Chapter 10
That's what Rachel calls it. The performance window. Three days of normal — texting Sophie, responding to her, keeping the rhythm of our friendship alive — while the group finalizes the plan.
Sunday: I text Sophie that Matt's busy and can't fix her raised bed today. Work emergency, I write. He's so sorry! Maybe next weekend?
Sophie: No worries at all! These things happen. Tell him I appreciate him even thinking of it ??
I stare at the yellow heart. The same emoji I've been using. She mirrors everything.
Monday: Sophie texts me a photo of her tomato plants. Red, heavy on the vine. Look what happened while I wasn't watching! Life finds a way ??
I type back: GORGEOUS. Mine are still green. I'm jealous.
Sophie: Patience, flavor queen. Yours will be better because you'll know EXACTLY when they're ready.
She's right about that. I know when things are ready. The precise moment a tomato shifts from firm and acidic to that sweet-tart equilibrium that means it's time. The nose knows before the fingers.
I should have known she wasn't ready. Wasn't ripe. Wasn't real. Too much sweetness too fast — the sensory equivalent of artificial strawberry flavor. Bright on first hit, gone in seconds, no finish.
Monday evening: the group meeting at the Airbnb.
All seven of us now — Rachel, Cara, Danielle, Amy, Lauren, Nina who flew in from Portland that morning, and me.
Matt is there too, sitting slightly apart on the couch, still processing.
He's been quiet since the weekend — not withdrawn, just internal.
Working through something that has no language yet.
The house is small for this many people.
Shoes piled by the door. Jackets draped over chairs.
The kitchen counter crowded with water glasses and someone's half-eaten granola bar and Danielle's ever-present laptop.
It smells like take-out Thai — Amy ordered Pad See Ew for the group. Empty containers line the counter.
Rachel stands at the head of the table. The binder is open. A whiteboard propped against the wall — Danielle brought it, of course she did — with a timeline drawn across it in blue marker. Red dots marking each of Vanessa's confirmed cities. A green dot for Atlanta — us. Now.
"Wednesday," Rachel says. "That's our window. Priya — can you get Sophie to commit to a specific location on Wednesday afternoon?"
"Her garden plot. She's there every Wednesday between four and six."
"Perfect. We'll arrive at four-fifteen. All of us."
"And do what?" Amy asks. She's quiet, sharp-featured, sitting with her arms crossed. Of all of them, Amy seems the most tightly wound. The most damaged. Her story — Book 6, Cara told me — involved Sophie living in the same building. The proximity was suffocating.
"We present ourselves," Rachel says. "All of us. Together. We tell her we know who she is, we have documentation, and it's over."
"And if she denies it?" Nina says.
"She'll deny it. She always denies it. But we're not there to get a confession. We're there to deliver a message: we see you, we can prove it, and if you don't stop, we will take legal action."
"What legal action?" Matt asks. His first words all evening.
Danielle takes over. "Civil stalking and harassment statutes.
In Georgia, Texas, and Oregon — three states where we have documented victims. The hard drive files constitute evidence of premeditated targeting.
The Same Face Project website is public record.
We have testimonials from seven women willing to make sworn statements. "
"Will she go to jail?" I ask.
Silence. Rachel and Danielle exchange a look.
"Probably not," Rachel says. "What she does isn't technically criminal in most jurisdictions.
She doesn't steal. She doesn't threaten.
She doesn't commit fraud in the legal sense — she uses aliases socially but doesn't defraud anyone financially.
The most we can get is permanent restraining orders and a public record of her real identity linked to all known aliases. "
"So she just — gets away with it?"
"No." Rachel's voice is firm. "She doesn't get away with it.
Her face, her real name, every alias she's ever used — all indexed.
Public. Searchable. She can never do this again without being instantly recognizable.
The system we built — the website, the documentation, the network — that's what stops her.
Not one dramatic moment. The accumulation. "
The room is quiet. The weight of it settling. Four years of destruction. Seven marriages targeted. And the resolution isn't handcuffs or a courtroom confession. It's a website and a binder and seven women willing to say yes, this happened to me.
"I want to say something to her," I say. "At the confrontation. I want to be there and I want to speak."
"Of course," Rachel says.
"I want her to see my face when she realizes I know."
Rachel nods. Doesn't smile — she never smiles during planning — but something in her expression eases. Like this is what she's been waiting for. A target who doesn't just accept the rescue but participates in it.
"Tuesday," Rachel says. "Tomorrow night. We need one more thing from you, Priya."
"What?"
"Dinner with Sophie. One last time. As planned — she's expecting you Tuesday, right?"
I nod. Sophie texted about it this morning. Tuesday dinner still on? I found this AMAZING natural wine bar that does small plates. My treat!
"Go," Rachel says. "Act normal. This is the last time you'll see her before the confrontation. Let her think everything is fine."
UNCOMFORTABLE CHOICE #2. There it is. Sitting across a table from a woman who has a file on my marriage, eating her food, drinking her wine, laughing at her jokes — knowing that in twenty-four hours, I'll be standing in her garden with seven other women she destroyed.
"I'll go," I say.
Matt looks at me. His jaw is tight. He doesn't say anything but I can read it: I hate this. I hate that you have to do this.
"It's one dinner," I say. To him. To everyone. To myself.
* * *
Tuesday. 7 PM. The natural wine bar Sophie chose.
It's intimate — exposed brick, candlelight, a chalkboard menu with things like funky orange and skin-contact rosé and pét-nat.
Sophie is already at a corner table when I arrive.
She's wearing a green wrap dress and gold earrings and she looks beautiful and warm and like every lie I've ever tasted that was engineered to be indistinguishable from truth.
"Priya!" She stands. Hugs me. "I ordered us a carafe of the orange wine. It's SO weird. You'll love it."
I sit. Smile. "Weird how?"
"Like — yeasty? But in a good way? It tastes like bread and apricots had a baby."
I laugh. It comes out naturally. That's the horrible thing — my body still responds to her the way it always has. The warmth, the ease, the feeling of being known. Two months of conditioning. My nervous system doesn't care what my brain knows.
She pours the wine. We clink glasses. It's a good orange wine — funky, tannic on the palate, with a secondary layer of stone fruit that arrives on the mid-palate. Texture like diluted honey.
"So," Sophie says. "Tell me about your week. I feel like I haven't seen you properly in days."
"Work's been intense. The nut cluster project is in final formulation and they want to go to market by August."
"August? That's so soon."
"Too soon. But the VP wants it on shelves for fall. Pumpkin spice season."
Sophie rolls her eyes. "Pumpkin spice. The great American scam."
"It's not even pumpkin. It's cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and clove. The pumpkin contributes nothing to the flavor profile."
"See — this is why I need you. You deconstruct everything." She's leaning forward. Engaged. Present. Her phone is face-down on the table because she once told me she never looks at her phone when she's with a friend. A Sophie rule.
A Vanessa rule. From the playbook. Full attention. Total presence. Make the target feel like the only person in the world.
I take another sip of wine. It's turning sour in my mouth — not the wine itself but the context. Everything she says hits different now. Every compliment, every question, every lean-in — it's all technique. I'm watching a performance and the performer doesn't know I can see the wires.
"How's Matt?" she asks. Casual. Between bites of burrata.
"Good. Busy."
"Still working Saturdays?"
"Sometimes."
"That sucks." She pauses. Tilts her head. "You guys should do something fun together soon. A date night. When's the last time you had a proper date?"
She's probing. Checking the seams. When's the last time you had a proper date is a question that sounds caring but measures distance. If I say "last week," the marriage is strong. If I say "I can't remember," there's a gap she can fill.
"We went to that ramen place on Friday," I say. We didn't. We ate leftover soup on the couch while I tried not to cry. But she doesn't need to know that.
"Oh the one on Buford Highway? That place is so good."
"Yeah. It was nice."
She smiles. "Good. You deserve nice things, Priya."
The waiter brings small plates — olives, anchovies on toast, a whipped ricotta with honey that Sophie ordered without looking at the menu because she "scouted the place last week.
" Of course she did. Of course she scouted it.
She scouts everything. She found this bar the way she found me — by researching what would work.
"Try the ricotta," she says. "It's insane. The honey is local — some rooftop situation in Decatur."
I try it. It's good. The honey has a floral back-note — wildflower, probably — and the ricotta is light, airy, barely sweet.
Under normal circumstances, I'd be dissecting the texture, the ratio of fat to acid, the way the honey's viscosity interacts with the whip.
But my mouth is full of a different flavor tonight.
The flat metallic taste of lying. Of smiling and nodding and eating someone's food while planning their destruction.
Is this how she feels all the time? This disconnection between face and interior? This performance of warmth while something cold and calculated runs underneath?
Maybe. Maybe that's exactly how she feels. And maybe that's why she's so good at it — she's had years of practice living in the gap between surface and truth.
"You okay?" Sophie tilts her head. "You went quiet."
"Sorry — just thinking about the ricotta. The honey ratio is interesting."
She laughs. "You can't turn it off, can you? The scientist brain."
"Never."
"I love that about you." She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. Brief. Warm. The gesture of a woman who loves her friend. "Don't ever change, okay?"
I squeeze back. My palm is damp. She doesn't seem to notice.
We finish dinner. She pays — insisted. We walk to the parking lot and she hugs me longer than usual, rocking side to side the way she does, and she says: "I love having you in my life. You know that, right?"
"I know."
"I mean it. You're — you're the best thing about Atlanta for me."
I hold on for another second. My hands on her back. Her perfume — vanilla and something green, like fig leaf. My friend. My only friend. The woman who saw me standing in a garden with potting soil and decided I was the one.
VULNERABILITY: geographic isolation. Lonely. Eager for connection.
I let go.
"See you soon," I say.
"Always." She squeezes my hand. Gets in her gray Civic. Drives away.
I stand in the parking lot under the amber streetlight and I taste the orange wine on my tongue — that yeasty, apricot, almost-sour finish — and I know this is the last time. The last dinner. The last hug. The last love you, flavor queen.
Tomorrow, she'll know I know. Tomorrow, they all come.
I get in my car and I drive to the Airbnb instead of home. Rachel opens the door before I knock. She's still dressed. Still awake. Of course she is.
"How was it?" she asks.
"Fine. Normal." I step inside. The others are asleep or in their rooms. Just Rachel and me in the dim living room. "She asked about Matt. She suggested we go on a date night."
"Measuring the gap."
"I know. I told her we went to ramen on Friday."
Rachel almost smiles. "Smart."
I sit on the couch. Kick off my shoes. Rachel sits beside me — not close, but present. The way you sit with someone who's exhausted and doesn't need words.
"Tomorrow," I say.
"Tomorrow."
"Are you ready?"
She looks at me. Her eyes are dark and steady and tired and something else — fierce. The concentrated energy of a woman who has been doing this for two years and wants it to be over.
"I've been ready for nine cities," she says. "The question is — are you?"
I think about the orange wine and the vanilla perfume and the way Sophie said you're the best thing about Atlanta for me. I think about the file with my name on it. The neat cursive. Eager for connection.
"Yes," I say. "I'm ready."
Rachel squeezes my hand once. Brief. Warm.
"Get some sleep," she says. "Long day tomorrow."
I drive home. Matt is awake, waiting. He doesn't ask how it was. He just holds the covers open and I climb in and he wraps his arm around my waist and we lie in the dark listening to the house settle.
Tomorrow I stop being a target. Tomorrow I become something else.
The taste in my mouth is still there — orange wine, bread, apricot, sour finish. The last flavor Sophie will ever give me.
I let it dissolve on my tongue and I close my eyes.