Chapter Three—Lorna #2
I set the washcloth beside me. “Then tell me what you think.”
Chris makes a quiet sound of frustration, and I hear him move again. “I think you’ve been unhappy for a while.”
I let out a sound of irritation. “Because I’m being stalked.”
“I think it started before that.” His gentle tone makes it ever so much worse.
I sit straighter. “What started before that?”
“You being unhappy.”
I don’t respond because I’m stunned. I was the happiest I’d ever been before the stalker.
Chris continues carefully. “You retired. I was traveling more. You stopped coming with me as often. Then you stopped going out as much in Charleston.”
“I stopped going out because strangers started telling me what I wore when I left the house.” I sound angry because I am. He’s using reality to gaslight me.
“I know that’s how you connected it.”
My fingers go cold around the phone. “How I connected it?”
“Lorna, I’m trying to answer you.”
“Then answer me.” I snap the words. “Stop tap dancing and spit it out.”
He pauses before doing it. “Fenton thinks some of this may have gotten bigger because you’ve been isolated.”
My first reaction is confusion. “Fenton thinks.”
“I’ve thought it too.”
That hurts worse. I look at the closed curtains. “You think I’m isolated.”
“You’re home almost all the time.”
“I work from home.”
“I know.” He says it too easily, as though posting recipes and approving photographs takes an hour in the morning before I spend the rest of my day wandering from room to room.
I move the phone to my other hand because my wrist is aching. “Do you know what I did today?”
“What?”
“Before the perfume arrived.”
Chris doesn’t answer.
“I reviewed next month’s content calendar. After it arrived, I approved sponsorship copy, video edits, newsletter graphics, and a reader survey.”
“I’m not saying you do nothing.” He’s not really hearing me though.
“Then what are you saying?”
His voice softens. “I think you miss having more going on.”
I close my eyes at the dismissal of everything I do. He’s not cruel. Not even dismissive by his own standards.
He’s concerned for my mental state and handling me like I’m fragile.
Because he thinks I’m a liar or crazy. I don’t know which is worse coming from my husband.
My husband thinks I’ve retired from a real career and filled the empty space with an online hobby, too much time alone, and fear.
“Did Fenton tell you that?”
“No.”
I wait, already certain he did.
Chris adds, “Not exactly.”
I open my eyes. “What exactly did he tell you?”
“Lorna...”
“What did he tell you?”
The reluctance on his end is answer enough to make my stomach knot before he finally speaks. “He said the calls about the packages and messages seem to increase when I’m traveling.”
For a few seconds, I don’t understand what he’s implying. Then I do. “When you’re traveling.”
“Yes.”
My throat hurts when I swallow. “He thinks I call you about the stalking because you’re gone.”
“I don’t think he meant it that way.”
I let out a scathing laugh. “How else could he mean it?”
“He said you seem more anxious when I’m away.”
I stare at the dark television. “I’m more anxious when my husband is three states away and somebody is sending things to our home.”
“I understand that.”
“No, you don’t.”
Chris sighs. “I’m trying to.”
I push myself off the bed. My knees wobble when I stand, so I keep one hand against the mattress until I’m steady. “Did he say I want attention?”
“Lorna.”
The answer is in the way he says my name. I walk slowly toward the desk. “Did he?”
“He said you might be needing more from me than you’ve been getting.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It sounds awful in the quiet room. “That’s a very polished way to say yes.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting attention from your husband.” He sounds defensive.
“Neither do I, but you’re making me sound either nuts or manipulative.”
Rather than deny that, he ignores it. “I’ve been gone too much.”
“You have.”
“I’ve been distracted even when I’m home.”
“You have.”
Chris is quiet for a moment. “Then why is it insulting for me to admit that might be affecting you?”
I grip the back of the desk chair. “Because you aren’t saying my husband’s neglect hurts. You’re saying it explains my stalker.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You keep not saying it while explaining exactly that.” He’s taken Fenton’s assessment of my state over what I’ve experienced.
His frustration rises. “I think there are real things in that log. I think there are probably ordinary things in it too.”
“Which are which?”
“I don’t know.”
“The photographs?”
“I told you those concerned me.”
I randomly pick another item from the list on the spreadsheet. “The white lilies?”
His tone is aloof. “Flowers get sent to the house.”
“Without a sender.”
He grunts with irritation. “That doesn’t make them dangerous.”
I stare at the carpet. “The scarf?”
“You looked at it in a store. You might not even have remembered the exact pattern.”
My eyes sting, but I refuse to cry. I methodically list a few more, and he has an explanation for each one.
He thinks I’m lying or cracking up. It’s the only conclusion left to me. I squeeze my eyes shut. “So every single thing has another explanation.”
“Individually, a lot of them do.”
“That’s why I made the log.”
“I know.”
“No. That’s the entire reason I made it. The pattern is the evidence.”
Chris’s voice remains maddeningly calm. “Patterns can look different depending on how you group things.”
I bite back a whimper, not having realized how physically painful learning his true opinion of me could be. “What does that mean?”
“It means if you start with the assumption that one person is behind everything, every incident reinforces the assumption.”
I stare at the phone.
He keeps going because he thinks he’s finally explaining himself well. “If some of those incidents aren’t connected, the pattern changes.”
“Fenton told you that too.”
“He made a fair point.”
Pain presses behind my eyes, but it has nothing to do with the bruise now. “Of course he did.”
“Lorna.”
I laugh once, quietly. “I’ve been telling you for two years that your assistant is a problem, and you’re using his interpretation of my evidence to decide whether I’m reliable.”
He sounds angry. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“He keeps track of the household. He sees the calls. He sees the deliveries. He has context I don’t always have when I’m traveling.”
The words are so painfully perfect that I have to sit down. “I guess I should have married him then since he knows everything my husband doesn’t.” I don’t trust myself not to start shouting.
He has context I don’t.
Chris has just told me exactly what I’ve been trying to make him understand for two years, and he still can’t hear it. Fenton knows more about my daily life than my husband does. Worse, Chris considers that a reason to trust him.
I lower myself into the desk chair. “What else has he told you about me?”
“This isn’t about Fenton.”
I scoff. “It is now.”
“Lorna, he’s worried about you.”
My mouth falls open. For a second, I genuinely have no answer. Then I laugh, and tears spill before I can stop them. “Fenton is worried about me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve told you repeatedly that I don’t like how involved he is in our marriage. He doesn’t like me, and he doesn’t care about me.”
His sigh is full of exasperation. “You’re being ridiculous. He’s not involved in our marriage.”
“He answers your personal phone.” My voice shakes from anger as much as hurt.
“Because I told him to!” He’s raised his voice now too.
“He changes our plans.”
“When business requires it.”
“He knows when I call, what I send you, when I’m expecting you home, what gets delivered to the penthouse, and apparently how often I leave it.” I wipe angrily at my face. “Now he gets to decide whether I’m lonely enough to need therapy.”
“Nobody is deciding anything for you.” He’s no longer hiding how much I’m annoying him.
“You’ve already been discussing a therapist.”
Chris gets silent again, and the pause confirms it.
I grip the phone tighter. “You have. It was more than in passing, wasn’t it?”
He lets out a ragged exhalation. “I asked him to find a name.”
My stomach drops. “You asked Fenton to find me a psychologist.”
“I asked him to research somebody reputable. Someone with ability to write prescriptions. A psychiatrist.” He appears to have chosen full disclosure. “You need help.”
For several seconds, neither of us speaks.
The air conditioner starts again with a soft mechanical hum, moving cold air across my damp face.
I stare at the hotel key card beside my elbow because looking at anything else feels impossible.
Earlier this week. Before tonight. Before the bruises, before the rose, before I woke up on the floor wondering whether someone had raped me, my husband had already decided there was enough wrong with my mind to find someone who could medicate me.
I hear Chris shift on the other end. When he speaks again, the careful patience is gone.
He’s tired, frustrated, and apparently done softening the truth for me.
“You’re not sleeping. You barely leave the penthouse unless Willa is with you.
Every delivery frightens you. Every message becomes another entry in that spreadsheet.
You’ve rearranged your life around this, Lorna, and nothing we’ve actually verified proves one person is doing any of it. ”
My fingers curl against the edge of the desk. “Because you haven’t tried to verify it.”
“I hired security.”
“You hired Willa to make me feel better.”
“Yes.” The blunt answer slices through me. Chris sounds too exhausted to realize what he’s admitted until the silence stretches. “At first, yes. I thought having somebody with you would help you feel safer.”
Not keep me safe.
Help me feel safer.
I look down at my wrists. The purple bands are darker beneath the hotel lamp, the skin tender where my sleeves rub them. “You never believed me.”
“I believed you were scared.”
A broken laugh slips out. I turn my face away from the phone even though he can’t see me. “That’s not the same thing.”