Chapter Twenty-Four Talia
Chapter Twenty-Four
Talia
Talia is leaving her early bird Pilates class on Monday when she sees it for the sixth time since last week: the matte black Ford Taurus with the darkly tinted windows, parked—as always—right alongside her Volkswagen Jetta.
After that first time outside Jo’s, Talia was able to convince herself she imagined it.
No one took her photo, she told herself, and that car being parked next to hers had been just that: another car, belonging to someone who didn’t care who Talia was or where she was going.
It was important to be vigilant, especially as a woman living in a city.
But after all the Amanda stuff, Talia was bordering on neurotic. And that wasn’t healthy.
But then she saw the Ford Taurus the next morning, parked outside her house in South Congress.
And then again, the day after that, in the Cuff parking lot, where she’d stepped out during her lunch break to run errands.
Twice over the weekend she’d spotted the car again—always idling eerily by, never with a driver in sight—and now, as she stares the car down in the Pilates parking lot, she can no longer pretend otherwise: She’s being followed.
Nearly a week has passed since her fight with Meera, but Talia still feels keyed up and querulous in a way she can’t shake, and being pursued by a stranger isn’t helping.
What’s worse: She can’t confide in Meera about this relentless stalking, because the two aren’t speaking.
Every time Talia glances over at her former friend—just a few desks away in their compact ML-team mod pod—she rehashes their argument on repeat in her head until her blood boils.
The heightened tension would be enough to make anyone snap.
Talia is powerless to stop it.
Judgment clouded by rage, she stomps over to the vehicle, her rolled-up Pilates mat thwacking against her back with each step. She squeezes between their two cars and knocks on the blacked-out driver’s side window—gently at first, and then with her whole fist. “Come out,” she says. “Show yourself.”
A few of the women leaving the studio shoot her curious looks, but she doesn’t care. If only Talia could explain to them that she’s just an ordinary person—a good person, at that—trying to enjoy her ordinary life without constant surveillance. Then they’d understand.
Suddenly, with a loud whining sound, the window retracts into the door. Talia jumps back; she didn’t actually expect him to acknowledge her. A man with weathered skin and aviator sunglasses sits on the other side, his expression unreadable.
“Can I help you?” he asks, and for an unsettling moment, Talia wonders if she did, in fact, imagine this whole thing. Perhaps she’s now the one harassing an ordinary person.
She’s tempted to retreat, but instead, she stands her ground. “You’ve been following me.”
“Yes.” The man says this matter-of-factly and without apology, as though she’d asked whether it was Monday.
“Why?”
“Because I was hired to do so.” Again, his tone is completely devoid of remorse. This is quickly turning into one of the strangest interactions Talia has ever had.
“By whom?”
He laughs, showing off the gold fillings on his back teeth. “You know I can’t tell you that.” She hates that she can’t see the eyes behind those sunglass lenses, which are as dark as the windows on his car.
“Can you tell whoever it is that I have nothing to hide? That I’m not doing anything wrong? That I’m just grocery shopping and working and”—she gestures to the Pilates mat strapped to her back—“trying to fucking exercise in peace?”
“I don’t get paid to talk,” he says, an obnoxious smirk still plastered to his face. “I get paid to watch.”
“Well, watch this.” Talia takes a step back and shows him her middle finger, a crass gesture that she never imagined feeling motivated to use herself.
The man turns then and reaches for something on his passenger seat—oh, my God, he has a gun, Talia thinks—but when he turns back to the window, he’s holding not a gun but a compact Nikon D3500.
“Say ‘cheese,’” he says before snapping a picture.
And then, just as quickly, he peels out of the parking lot and out of sight.
She needs to get to work, but after climbing into her car, Talia finds herself paralyzed.
Someone has paid this man to stalk her, and she cannot move—cannot think about anything else, really—until she finds a reasonable explanation for who that someone could be.
A running list starts to form in her head.
Amanda Reade’s nosy sister, the one who reported Townsend to the police?
What about her own sister, who she hasn’t seen in years?
Or her estranged parents? Or even Meera, her supposed best friend, who seems to trust Talia less and less by the minute?
Her head aches, so she slumps forward, letting her forehead rest on the steering wheel.
Though she isn’t convinced that any of these suspects would actually hire a private investigator to follow her, the thought alone is enough to send her reeling.
Another possibility crosses her mind. It pains her to consider it—like poking an unhealed wound—but still, it makes too much sense not to take into consideration: Malcolm’s family.
Perhaps they are the ones who sent this man with a camera after her.
Perhaps they still believe, even all these years later, that Talia is somehow responsible for what happened to Malcolm.
They weren’t officially together during her senior year of high school; Malcolm’s football practice schedule at Auburn kept him too busy to maintain a relationship.
Arriving at Auburn for her freshman year, Talia felt sure things would go back to the way they were in the beginning, when they first fell in love.
She’d spent her entire senior year dreaming of how things would be, the life they would have together.
Unfortunately, Malcolm didn’t share her vision.
It was the same cycle over and over: They’d hook up, she’d get her hopes up, he’d let her down, rinse and repeat.
By her senior year (during which time he was still at Auburn, working as an assistant football coach), it seemed increasingly unlikely that she would be receiving a ring before spring, as nearly every girl in Zeta Tau Alpha was expected to.
But the biggest shock came right before her graduation, when Malcolm did propose . . . to someone who wasn’t her.
She didn’t blame Malcolm for meeting Clara Belle Linhart. He wasn’t doing anything malicious when he fell in love and decided to start a life with her. But still, Talia couldn’t deny that it hurt.
For years, Talia followed Malcolm and Clara Belle’s love story through her phone screen as they exchanged vows on a farm, and then bought a home in Opelika, and then adopted a Labrador named Scratchy. Watching someone else live out her happily ever after was painful.
Talia knew the only way she would ever be able to fully move on would be to leave. So, she did. She moved away, began working at Cuff. She started a new life, and most days, she could let herself pretend that Malcolm Gray had never existed.
That’s why it didn’t make any sense when Malcolm’s parents pointed a finger at her after his accident.
By then, she hadn’t spoken to him in years.
But as she knew all too well, trauma can rob people of their senses.
Perhaps his parents’ way of dealing with the guilt and grief—of getting a semblance of closure, even if they can’t get answers—is passing the buck to her.
It isn’t fair, but Talia understands; the best way to avoid becoming a scapegoat, after all, is to find one.
Enough about Malcolm, enough about his parents, enough about the Ford Taurus with the blacked-out windows and the camera-wielding loser driving it.
Talia needs to get to work and invest her energy elsewhere.
And while she’s eager to put this morning behind her (and still pissed from last week’s argument), she has a strange urge to tell Meera about flipping that PI the bird. Talia has a feeling she would be proud.
But when she gets to the ML-team mod pod, she finds Aarav the custodian, rather than her coworker, at Meera’s desk, packing Meera’s half-alive succulent into a cardboard box.
Immediately, Talia’s mind goes to the worst possibility: Meera is having a Hashimoto’s flare-up and had to take a leave of absence from work. Talia knows stress can trigger flare-ups in autoimmune conditions like Meera’s; perhaps their horrible fight at Goldie’s sent her over the edge.
“Good morning, Aarav. Do you know where Meera is?”
The older man continues to clean Meera’s desk, as though Talia hasn’t spoken.
She knows Meera has a soft spot for him, what with their shared understanding of Tamil, but something about Aarav has always given Talia the creeps.
She watches as he picks up the framed school photo of Gracie from Meera’s desk and stares at it for a beat too long before packing it in the box with the plant.
“Aarav?”
“She has let go,” he says, still avoiding her eye.
“She what?” For an awful moment, Talia thinks the custodian is telling her that Meera is dead, and the large Iced Turbo she chugged before Pilates churns sickeningly in her stomach.
“She was let go.” This comes from David, whose desk is to the left of Meera’s. Talia neither dislikes nor particularly likes David, who’s efficient and competent but has a habit of crunching on pistachios all day and leaving the shells stacked on his desk.
Talia whirls to face him. “How do you know that?”
“I ran into her as she was leaving Betty’s office. She didn’t tell me much, other than the fact that she got suspended, but rumor has it she was misusing her access to customer data.” David raises his eyebrows. “I bet you know what happened.”
“I don’t,” she lies. The floor tilts beneath her, and she steadies herself on Meera’s desk. For all the nasty things Meera said to her during their argument last week, Talia knows she was just as cruel, if not crueler. This is worse than a Hashimoto’s flare-up; this is all her fault.
“For Meera.” From the corner of her eye, Talia sees Aarav offering her a folded piece of paper.
“This is for Meera? Did you find it on her desk?” Her brain pulses with a single thought, a reflex at this point: Amanda.
Aarav nods. Talia unfolds the paper slowly only to find that the note inside is written in what must be Tamil script. The letter is from Aarav, not Amanda, and Talia feels foolish for letting her neuroses get the better of her, if only for a second.
“For give to her,” Aarav says.
“Forgive her?” Talia wonders how Aarav could possibly know about their fight. Had he noticed the friction between them in the office? Then she repeats the sentence back to herself. “For give to her. You want me to give this to her.”
He nods again.
“I will,” she says. “I promise.” But as soon as Aarav returns to his office, Talia deposits the note in the box with the rest of Meera’s belongings.
Meera isn’t going to want to see her, not after this.
No doubt she’s going to cast blame on Talia, just as Malcolm Gray’s parents have done.
And perhaps this time Talia deserves it.
Still, she can’t help but think, I never asked Meera to retrieve those messages. I never asked Meera to misuse her access to customer data.
Talia may look like the bad guy here, but one could argue that Meera brought this all upon herself.