assessment protocol that activates before my conscious mind catches up.
My mother appears in the living room doorway. She's holding a baseball bat. Both hands on the grip, knuckles white, her face a mask of controlled fear.
For a moment I just look at her. Vivian Reeves. Five foot four. Sixty years old. Holding a Louisville Slugger in her own living room because a man decided that her daughter's humiliation wasn't sufficient and her home should be a target too.
"Mom." I go to her. Gently take the bat from her hands. Replace it with my phone. "If something goes wrong, call 911. Stay here."
She grips the phone the way she gripped the bat. I squeeze her hand once and walk to the front door.
Through the sidelight window I can see a man on the porch. Tall. Dark suit, well-tailored. Briefcase. Hair cut clean.
He doesn't look threatening. But neither did Daniel.
"Who is it?"
"Ms. Reeves?" His voice is measured, clear, carrying easily through the door. "My name is Adrian Kade."
The name registers before the context catches up. Adrian Kade. I know this name. Not from personal experience. From headlines.
I don't move. My hand is on the deadbolt but I don't turn it.
"Ms. Reeves, I understand this is unexpected. I'm an attorney." A pause. Brief and measured, t"I've been retained by True North Gear. I'm here to help you."
They sent him. From Montana. From a thousand miles away. From the other side of the silence I created when I stopped answering their calls.
I turn the deadbolt and I open the door.