Chapter 4 Damian
I was the first one awake, which is normal.
I ran the perimeter cameras early. Then I ran them again a little later because I did not like the look of a delivery van two streets over. Then I made a French press and sat down at the dining table with my laptop, the way I do every morning, while the house slept around me.
Maren’s email forwarding routed through a server I built the day we moved in. It scanned every message coming in. This way, she wakes up to a clean inbox because I clean it while she's asleep. She doesn't know that. She didn’t need to.
A flag fired while I was on my first cup.
I recognized the sender before the scan even finished. The address belonged to a man Maren worked with on a film seven years ago.
I traced it. It took me a couple of hours to realize the stalker had been inside her mail for years. No wonder he knew a lot about Maren’s personal life.
Thomas woke up and came down the stairs, and read my face before I said a word.
"Talk to me," he said.
"He sent her an email from a dead man," I said. "A real one. A colleague of hers who died four years ago. He spoofed the address."
Thomas pulled out the chair across from me and sat down slowly. He was quiet for a second. Then he did the thing he does, which is reorganize the entire day around bad news without raising his voice.
"Okay. She finds out today. From us. From you, since you found it. Brady makes her eat first. Then you show her, you keep it simple, and you don't make her feel stupid for not knowing."
"I wasn't going to make her feel stupid."
Brady woke up half an hour later, came down, took one look at the two of us not talking, and did exactly what Thomas predicted. He started making breakfast.
"Whatever it is," Brady said, cracking eggs, "she eats first. Bad news on an empty stomach is how you lose people."
By the time the sun was fully up, Maren came downstairs in her father's old flannel, hair unbrushed, and accepted a plate of eggs she had not asked anyone to make.
"You're all very quiet," she said.
"Eat," Brady said gently. "Then we'll talk."
She looked at me. I think she already knew.
I waited until she had eaten. Then I turned the laptop toward her.
"He sent you an email," I said. "It came in overnight. It's from David Okafor."
Her fork stopped halfway to her plate.
"David's dead," she said.
"I know."
"David died in 2021. Stroke. I went to the funeral."
"I know that too." I kept my voice level, the way you keep a hand steady.
I said his name out loud one more time, because I have learned that people need to hear the name said plainly, once, before they can move past it.
"The email isn't from David Okafor. The man who's been writing you faked David's address to do it.
I want you to see it, and I want to walk you through how I know, because I don't want you wondering in the middle of the night whether some part of it was real. "
"Okay," she said. Her voice was very controlled. "Okay. Show me."
I showed her. I explained the trace. I did it in plain words, not in the words I'd use for a court or a client.
She didn't cry. I had braced for crying. Instead she asked questions, and they were the right ones.
"When did he first get into my email?"
"At least 2019. Possibly earlier. I'm still working backward."
"How did he do it?"
"A few different ways over the years. He's patient. He's careful. He doesn't rush."
"How long has he been able to read everything I send?"
"Years," I said. "I'm sorry. There's no soft way to say it."
She nodded slowly, taking each answer and setting it down somewhere inside herself. Brady had stopped pretending to clean the stove. Thomas was very still by the window.
Then she asked the one I had been waiting for. The one I had the answer ready for, because I had checked the night I found the forum, and had hoped she would never need to hear it.
"The emails I wrote my father," she said. "In the last few months when he was sick." She looked at me steadily. "Has he read those?"
I did not look away from her. She had earned that much.
"Yes," I said.
She closed the laptop. She didn't slam it. She closed it the way you close a door on a room you're not ready to be in yet.
Then she got up, walked out the back door, and went and stood in the garden among her father's roses.
I watched her through the window. I did not follow her. Some grief needs witnesses and some grief needs to be alone, and the only way to tell the difference is to wait and see which one she walked toward.
Brady filled the kettle and put it on. "Tea," he said quietly.
Thomas came and stood beside him at the window. She stood out there for a while. Long enough that Brady's tea steeped twice. Then she came back in, and her face was put back together, the way a face gets put back together when you’ve decided to keep moving.
She came over to me. I expected another question.
"Damian," she said.
"Yeah."
"Thank you. Not for finding it. I mean, thank you for that too.
But thank you for how you told me. You didn't talk down to me.
You let me ask. You had the answer ready about my dad's emails before I even finished asking, which means you went and checked, and you didn't make me wait for it.
" She put her hand briefly on my shoulder. "That mattered. So, thank you."
She went to go find Brady's tea.