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“Your daughter is in the hospital, Cam. Maybe pick up your phone and call us sometime.”
Mean and petty, I know, but I’ve never been so furious. Or so stressed. Or so downright petrified.
Beatrix was fine. Cam and I, however, lost five years of our lives that day.
Now I say to Cam, “He’s here.”
“Who’s where?”
“That guy. The skeevy one I told you about, with the glasses and the comb-over man bun. He’s here at Westmore.”
“Well, maybe he has a musically gifted kid.”
I roll my eyes, lift my hands from the steering wheel. “Right. And he just happens to go to the same gym as me and shops in the canned goods aisle at Whole Foods whenever I walk through their door.”
In the back seat, Baxter leans as far forward as his booster seat will allow. “Hi, Daddy!”
“Hey, buddy. You keeping your mom company?”
Except for his fine mousy waves, our son is a spitting image of Cam. Baxter gives an enthusiastic nod. “She took me to Bruster’s, and then she made me get the frozen banana.”
And he’s still salty about it, too, no matter how many times I explain that food coloring is bad for his six-year-old body, and the scoop of Purple Dinosaur he’s constantly begging for is more dye than ice cream. The banana dipped in dark chocolate is our hard-won compromise.
I twist around on my seat and hold a finger to my lips, my next words for Cam: “Of course he doesn’t have a musically gifted kid. I’m telling you, Cam. This guy is following me. Heis.”
“Who is?” Baxter says, looking out the back window. “Who, Mommy?”
I ignore him and check my mirrors, all of them, but the man is gone. The line of parked cars, the hill between here and the busy road, he’s nowhere. Even if I could see the sign from where I’m sitting, there are dozens of people on this stretch of street, pedestrians and runners, employees popping out for fresh air or to the nearby sandwich shops, people socializing on the covered benches. If he’s still down there, it would be easy to conceal himself in the crowd.
And yet he made sure I saw him when I was turning into the lot, didn’t he? The way he was dressed in all black like some kind of daytime cat burglar, how his shoulders straightened and his head popped up when he spotted my car, how he stared at me through the windshield like he was daring me to see him. Like hewantedme to see him and be scared. Maybethat’swhy he’s been following me for days.
I gasp as something occurs to me. “Omigod, Cam. What if it’s not me he’s after, but theK-I-D-S? What if that’s why he’s been following me all over creation, because he’s trying to get to them?”
“Why would he be after the kids?”
I cringe at the way he said the word, already dreading the conversation I’m going to have to have with Baxter later. “I don’t know. For ransom. For creepy shadiness I don’t want to say out loud because you’re on speakerphone. Plus, I don’t want to give it energy.”
“Saying the words...” Something clangs in the background, metal on heavy metal. Cam waits until the noise dies down. “Saying them out loud doesn’t bring something into existence, you know that as well as I do. And why would he be after the kids when there are a thousand other families in this city with fancier cars and bigger houses than ours? I mean, one look at our street and it’s clear there are plenty of bigger fish.”
“Yeah, but it’s your face on the cover ofAtlanta Magazine.” When Cam walks into a place, everything tilts. Heads turn, bodies shift, gazes stick. Going to a restaurant with Atlanta’s Steak King is like dining out with a rock star. The waitstaff, the chef, the other patrons in the restaurant—they all come over to bask in Cam’s glow.
And Cam knows he’s visible, even without his chef’s gear. Thick black hair, a square jaw, straight white teeth he flashes often. My husband is handsome, but it’s the combination with his height that gets him noticed. Six and a half feet of big, Mediterranean man.
“Go talk to the building’s security guard. That’s what he’s there for.”
“And say what? That there was a strange man standing on the sidewalk? The road is public property.”
“True, but I’m sure the guard would want to know if one of their clients is being stalked. At least give him a description of the creep.”
I shiver, the reality of this conversation inching up the back of my neck. Maybe I’m wrong. Atlanta is a big city that can feel like a really small town. I run into people I know everywhere. Maybe this is all some strange coincidence.
I rewind back to the first time I noticed him, a few days ago through the plate-glass window at Kale Me Crazy. There I was, seated alone at the bar with my phone and a smoothie I didn’t want, killing an empty hour between playdates and pickup times by scrolling through Pinterest. I was feeling sad and nostalgic for the offices and boutiques I used to design, back before I met Cam. This was before his name became synonymous with Atlanta’s high-end dining, before I came up with the sleek stone and metal look that would become a recognizable part of his brand, before I pushed out two babies in three years and closed up shop. But that day, I looked up and he was there, squinting into the sunshine and watching me.
A weirdo, but a random one, I assumed—until I spotted him later at the dry cleaner, at the deli across from my yoga studio, at the Starbucks and the canned goods aisle of the grocery store.
And now here he is again, today.
At my child’s music school.