Page 9 of The Expat Affair

On Monday afternoon, I step out of the PrimeFone store into a horde of tourists, a whole five hundred euros lighter thanks to my brand-new replacement debit card, still smoking in my pocket. Five hundred euros I don’t have and can’t really afford for a dinky, refurbished iPhone, which I’ll need to call the police if someone’s chasing me.

Last night after the detective and I hung up, I lay in bed, staring at the clouds trailing past my little window while his ominous words drew tight around my neck like a noose—or a zip tie. Every time I closed my eyes, it wasn’t Xander I saw lying sprawled on the shower floor, not his neck or his finger . . . but mine. The detective thinks someone is coming after me, and now, so do I.

At least the Leidsestraat is bustling, a wall-to-wall sea of people crowding the pavement. I find a quiet-ish spot by a corner and scroll through the messages on my new cell. The second the salesman helped me connect it to my iCloud, the notifications started rolling in, a series of missives that got progressively longer and more urgent in tone. I pause on one from my sister—better watch out mom saw the nip-pic—followed by one from my mother: CALL ME OR ELSE!

I haul a breath, pull up FaceTime, and hit Call. The line connects, and the screen goes in and out of focus on something white and fuzzy.

“Mom. This is FaceTime. Take the phone off your ear. Look at the screen.”

More jumbling. More images from a camera lens that can’t quite get a grip on anything solid. And then, there it is: my mother’s face.

And she doesn’t look happy. “Well, finally. I’ve only been calling you all weekend. I was starting to get worried.”

She uses her librarian voice, terse and highly annoyed, mostly because my mother is always worried about something. The way my dad works too hard and eats too much red meat. My sister’s daughter still not walking at thirteen months and how it’s a sign of something awful. Fentanyl finding its way into the Halloween candy supply and China listening in on her calls. The state of the world in general.

And me. These days, most of her worries seem to center around me.

“Everything’s fine. I just lost my phone, that’s all.”

If the news of Xander hasn’t made it across the Atlantic yet, I’m not going to be the one who brings it up. Maybe I deleted the picture before someone could connect it with his death, or maybe it’s just that a dead Dutchman doesn’t make a big enough wave to make a splash on American news sites, I don’t know. What I do know is that for my mother, the nip-pic will be the real story.

I slip back into the crowd of tourists and follow the tram line south. “Before you start, yes, I know that picture was ill-advised, but it was only up for a couple of hours. I took it down as soon as I realized.”

“Realized what, that the entire world had seen your lady parts?”

I wince. “You don’t have to fuss. I’ve already gotten an earful from all sorts of people I was really hoping never to hear from again. Also, while we’re at it, how did everybody in St. Francisville jump on that post so quickly? It was only up a couple of hours and it was the middle of the night. What are they, vampires?”

“You know how people here love to talk.”

Why, yes. Yes, Mom, I do know. It’s a big part of why I left. The other part is Barry.

“Did he see, you think?” I ask.

“Oh, . . .”

I hate the pity I hear in my mother’s voice, but mostly I hate how much I care about the answer. Of course I wanted Barry to see that picture. He’s the real reason I posted the damn thing, so he would see that sultry, sexy version of me and feel . . . what? Sorrow? Remorse? It was a stupid, vengeful move that resulted in three thousand people seeing my nipple.

“Never mind. Do not answer that.”

I muscle my way down the busy street. “How are you? How’s Dad?”

“Oh, you know. Same old, same old. The well has been acting up again, and now they’re saying we’ll probably have to dig a new one. Your father about keeled over when he heard how much that’s going to cost. It’s why he couldn’t say no.”

“Couldn’t say no to what?”

Dad is an electrician, a one-man shop he advertises on the side of his van with an orange cartoon man holding a light bulb, lit up in an orange glow. Ted Dumont, For All Your Electrical Needs. Dad does okay, but St. Francisville isn’t exactly a booming metropolis, and the client pool is the size of a rain puddle.

Mom fills the silence with one of her sighs, and in it, I hear the answer. I lurch to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Mother, you can’t be serious.”

A cluster of Italian teenagers come tumbling out of the pharmacy and ram me from the side, nearly knocking me into the tram tracks. “Scuzi!”

one of them shouts as they skitter past, but I don’t acknowledge any of it because I know what my mother is working very hard not to tell me. I know why Dad couldn’t say no.

“Your father said you’d be angry, but sweetie, please don’t blame him. That PPP money wasn’t nearly enough to keep us afloat, and we’re still digging ourselves out of that hole in a market that isn’t the greatest. Barry’s the only developer in town who’s not slowing down. If anything, he’s busier than ever.”

I grit my teeth, clamping down hard to hold back a scream. Never, not once in our eight-plus years together would it have ever occurred to Barry to hire my father for one of his builds. He always chooses a firm from Baton Rouge, the biggest and the best with a CEO that kisses his ass and steers a whole slew of qualified electricians. There’s only one reason Barry hired my father, and that’s to mess with me.

“I’m not mad at Dad but Barry. No—I’m mad at myself, because this is why you don’t drunk post. Because alcohol makes you think it’s okay to upload a picture of your nipple for all the world to see, except it wasn’t all the world I was going for. You know that, right? It was one person. One idiot asshole ex who I hoped would see it and say, Whoa. What kind of loser lets a woman like this get away? What kind of dumb fuck am I?”

“Sweetheart, you know how I hate the f-word.”

“And now that picture is out there in a big way, stirring up a shitstorm of epic proportions and constantly bringing me back to what ended up being a seriously traumatic night. All because in a moment of drunken delusion, I was hoping to summon up guilt or remorse or shame when Barry has given me zero indication he’s capable of feeling any of those things. God! I’m so stupid. And petty, too, apparently.”

“Oh, Jo . . .”

Mom heaves another sigh. “Honey, you’re not stupid. What you are is human, so please stop beating yourself up. I hate what that man did to you, but mostly I hate how it’s made you want to put a whole ocean between you and your home. Your father and I miss you so much.”

“I miss you, too.”

My throat goes tight around the words.

“And he did see the picture, by the way. His receptionist told your father he’s been impossible ever since.”

I don’t want to love the image of Barry stomping around his office as much as I do, but there it is. The one bright spot in a couple of really shitty days.

The ground under my sneakers begins to vibrate, the tram scattering tourists as it comes clanging down the center of the street. I shoulder my way through the crowd, trying to beat it to the stop on the next bridge.

“Mom, I gotta run. This is my tram. Give Dad my love, okay? And tell him I said congrats on the big job. Love to you both!”

We hang up, and I drop my phone into my bag.

I bulldoze my way through the tourists to the bridge just in time. The tram doors slide open, burping out a thick cluster of tourists, their faces flushed with cold and excitement. They push past me with bright cheeks and windblown hair.

I collapse onto an empty seat by the window and let the tram carry me away from the noise and the crowd, still breathing hard as I stare at the scenery flashing by on the other side of the glass. The tunnel of ancient gingerbread buildings gives way to the Leidseplein with its street artists and terraces, the Bulldog with its striped awnings and neon signs, the Municipal Theater of orange and white brick that dominates a whole corner. The familiar sights bring me back a little, and I tell myself to let it go. Barry saw the picture of the nipple he’ll never touch again as long as he lives, and I have bigger problems to worry about than a manipulative ex.

Like dead Tinder dates, for example. Like killer diamond thieves.

I’m digging in my bag when my fingers make contact with something foreign at the bottom. Something white and round and smooth and definitely not mine. I pull it out, hold it in a palm. It looks suspiciously like an AirTag.

Except it’s not. The Find My app on my phone shows ’s Luggage exactly where it should be, in the suitcase I shoved under my bed on the P.C. Hooftstraat. According to the app, no other devices are near me.

If not an AirTag, then what?

I flip the thing over, study it from both sides. There’s no Apple logo, no logo on it at all. I inspect the smooth metal rim, turning it every which way, but there’s nothing there, either, no words or writing to identify it, but I know instinctively it’s some kind of tracker.

Fear rises in my belly, and I slap my bag onto the empty seat beside me and sort through the contents. I take everything out, feeling in the side pockets and poking through every compartment in my makeup bag and wallet. I turn my bag upside down and give it a good shake, until nothing falls out but crumbs. The tracker in my hand is the only one like it in my things.

A fluke? A random stalker following me through the Leidsestraat?

I think about whoever’s out there, sitting in a coffee shop somewhere or maybe even here in this tram, watching my little blue dot dance across their screen. My heart thuds at the thought, my gaze panning over the people near me. Two women sitting close, their heads pressed together as they talk in a language I can’t understand. A trio of teenagers, passing around a Starbucks cup. A mother trying to wrangle her overactive preschooler, hyped up on the half-eaten cookie in his hand. A man in a red shirt and a battered ball cap staring at his phone. I’m pretty sure he got on when I did, and now he’s standing by that same door, his body positioned so that if he raises his gaze even a little, we’d be eye to eye. I watch him, and panic zings through my veins. Is he following me?

The tram rolls to a stop, and I shove my things back in my bag and strap it across my chest, my muscles jumping out of my skin. The doors ding open, and I force myself to sit still, waiting as people filter in and out, pretending to adjust my shoe as I drop the tracker to the floor and shove it under the seat as far back as it will go.

And the whole time, I watch the man in the ball cap the same way my father taught me to ride a horse once upon a time, with eyes that focus on nothing and everything. The second you turn your head, your body moves and you confuse the animal. I watch the man in the ball cap without looking at him, without moving a single muscle. He doesn’t move, either. Not even to look up from his phone.

By now, the last stragglers have boarded the tram, and the doors are ready to close. I wait until the very last second and lunge for them, landing on the sidewalk right as the doors slide shut behind me. The tram clangs, the signal it’s about to pull away.

Triumphant, I whirl around, my gaze searching out the man behind the glass. He’s still standing in that same spot by the door, still clutching his phone, only now his head is raised. He sees me watching and smiles, right before the tram slides away.