Bonus Epilogue #2
I scan the apartment — living room, normal. Couch where it belongs, and there’s the throw blanket Ellie gave me two Christmases ago, the stack of medical journals I keep swearing I’ll read. Nothing moved. Fire escape latched. Front door was double-locked when I walked in.
Which means whoever did this has a key. Or doesn’t need one.
Landon, my brain offers. But the idea falls apart before it’s fully formed.
Landon Webb — the man who has never once demonstrated awareness that other people have inner lives — figured out my oat milk preference and memorized my grocery list?
Landon, whose version of thoughtfulness is remembering a woman’s dress size so he can buy her something she didn’t want?
Please. This kind of attention is too detailed, too personal, too specific for a man who treats people like chess pieces.
This is someone else.
Someone who has been watching me with a thoroughness that makes Landon’s crude surveillance resemble a child’s game.
My hand drifts toward the phone on the counter. I should call someone. Ellie — except Ellie is unreachable, tangled up in a world I don’t fully understand.
I decide to call the police. That’s what a normal person does when someone has broken into their apartment and reorganized their refrigerator like some kind of domestic phantom.
I pick up the phone. I dial.
Five rings before someone answers in a gruff, tired voice.
“Chicago PD, non-emergency. How can I help you.” Not a question. A script.
“I think someone broke into my apartment.” My voice is steady. It’s the clinical tone I use when I’m telling a family something they don’t want to hear. “Nothing’s damaged, but things have been moved. Someone was inside my home.”
A pause. Slow keyboard clacking, each keystroke radiating enthusiasm.
“Name?”
“Maren Lavelle. L-A-V-E-L-L-E.”
More typing. Then a silence that goes on just a beat too long.
“Miss Lavelle.” His tone shifts — not toward concern, but toward weary condescension.
“I can see here that this is the third call you’ve made regarding a suspected break-in in the past four months.
Officers were dispatched to your address on both prior occasions.
No signs of forced entry were found. No evidence of intrusion. No items reported missing.”
“This is different.” I grip the edge of the counter. “The other calls were about someone else — someone I could identify. This is a completely different situation. Someone got into my apartment while I was at work and?—”
“Ma’am.”
“—stocked my refrigerator with items from a private list on my phone?—”
“Ma’am.” He cuts through my sentence with a blunt efficiency.
“I understand your concern. But based on the prior reports, there’s no evidence of criminal activity at your residence.
No forced entry, no property damage, no theft.
Someone buying you groceries — I appreciate that feels alarming, but there’s nothing actionable here. ”
“Nothing actionable.” I repeat it back to him, tasting every syllable of its uselessness.
“If you observe signs of forced entry — a broken lock, damaged windows, anything tangible — call us back, and we’ll send a unit. Otherwise, I’d recommend checking with your building management about who has access to your unit. Could be a maintenance issue.”
A maintenance issue. Someone tracked down the specific oat milk I drink, identified a recipe I saved two weeks ago, and the Chicago Police Department is chalking it up to a maintenance issue.
“Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?”
The question answers itself.
“No,” I say. “Thank you for your time.” I set the phone down on the counter with a care that belies the tremor in my fingers.
So that’s it, then. Ellie is unreachable. The police have filed me under repeat caller, no actionable evidence.
I’m on my own.
The realization doesn’t arrive with panic. It arrives with the cold, settling weight of a fact that has been true for longer than I acknowledged.
No one is coming to help.
My stomach, entirely unbothered by the existential crisis, lets out a growl that could wake the neighbors.
I look at the fridge. At the rotisserie chicken. At the strawberries glowing under the little light.
I press my lips together and reach for the chicken.
Because honestly, what am I going to do?
Starve out of principle? Refuse to eat food from a ghost who has shown more awareness of my dietary needs in one evening than any man I’ve dated in the past five years?
The absurdity of this is not lost on me.
I’m eating groceries provided by what is almost certainly a stalker, and they are, infuriatingly, exactly what I wanted.
I eat at the kitchen counter, half standing, half leaning on the stool — a habit Ellie has told me roughly nine hundred times is terrible — and I replay it all: the parking lot, the sound between the cars, the keys sitting on the asphalt, warm, with the blue rhinestone initials tilted toward the light.
Not dropped. Placed. Angled so I’d spot them without searching.
Like someone was making sure I got home safe.
Like my getting home wasn’t some side effect of their evening but rather the whole point.
Beyond my window, the street is empty. The night is quiet with the patience of something that knows how to wait.
But somewhere out there — I can feel it — someone is watching.
I rinse the plate. I flip off the kitchen light. I check both locks again — though at this point the gesture feels less like security and more like theater.
I climb into bed and pull the covers up to my chin.
I stare at the ceiling of an apartment that doesn’t feel entirely mine anymore; that’s been quietly, irreversibly changed by someone who moved through this space, breathed this air, opened my drawers, and left behind nothing except proof that I had been on his mind.
The police won’t help me. Ellie can’t reach me.
Whatever this is, wherever it leads, I’m facing it alone.
And the strangest part — the part I plan to examine very carefully tomorrow when I’m rested and thinking clearly and caffeinated with the oat milk that showed up in my fridge by means I cannot explain — is this:
For the first time in weeks, I’m not scared.
And I really, really should be. Someone has wormed their way into every corner of my private life, and the correct response is to be terrified. The smart response is to barricade the door, sleep with something sharp under the pillow, and treat every shadow like a threat.
Instead, I pull the covers tighter, close my eyes, and the last thing that follows me into sleep isn’t fear.
It’s the scent of cedar on a sweatshirt that someone folded with care.
And the question I’m not brave enough to answer yet:
Why does that feel like safety?