Chapter 7 Mara
MARA
Monday evening, the Thai food arrives on my doorstep.
I hear the buzzer go off as I’m scrolling through emails on my laptop, and I frown, wondering who it could be. I didn’t invite anyone over, and for once I’d planned to eat something frozen from my freezer instead of ordering out.
But when I open my door, there’s a bag outside, the usual white bag from my favorite takeout spot. At first I think the delivery guy must have left it at the wrong house, but when I look closer at the receipt stapled to it, my pulse speeds up.
It’s Thai beef salad, tom kha gai soup with shrimp, and mango sticky rice. My exact order from the place three blocks over, the one I get when I'm too tired to cook and too lazy to venture out into the Manhattan chaos.
Except I didn't order it tonight.
I pick up the bag slowly, checking for a note, anything that might explain how it got here. Nothing. Just the familiar white containers with their cardboard lids, still warm, the smell of basil and chili making my stomach growl despite the unease crawling up my spine.
It must be a mistake. It was delivered to the wrong apartment. The delivery guy mixed up the orders, and somewhere in this building, someone else is wondering where their dinner is. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
Someone else must have ordered exactly what I get every time. It’s not that strange of an order.
Right?
I peer more closely into the bag, and see the small clear container with the extra lime wedges I always order.
That can’t be a coincidence.
With my heart suddenly beating rabbit-fast in my chest, I look sharply up and down the hallway and then quickly retreat into my apartment, flipping every lock the moment I close the door.
I set the bag down on my kitchen counter like a live grenade, staring at it as I try to convince myself this is normal.
Maybe Claire ordered it because of the long hours we've been putting in at the gallery.
Maybe Annie got on an app and ordered it to my apartment, some kind of care package now that she's feeling better.
But even as I try to explain it away, the excuses feel thin.
Annie would know my favorite food order, but would she know exactly the place in Manhattan that I order from?
There’s actually a closer Thai place, but I don’t like it as much.
And I don’t recall ever telling Claire my order, although maybe I got it for lunch before and forgot.
I eat the food anyway, because I'm starving and because throwing away perfectly good takeout feels wasteful—and also because acknowledging that something is wrong means dealing with it. I'm not ready to deal with it.
It has to be a coincidence. That’s all it is. No one is watching me or stalking me or fixating on me. That’s true-crime shit, the kind of thing that happens to other people and in fiction. My life isn’t that dramatic.
I’m just keyed up because of the lingering memory of Alexander, and jumping at shadows. It was just a mistake. I’m eating someone else’s dinner.
By the time I fall asleep with the television on, some documentary about Renaissance art that I'm not really watching, I’ve almost convinced myself that’s true.
Then, on Thursday, the book arrives at the gallery.
Claire brings it to my office, her eyes wide with excitement. The package is wrapped in brown paper, tied with string, old-fashioned and elegant. Inside is a first edition of a biography about Caravaggio, deliciously old, the pages crackling when I open them and smelling of old ink.
I know without looking anything up about it that t's worth thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe, depending on its condition and where it came from, and if it can be authenticated.
"Someone really likes you," Claudia says, leaning over my shoulder to peer at the book. "That's incredibly romantic."
I tear my eyes away from the book, glancing over at her. “Was there a card? A return address? Anything?”
She shakes her head. “Maybe it’s your secret admirer,” she teases, and I know exactly who she’s talking about.
Because I suspect him, too.
The takeout order was generic enough, but this is a clear signal. Who was there with me at the Caravaggio exhibit? Who talked for hours with me as we walked through it and had coffee afterward? Who seemed like someone who doesn’t take no for an answer easily?
Alexander Volkov, that’s fucking who.
“It’s not romantic. It’s creepy.” I push the book to the other side of my desk, but I feel like it’s staring at me.
It’s a message, I know it. And even if he sent it because he’s thinking of me still, just as I’m thinking of him, that means he looked up my gallery.
He looked into me. It’s persistent, but it also makes a shuddery feeling run down my spine, as if I’m being watched.
When Claire leaves, I grab the book and shove it into a drawer, my fingers prickling where I touched it. I want to take it home and give it a place of honor on my bookshelf, but every time I look at it, I’ll think of him.
And I don’t want to think about him. I want to forget him.
But on Monday, flowers arrive.
They're waiting at the gallery when I get there in the morning, a massive arrangement of white peonies and deep purple irises. The combination is unusual, and it takes me a moment to realize why they look familiar.
Then I remember: I sold a painting last week, a contemporary piece by an up-and-coming artist. The painting featured a woman in a white dress standing in a field of purple flowers. Peonies and irises, exactly like these.
I sold that painting to a private collector in London. The sale was confidential, handled through encrypted emails and wire transfers. The only people who knew about it were me, the collector, and the artist—and apparently, whoever sent these flowers.
This time, there is a card. It says only: Something so beautiful deserves to be seen.
There’s no signature and no name, not even initials. Just those five words in elegant script. My fingers tremble when I take the card to look at it, and I nearly drop it on the floor.
Claire comes out of the back a moment later and sees me standing in front of the flowers, staring at them like they might suddenly reveal their secrets. "Okay, now I'm jealous," she says. "Whoever this guy is, he has excellent taste."
"Yeah.” My voice sounds distant even to me. "Excellent taste."
I spend the rest of the day trying to focus on work—on the auction we're preparing for and the clients who need my attention. But my eyes keep drifting to the flowers, the way they seem to watch me from across the room.
The next morning, I go for my usual run in Central Park, trying to clear my head. It's early, the sun just starting to rise, casting long shadows across the paths. I've been running this route for years, and I know every turn and hill, every bench and lamppost.
Today, it feels different.
I can't shake the feeling that someone is behind me as I get further along the path, matching my pace, staying just out of sight.
But every time I glance over my shoulder, there's nothing unusual there.
Just other runners, tourists with cameras, couples walking hand in hand. Normal people doing normal things.
The feeling persists, a prickling awareness at the base of my skull that makes my heart race faster than the exercise warrants. I push myself harder, running faster than I usually do, taking turns at random to see if the feeling follows.
It does.
By the time I make it back to my apartment, I'm breathing hard and my legs are shaking. I tell myself it's just the run, pushing myself too hard, just paranoia from too many late nights and too much stress. I take a long shower, trying to wash away the unease, and I almost succeed.
Until I check my mail on the way out of the apartment to work.
There’s a small package inside. A prickling feeling runs down my spine as I reach for it, my heart beating too fast all over again. When I open it, I nearly drop the box.
There’s a bracelet lying on the velvet inside of it. It’s clearly very old, Art Deco in style, made of platinum and diamonds. It’s kind of piece that belongs in a museum or on the wrist of someone's grandmother. It's exquisite and delicate—clearly vintage and clearly expensive.
There's no note this time. Just the bracelet, gleaming in the fluorescent light of the mailroom.
I slip the box into my purse, my stomach twisting with unease as I mentally tally up the growing list of gifts.
The book, the flowers now wilting in a vase, and now this bracelet that likely cost whoever is sending these gifts an even more obscene amount of money than the first edition.
I go over them all in my head as I walk outside to catch a cab, trying to make sense of it all.
Someone is watching me. Someone knows what I like, what I want, what I do. Someone has been paying very close attention, and they want me to know it.
And I think I know who that someone is.
The thought should terrify me. It does terrify me. But underneath the fear is something else, something I don't want to examine too closely. A dark thrill, a twisted kind of flattery, the knowledge that someone out there thinks I'm worth this much effort.
I think about the man in Boston, about the way he looked at me like I was the only person in the world, about the electricity that crackled between us. I think about his voice, his hands, the intensity in his eyes that made me feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff.
But he doesn't have my number. There's no way he could have followed me back to New York, no way he could know these things about me.
Is there?
I gave him my name…my full name. Someone dedicated enough could find out my address for home and work, and the first edition book was a slam dunk of a gift. But the flowers, the bracelet, the takeout…