Chapter 13 Have To Go Back #2
She sifted through her mail on the counter, saw the letter addressed to her, turned it over and opened it.
It wasn’t handwritten, but typed. Not even junk, but personal. A personal attack.
Saying that she was a horrible bitch and a nasty, vindictive person and she’d get what was coming to her.
The only person who ever told her she was vindictive in life was Fredrick.
He was the only one she’d ever done anything to like she had.
She knew the revenge payback she’d done to him wasn’t right, but she felt humiliated that he had been cheating right under her nose.
Everyone else that found out about her pranks thought they were hilarious and creative. What Fredrick did back to her was vindictive.
Maybe not the rearranging of her art supplies. She put that right up there with what she’d done.
Dumping out her plants on the front porch—that was messy and a lot of work to clean up, some of them ruined. Karl had helped her with that.
Kind of the same as the glitter in a way.
But the fish and flies. Yeah. That was horrible.
That was vindictive.
She reached for her cell phone. She should just let it go. There was no reason to let him know she was pissed over this. Or that he got a reaction, but she wanted an end to this.
It rang three times and he finally picked up.
“What do you want?” Fredrick asked.
“I thought we were done and called a truce to everything,” she said.
“What the hell are you talking about now?” Fredrick asked.
“The letter. Everything I did to you, I did at once. The same day. You keep dragging it all out. This is ridiculous.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You keep accusing me of shit I didn’t do.”
“You said you didn’t damage my car, fine. It’s not that. But I got a letter in the mail today. There are words and things said in it that only you’ve said to me before. No one else. I’m over this.”
“I didn’t send you any letter,” Fredrick argued. “I’m tired of you thinking I care enough about you to keep this up.”
“Really?” she asked, her hand going up in the air. “Because you’re the one who put the dead fish on my front porch three weeks ago. We broke up over two months ago. You’re continuing with it, not me.”
“I’m going to lose my crap in a minute, Meredith. I didn’t send you a letter. Maybe putting the fish there wasn’t a good idea, but I was angry.”
“Newsflash. I was too. You cheated on me. You embarrassed and humiliated me. That hurt trumps you being annoyed that I put a few stitches in your pants that you could remove with scissors. You know I have a phobia about flies and why, and yet you preyed on that.”
She wouldn’t admit that she still shivered when she walked past that spot on her porch and looked for any remains of the fish or fly larva.
It was a stupid phobia. It’s not like she thought they were going to eat her alive. At least she knew that wouldn’t happen.
“Whatever,” Fredrick said. “But I’m done and I wish you’d stop calling me. Sounds like you’re the one that can’t let go.”
She put her phone on speaker, snapped a picture of the letter and texted it to him. “Read this. Tell me it’s not your words.”
There was silence on the other end. “Shit.”
“What?” she asked. She knew it was him because the letter listed a date they’d been on and how she’d behaved like a petty bitch in his eyes. No one else knew that.
“I didn’t write this,” Fredrick said. “But I know who did.”
“Who?”
“Lana,” Fredrick said.
She ground her teeth. That just meant that his affair with his coworker had been going on longer than he’d admitted because that incident was almost a year ago that was mentioned.
“Why would she know about that date we had and what happened? And why the hell would your new girlfriend care enough to send me this?”
“We aren’t together anymore,” Fredrick said. “She’s pissed off.”
“Not my problem,” she shouted.
Then she took a deep breath.
She prided herself on not losing her patience because she never wanted to let it happen around her students.
“Yeah, well, if you didn’t act like a raving lunatic when we broke up, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Are you seriously blaming me? Let me get this straight. You cheated on me, and now you and your girlfriend are saying it’s my fault for reacting that way when I was hurt?”
“Lana told some people at work what you did. Like she thought they’d side with me or her on what a whack job you were. She should have kept her mouth shut because all it did was cause a fight with us.”
Fredrick hated attention on him at his job. Maybe he should have thought of that before he slept with a coworker.
“What does that have to do with her sending me this letter?”
“Because once our boss found out we were dating, they moved her to another department. She didn’t want to go and said we were done.”
Meredith laughed. “She chose her job over you?”
“No. Not at that time. We told everyone it was a passing thing and was over, but we kept it going.”
“Guess no one bought it. Or you know, you’d shown your character once and they might not have believed you.”
“I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you,” Fredrick shouted.
“Because your actions caused all of this and I should get an explanation. Do I have to worry about her coming after me now too?”
“No,” Fredrick said. “I’ll deal with it. She was annoyed she had to switch departments. HR said that they didn’t want to deal with any conflict or drama with our split, it was for the best.”
“So lying caused her to be moved anyway.”
“She was going to have to be moved and didn’t know why it had to be her over me.”
Because Fredrick had been there longer and he would have whined, she knew that.
“Make her stop,” she said. “There is no reason for this. I’m the victim, not you or her. If I get anything else or something happens again, I’m going to take legal action. Your employers might not like that either.”
She hung the phone up and tossed it on the coffee table, then picked up a couch pillow and screamed into it a few more times.
She should take it as a sign that she needed a break from men because she wasn’t sure if he was being honest or lying when she used to be able to gauge those things so much clearer.
“Now, now, Meredith. You really shouldn’t get yourself so worked up.”
His voice was a whisper meant only for the empty room, though his eyes were glued to the feed on his laptop. He zoomed in, the camera focusing on her hand as she snapped a picture of a piece of paper, then resumed pacing, her phone pressed tight to her ear.
What was she talking about? Who was she talking to?
He leaned closer, straining, aching to catch the words through her lip movements.
Luck had been on his side earlier as he slipped through her kitchen just before she came home.
Just enough time to brush his fingers across her life.
Her favorite coffee cup that she’d put in the dishwasher before she left, the silverware she’d used, the pan that held the ghost of last night’s dinner.
She hadn’t finished her steak. He noticed that detail. She liked it cooked differently than he did, and that was fine. They could work that out together. Couples always compromised.
When she disappeared out of the camera’s frame, his shoulders slumped with disappointment. It was better this way. She was testing him, pulling back, waiting to see if he’d be patient enough, worthy enough.
It still stung that she hadn’t accepted his dinner invitation tonight.
With a sigh, he closed the laptop. The television flickered on, flooding the room with meaningless chatter. None of it mattered. Nothing compared to her.
Meredith was the only story worth watching. The only one worth waiting for.