Chapter 5
BILLIE
My first mistake was assuming I could relax at a tween girl’s birthday party.
This was basically an emotional demolition derby with cake and music.
Two girls had already had breakdowns, which resulted in the need for full-blown consoling sessions.
One was due to a boy liking another girl’s photo on social media, and I didn’t catch what caused the other one, but there were tears and declarations that her life was over.
I sat in the backyard surrounded by a sea of pastel decorations and preteens shrieking over TikTok choreography as they jumped on the built-in trampoline, and all I could focus on were the notes.
The whole thing felt weirdly cinematic, like I’d stumbled into the wrong genre of my own life.
I was doing my best, for the sake of my family, to pretend that I wasn’t freaked out.
It was actually taking a lot more effort than I’d originally thought it would.
I assumed I’d be able to do what I always did and compartmentalize my feelings.
In this case, it was proving to be easier said than done.
I flipped through who might have been offended by my behavior, like a Rolodex in my head.
I mentally recited the list of men who could possibly have motive to break into my apartment and car.
It was longer than I liked to admit. Since both my sisters had settled down, my grandparents’ house was restored and in good hands, and the business was safe and booming, I decided it was finally time for me to have a personal life.
The past three months had been a very weird, very busy season in my dating life. I’d managed to rack up a questionable highlight reel of men I’d rejected, specifically those who had not taken it well. There was:
Travis, who took me to “axe throwing and tacos” for our first and only date and spent the entire night mansplaining the biomechanics of axe throwing, pausing only to call his ex and intermittently to tell her what a “psycho” she was. He was a real charmer.
The guy from the wine bar, Ronan, who asked if I wanted to “see his yacht” (spoiler: it was a kayak he kept in the back of his Prius), then tried to kiss me before we’d even gotten our cheese plate and spent the second half of our date staring at my tits and making borderline inappropriate jokes. Class act.
Simon the finance guy, who wore a Patagonia vest and introduced himself as “a sapiosexual,” then proceeded to ask me to take an IQ test before the appetizers arrived. Such a gentleman.
And finally, “Thursday,” the man whose real name I forgot because I only met him the one time, on Thursday, which I remember because I missed Law & Order: SVU for the date, and he spent three hours psychoanalyzing my Myers-Briggs type while vaping. Hello, Romeo, am I right?
All four men took my decline of a second date particularly bad. I didn’t want any drama. Despite my best efforts, they had all harassed me and now one of them had potentially become my stalker.
Travis accused me of being distant after we broke up. When you didn’t accept a second date, did it count as breaking up? Or was I technically in the clear, karmically speaking?
Ronan showed up at my spin class, which I’d mentioned, pretending he had no clue I’d be there and asked me out again. When I told him I still wasn’t interested, he tried to block my exit, and I had to threaten calling the police.
Simon continued to ask me out, texting and calling for a week, daily, despite me declining, until I blocked him.
“Thursday” cried for an hour and said he was going to unalive himself if I didn’t give him another chance when I told him I didn’t want to see him again.
Those were the more extreme reactions to not getting a second date. Evan, who called me a “frigid bitch,” was the more typical. I doubted it would be one of the “Evans,” but if we were putting those into play, then that opened up dozens more men. Or it could just be a rando off the street.
A burst of laughter rang out from the girls on the trampoline.
I shook out my head and made an effort to be present for my niece-of-the-heart, Carly.
It was amazing seeing my Bailey seamlessly fold into Cole’s family.
Cole, his sister Sarah, Carly, and the twins had all lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, where he’d slept on the couch, before he and his construction crew had finished renovating my grandparents’ house, which was now his and her sister’s home.
Thankfully, he no longer had to sleep on the couch. There was plenty of room. Five bedrooms and six bathrooms. I was glad to see a new generation being raised in it and that it had stayed in the family. And that I had nothing to do with either.
I’d done my share of raising children and also of living in grand Victorian houses. That was not the life I wanted to live ever again. But Bailey could not be more suited for it.
Right now my middle sister was in the kitchen bouncing her best friend Olivia’s baby on her hip and couldn’t look more in her element. Her bestie had twins six months ago, and she was holding the boy, Mikey.
When I saw my sister happy, about to be married to a man I knew would love her and take care of her, all the sacrifices I’d made felt like they were worth it.
My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket. It was a text from an unknown number.
Unknown
nice shirt the green really brings out your eyes
I lifted my head and looked around as my heart slammed into my chest. The party wasn’t that big.
How could he be here?
No one appeared to be looking at me.
Was this him? Was this the guy who was leaving me the notes? Was he here?
Carly’s mom, Sarah, dark-haired and perennially tired, was sitting on the edge of the trampoline, holding a phone up to record while pretending not to monitor every bounce for potential neck injuries.
Gathered at the fire pit were Bailey’s best friend Olivia, her husband Ben, her business partner and gay bestie Trevor, and Arthur Reynolds, who was Sarah and Cole’s ninety-year-old former neighbor whose main contribution to the party was a series of dad jokes that left the younger kids in helpless giggles.
At present, he was snoozing upright in a lawn chair, a party hat askew on his head, and a half-eaten lemon bar on his lap.
The rest of the partygoers were Carly’s tween friends and Luke and Leo’s best friend Jeremiah, and his mom dropping him off his inhaler.
None of the adults had their phones out. No one was side-eyeing me. So he wasn’t here. Not at the party. But he was close enough. He knew what I was wearing, and whether that was a result of hacking, surveillance, or simple dumb luck, it meant he was watching. Or had watched.
The thought sent a full-body shudder through me, which I disguised by taking a loud, unnecessary sip from my lime LaCroix. I forced myself to breathe.
If he’d gotten close enough to me to get into my apartment and into my car, then he’d most likely done surveillance. He must have been watching me today. Which is how he knew my shirt was green. I was not going to allow him to torment me.
I reminded myself that I had a plan. When the party was over, I’d drive to the police station, bring the new note, and now this text.
It was a plan, it was rational, it was the right thing to do.
I repeated this to myself like a mantra, even as every instinct screamed at me to go home, lock the door, and never leave again.
I expected my sisters to sense my tension instantly, but they were both in their element socially.
Bailey was still in hostess mode, working the kitchen like a pro.
Birdie was the opposite: floating around the perimeter of the yard, sun-bleached hair that she wore twisted into a loose braid trailing over one shoulder, white summer dress that made her look like the concept art for a more relatable Disney princess.
At some point she must have caught my eye, because less than a minute after my pulse started returning to a plausible pace, Birdie appeared at my side, cracking a seltzer open with her perfect manicure.
“Hey, Sissy, do you want a seltzer?”
“Only if it’s spiked,” I muttered, then added, “I’m good,” louder.
She lowered herself onto the bench next to me with a graceful, slow-motion hover.
Birdie was the opposite of me in every way.
She was easygoing, artistic, and good-natured.
Her wedding was in six months, and the only thing she’d planned was the honeymoon, and she had zero stress about the entire thing.
If it were my wedding, six months out, every vendor would be booked, I’d have the entire day, every minute scheduled.
Every single guest would have RSVPed or would be cut, no exceptions.
I’d most likely be broken out in hives, mainly because the thought of getting married, of being legally tied to another person, made me want to crawl out of my skin, but the thought of promising to do that in front of family and friends was only slightly less terrifying.
Birdie angled her body, so her shoulder touched mine. “Did you get home okay last night?”
My eyes sliced to her as panic rose in me. Had she heard about the break-in? The note left in the car? Why was she asking that? But the little arch of her eyebrows, the half-smirk, told me she was fishing for date gossip.
Of course. Evan. I’d completely forgotten the night before had even happened.
Fuck. I was already so paranoid, I totally forgot the date I’d gone on. She wanted to know about Evan.
I exhaled, picturing the bruised banana of a man I’d dined with and how he’d spent five minutes mansplaining the optimal way to de-pit an avocado. “I’m not going to see him again.”
Birdie made a sympathetic noise. “What was wrong this time?”
“He was boring.”
“You need to give him a chance.”
“How many questions do you think he asked me?”
She counted on her fingers like she was doing long division. “Um… ten?”
I stared at her.
“Five?” she ventured a second guess.