Page 109 of A Home for Harmony

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BASED ON HIS OPINION

“I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m pissed. Livid. Furious.”

“Ouch.”

“Don’t make light of this,” he said. “I’m not your boyfriend right now. And I want you to start at the beginning.”

Tears filled her eyes. “Are you breaking up with me over this?”

“No,” he snapped. “I want you to talk to me like law enforcement. Give me all the facts.”

“Is this a criminal thing now?” A tear slid down her face, soft and silent. He saw her now—not just the woman she’d become with him, but the one who had once been terrified when he walked up to her broken-down car. And it hit him—he’d lost sight of that fear, that vulnerability.

“I’m not sure until I know what is going on. Start talking.”

“I don’t know where to start,” she said.

“When did it start?” He was trying not to lose his patience, but it was damn hard.

He hoped to hell she didn’t tell him before she moved here, but something told him he would not get that wish.

She took a deep breath. “I really don’t know the exact date. It might be about two years. Less.”

He closed his eyes and dropped his head back. “You’re joking, right?” He was glancing at the ceiling and then fixed her with a stare as he lifted his head.

“No,” she said. “I’m probably making more out of it. I don’t know.”

“Which is why you’re going to tell me all about it. Let me be the judge.”

She breathed in and out a few times. “What a shitty way to spend my birthday.”

She never swore and that told him how worked up she was over this.

“Harmony, I’m trying not to lose my shit here.”

“You’re doing an awful job of it,” she said, wiping her nose as another tear fell. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about this here. It’s hard for me to answer anything without my laptop to look things up.”

“We’ll get to that later.” He took a deep breath to compose himself better. “Give me an overview.”

He pulled his phone out and hit record, her eyes growing big. “Why are you doing that?”

“Something to reference back. You might say something now and forget it later. Please,” he said gentler. “Summarize it for me and why you think this is happening.”

She squared her shoulders, grabbed a tissue from a box he had on the shelf behind her, blew her nose, then said, “I get a lot of messages and emails from people daily. I glance at them and reply or react to some. Like or hearts or whatever. It helps to keep people engaged, but I can’t get to everything or I’d get nothing done. I don’t try to be selective of who I reply to either, spreading my attention around.”

“I got that,” he said.

“I noticed I was getting messages that seemed too clingy. Or that they were coming from the same username, but it took me a while to piece it together. They were on all my social media accounts. Everything. The same messages as if they wanted me to know and acknowledge them. Or were trying to get my attention to engage.”

“I can see where that might annoy you,” he said. “But it could be someone that wanted attention, as you said. You have a lot of followers and they might have wanted to stand out.”

“That is what I thought,” she said. “But then it was more like how pretty I looked in a certain color. Or maybe my eyes sparkled when I talked about the weather that day.”

“Deeper more personal messages.”

“Yes. I found them creepy and ignored them. The more I ignored them, the more I saw. Or maybe I was looking now. I blocked them so I didn’t have to see them anymore. I was positive it was the same person on all the platforms even though the usernames didn’t match up. It was a similar tone and message. Then they all ended with the same three emojis. A smile, a hug and a heart.”