Chapter Seventeen—Chris
FENTON IS ARRAIGNED Friday morning. Aldren Capital’s attorneys coordinate with the district attorney’s office, and Stone turns over the evidence his team collected.
The charges include breaking and entering, assault, stalking, identity fraud, and attempted kidnapping.
Between the recording, the backpack, and Fenton running toward the lodge, the judge denies bail.
I’m not in the courtroom. Willa tells me to stay here, so I do.
Stone calls shortly after noon with the details. I take the call on the guesthouse porch while Lorna works inside the lodge. My right hand is swollen from hitting Fenton, and the bruise along my cheek has changed from purple to an ugly greenish yellow.
When Stone finishes, I thank him and put my phone away. Fenton is behind bars. Lorna can go outside without wondering whether he’ll step out of the trees.
It makes everything easier but doesn’t change what came before. A little after two, the lodge door opens. Lorna comes across the yard carrying two mugs and stops at the bottom of the guesthouse steps. “Coffee.”
“Thanks.” I take one from her.
Instead of leaving, she sits on the lower step. I stay where I am, one step above her and far enough away that she doesn’t have to move unless she wants to. For a while, we drink coffee and look toward the mountains.
“Willa told me bail was denied,” she says.
“It was.”
“Thank goodness.” Lorna takes another drink, then glances at my bruised hand. “How long before you can close that properly?”
“I can close it.”
She sniffs. “Without making that face?”
I try it again and fail to keep from grimacing. “Probably a few days.”
“That’s what I thought.”
There’s enough of the old Lorna in the comment to make me want to smile, but I don’t try to turn it into more than it is. I set my mug beside me. “There’s something I need to say.”
Her expression changes immediately. “Chris.”
“It’s the last speech.”
She watches me for a second. “That’s a dangerous promise.”
“Then I’ll make it a goal.”
That gets the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth before it disappears. “What do you need to say?”
“What I did. All of it. Once.” I look at her directly. “I don’t want you wondering whether I understand only the part where Fenton turned out to be the stalker.”
Lorna lowers her mug to her lap. “Okay.”
I know the facts. I don’t need to dress them up.
“When the gifts started, you told me something was wrong. I decided they were probably from a fan. When they got worse, I gave the problem to Fenton instead of hiring an investigator or dealing with it myself. You told me you were frightened, and I treated your fear as something that needed to be explained instead of evidence to which I needed to pay attention.”
Lorna looks out across the yard. “You thought I was overreacting.”
“Yes.”
“You said I was under too much stress.” Her lower lip wobbles slightly.
“I did.”
She nods once. “Keep going.”
Every word feels harder than the last to get out.
“Willa wrote a threat assessment. I never read it. I let Fenton summarize and truncate it without realizing because that’s how I’d arranged my entire life.
The same thing happened with your calls.
I gave him permission to screen them, and I never asked what wasn’t reaching me. ”
Her fingers move around the mug. “I used to call twice because I knew the first one wouldn’t get through. Most times, the second didn’t either.”
I didn’t know that. The old instinct to say so rises and dies before I can utter the words.
Not knowing is part of the problem, and it was my fault.
“I should’ve been the easiest person in the world for you to reach,” I say instead.
“You had to get past my employee to talk to your husband, and that’s inexcusable. ”
“Yes.”
“When you kept telling me someone was following you, I suggested a psychiatrist.”
“Who could prescribe medication,” she says bitterly.
“Yes.” Shame burns through me, but I keep looking at her. “Then you were attacked, and I asked you to consider whether what you remembered had actually happened.”
Lorna’s face closes slightly. She definitely remembers it.
“I made you argue for your own reality while you were bruised from an attack. There isn’t an explanation that makes that acceptable.”
“No,” she says quietly. “There isn’t.”
I nod. “Then I saw the footage. I finally knew you were right, and I still went back to the same systems. I kept working through Fenton because he’d been cleared, using him was familiar, and changing everything seemed inefficient when I was here waiting with you to find the stalker.”
Lorna turns toward me. “Willa told you not to trust anyone who’d had access.”
“Yes.”
“I told you the same systems were the problem.”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head, sounding more sad than angry. “You still used him.”
“I did.” I don’t soften it. “He processed the shipment because I let him. I gave him the town because I was still letting another person handle pieces of my life I should’ve been handling myself. That gave him the clue he needed to find you.”
Her eyes shine, but her voice stays steady. “That’s the part I have trouble getting past.”
“I know.”
“You’d seen the video by then.”
“Yes.”
“You believed me.”
I nod earnestly. “Finally.”
“Then you still did it.”
I swallow. “That’s why saying I didn’t know Fenton was the stalker isn’t much of a defense. I didn’t know. I also knew the way I was operating had already failed you, and I went back to it anyway.”
Lorna looks down at her coffee.
I give her a moment before continuing. “Then there’s your work.”
Her gaze comes back to mine.
“I called it a hobby. Maybe not every time out loud, but that’s how I treated it. I signed tax documents showing what Raney Media earned and still didn’t know how many people worked for you. Camille knew more about your company than I did.”
“Camille who?” When I explain, her expression is hard to read. “She knew what I did for a living when my husband didn’t.”
That hurts because it’s true. “Yes.”
She seems to be having trouble grasping my continued stupidity. “I told you when I hit half a million subscribers.”
“I remember.”
“What did you say?” She obviously remembers but seems to expect me not to.
I don’t need to search for it. “‘That’s great, babe.’ Then I looked at my phone.”
Lorna gives a short, humorless laugh. “At least you remember now.”
“I remember because I finally understand how many times you tried to bring me into your life, and I gave you a rote sentence instead of attention.” I rest my forearms on my knees.
“Fenton didn’t make me do any of those things.
He exploited them. He filtered information, lied, and manipulated both of us, but he could only do that because I gave him access and rarely checked behind him. ”
Lorna is quiet for several seconds. Then she asks, “Do you know what bothers me most?”
“What?”
“He knew you’d believe him.” There’s no accusation in her tone, but she doesn’t need one. It’s a fact. A horrible, painful fact.
“I know.”
“He could send me perfume, take photographs, alter Willa’s reports, intercept my calls, and eventually walk into our apartment because he’d spent years learning one very useful thing about our marriage.
” Lorna’s eyes meet mine. “If he gave you an explanation that required less from you than mine did, you’d probably take his. ”
I close my hand around the edge of the step. “Yes.”
“That’s what he used.”
“I know.”
Lorna shakes her head. “No, that’s what I needed you to understand. The stalker didn’t somehow beat my brilliant husband at his own game. You weren’t outmaneuvered by a mastermind. Tim watched what you already did and built around it.”
My eyes sting, but I don’t shy away from the truth. “I understand that now.”
“Good.”
She looks back toward the mountains, and I let the silence stay until she decides whether she has more to say.
Eventually, she asks, “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. “Nobody gives a speech like that because they want nothing.”
“I wanted you to know I see it. I don’t want forgiveness today, and I don’t want credit because Fenton is in jail or because I punched him three times.”
That earns a brief look at my injured hand. “I liked the punching,” she admits.
Despite everything, I laugh.
Lorna’s mouth curves for a moment. “I’m still allowed to enjoy that.”
“Absolutely.”
The humor fades naturally. I pick up my coffee again, though it’s nearly cold. “I love you. I want my marriage back. Those are things I want, but they’re not things you owe me because I finally admitted I was a terrible husband.”
“You weren’t terrible all the time.”
“No.”
“That would’ve been easier.”
“Yeah.”
She gives me a warning look.
I catch myself. “Sorry.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Agreeing with everything I say because you’re terrified one wrong answer will end this conversation.” She looks disappointed in me.
She’s right, but apparently I’m not supposed to say that either. I rub my thumb along the mug. “I’m trying not to defend myself.”
“There’s a difference between not defending yourself and disappearing from the conversation.”
I consider that. “Then no, I don’t think our whole marriage was terrible. I think there were parts of it I loved enough that I got lazy about the rest. I assumed loving you meant I was taking care of the marriage even when my actual behavior said otherwise.”
Lorna’s expression softens slightly. “That’s closer.”
“I’m learning.”
“You’d better be.”
I manage a smile. “There’s the woman who approved three punches.”
“I didn’t approve them beforehand.”
“Important legal distinction.”
“Very.”
We sit with that for a moment before Lorna turns serious again.
“I’ve been waiting since the hotel for you to understand all of this,” she says. “Not just that you should’ve believed me about the stalker. I needed you to understand why I could leave a man I still loved.”
My throat aches. “I do.”
“You made me feel alone while I was married to you, Chris. The stalking made it dangerous, but it didn’t create the loneliness.”
“I understand.”
She watches my face carefully. “I need to see you be different. Not hear it.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want another speech next week because you thought of three more things you’re sorry for.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “You won’t get one.”
“I don’t want promises about how everything will change.”
“I won’t make them.”
Lorna sets her mug down beside her. “I want to decide based on what you actually do when nobody is grading you. When work gets busy again. When I’m telling you something inconvenient. When there’s no stalker forcing you to pay attention.”
That is harder than anything I could promise her, which is probably why it matters. “You should.”
Her eyebrows rise.
I amend it before she has to point out the problem again. “I want you to.”
“Better.”
She picks up both mugs and stands. Before she leaves, she looks down at me. “I do see you’re already doing some things differently.”
I don’t ask which ones.
Apparently, that earns me something because she smiles. “See?” she says. “That.” Then she walks back toward the lodge.
I stay on the guesthouse steps for another few minutes. She hasn’t forgiven me, and she hasn’t promised to come home to Charleston.
She asked me to stop explaining and let her watch as I prove if I can change.
I can do that. I have to because living without her would destroy me.
I get up, go inside, and answer my own phone when it rings.