28. Nick
28
NICK
S carlett suggested we lie low for a while and I agreed to it. Now late September we'd been staying out of the public eye for the past three and a half weeks. We ate at her house or mine, ordered groceries to be delivered, and she'd even taken to sleeping while Ethan was at school, baking during the midnight hours, and hiring a local single mother to run the cash register for her. The bakery even had reduced hours to early morning through lunch now. She was struggling and it didn't feel right.
Today, I was feeling the sting of the town's hatred. I stood at the counter of the coffee shop across the town square from Scarlett's bakery to get my coffee. I'd run out of K-Cups at home, and without my morning caffeine fix I'd be dragging all day. So I broke my own agreement with Scarlett to stay away from places where people were talking and I stopped to get a cup of coffee.
The snickering and whispers started immediately, but I didn't turn to see who it was that instigated them. Instead, I tried to just focus on ordering and paying. All I needed was coffee; then I could leave. But the barista had a few orders before mine, and I was forced to wait as she prepared them.
When curiosity got the better of me and I turned over my shoulder to see who was making the fuss, I saw Fiona. She shocked me. Her hair was past her shoulders, fiery red, curls in ringlets that hugged her curves. She'd obviously gotten extensions, and the tailored suit she wore fit her well. If she'd have been smiling politely, I'd have thought she was attractive.
Instead, she was staring at me with her eyes, but her face was angled at someone else, a woman seated next to her. They were talking quietly and snickering, and when I tried to read her lips, I was sure I picked out the words "gold digger" and "such a shame." They made my anger flare instantly, though the only thing I could do was clench my fists and jaw and look away. It seemed like she was always somewhere ready to make me furious.
It didn't matter how much time passed or how Scarlett and I reacted, Marjorie Whitman's piece calling Scarlett a gold digger and me her baby daddy had done its damage. Every time someone in this town saw either of us, they snickered. Now I was second-guessing our choice to lay low. Maybe if we'd have just gone on living our lives normally instead of hiding from this, people would've grown tired of the same old gossip and moved on to someone else.
I didn't think Fiona would move on until she saw Scarlett and me happy together, though, and maybe she was one of the reasons why people kept talking. She was so jealous that she couldn't seduce me and win me back that she just kept talking about me. I had half a mind to go tell her off, but just as I worked up the courage to say something, the barista called my name and I had to collect my cup of coffee.
I left the little coffee shop feeling very frustrated and annoyed. It had been five months since Marjorie's first segment aired. She'd done a few more throughout June and July, and her August broadcasts turned more toward a few politicians again. I had hoped this would've blown over by now, but if Fiona was the one fueling the rumors now, maybe it never would. It wasn't like the police could do anything about people spreading lies. They still hadn't even found out who broke into my office before Labor Day weekend.
Attempting to shake off my bad mood, I drove to the office listening to the radio. A few songs that reminded me of Scarlett came on and I sang along with them. And when I pulled into the parking lot and parked, I already felt better. I shot Scarlett a good morning text, knowing she'd be getting Ethan ready for school so she could go back home and sleep.
She responded with a kissing emoji and a car emoji, so I knew she was driving. And since I had patients to see, I headed into the office. Now I felt a lot better. I had learned how to deal with the negativity, and having Scarlett as my anchor to weather the storms helped.
But when I walked in and Emily was frowning and waiting at the door, my apprehension returned almost immediately, engulfing me in the negativity I was trying so hard to rid myself of.
"What's wrong?" I asked as I passed by her, setting my half-empty coffee and my laptop bag on the nurse's station counter. Emily was pretty even-keeled, so when she looked upset or rattled I knew it was for good reason. She'd been more than helpful following what we now suspected were two break-ins over the summer, though she'd been very nervous to open or close by herself since Labor Day.
"Sir, you'll want to see this…" She extended her arm and opened her hand. In the palm of her hand was a flash drive. "I found it in the back of the computer when I was cleaning. I dropped a receipt I was supposed to mail to Mrs. Barker so I moved the tower and this was in the computer."
The small black flash drive was run-of-the-mill, nothing special about it, and it was a little dusty, but nothing compared to the thick layers of dust I knew clung to the back of that computer tower.
"Did you put it in, see what's on it?" My gut instinct was to just open the drive and see what was on it, but Emily was smarter than me. That was what I paid her for.
"No sir, I didn't." Her fingers clasped around it, then she turned her hand over and dropped it into my palm as I held my hand out to her. "If there's a virus or something, only the one computer is affected, I think. If I put it back, I'm afraid something will happen. We have so many patient files on our network." She bit her lower lip as it quivered. "Do you think whoever broke in earlier this month put this in the computer? It's been there the whole time and we never knew?"
I stared at the flash drive and sighed. She had a very good point. Whatever this was could be malicious, and if someone had snuck into our office to put this into a computer, there was no telling what it was. I sighed hard and scowled.
"I think we need to send an email out to our patients and let them know we may have been compromised. Meanwhile, I have to get this to the detectives who are looking into the break-in." This day was getting worse by the second. As if it wasn't bad enough that my name had become a household name for all the wrong reasons, someone was messing with my career again. This had Marjorie Whitman written all over it; I just couldn't prove it. I had no evidence.
"I'll send it out, sir." Emily frowned and walked over to her desk as I collected my laptop bag and coffee and retreated to my office to get set up for the day.
When I called the police to tell them about the drive, they told me to put it in a baggie and drop it by the precinct, or they could send a man to come get it. I told them I'd drop it by because curiosity was getting the better of me. I knew I didn't have anything compromising on my laptop. It was just my personal computer, so I put the drive into it and opened the files on it. It was just a bunch of random code that tried to run on my computer, but my virus software didn't detect anything, which made even less sense.
The one thing the cops told me was something I already knew, but hearing them say it out loud was a kick to the gut. I had to inform every patient, including Scarlett on Ethan's behalf, that my system had been compromised. Just what I needed, another scandal. If Scarlett heard about this, she was going to freak out even more, and I was beginning to get afraid that she'd just pack up and leave.
Maybe that was what we both needed to do. I had enough money to start a new practice and a new bakery in a new town, far away from here. I just didn't know if I could convince her to go. And the looming guilt that I'd break a promise to my parents still hung over my head. I was supposed to care for their home.
I just needed someone out there to care about what was happening to my life again. It was too bad I couldn't get Marjorie Whitman to report on someone else and let the wolves prey somewhere else.