Miller rushed out of the restaurant. He spotted me standing on the sidewalk, staring at nothing at all. But I felt it in my bones. I’d felt her eyes on me. Isabella was here. She knew where we were.
“What’s wrong?” Miller said as he put his hand on my shoulder. “Alice said you seemed disoriented. How about we sit down.” He tried to lower me to sit on the curb but I pulled back.
“It’s her. She’s here.”
“Hey, take a deep breath for me.”
“I’m not having a panic attack! And I’m not disoriented. She’s here.”
“Who’s here? Brooklyn, look at me.” He grabbed both sides of my face. “What are you talking about?”
“Isabella.”
He lowered his eyebrows.
“I came into the restaurant and Alice said I’d just been in. And that I’d rushed off. I only just came in. It has to be…” my voice trailed off. “She found us.” Now I was pretty sure I was having a panic attack. “We need to go. We need to get out of here.”
But Miller didn’t move.
“We have to go!”
Miller looked over at a couple that was walking into the restaurant, who were blatantly staring back at us. “There’s security footage,” Miller whispered as he turned back to me. “How about you come inside. We’ll watch it together.”
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“I do believe you. But I don’t want to uproot our whole lives unless you’re 100% sure. Did you actually see Isabella?”
“No…but…”
“Let’s just look at the tapes.”
“Miller who else could it possibly be? Alice thought it was me. Isabella must have been dressed up like me. She must have…”
“Brooklyn.” Miller put his hand on my stomach that was getting bigger by the day. “I’ve pictured our whole lives here. The three of us. I don’t want to start over again. We have good jobs. We’re doing well here. Please, just take a deep breath and we can look at the security tapes.”
Miller had never seen someone watching us from the woods. He’d only ever heard my recounting of it. And he hadn’t felt the chill run down my back when I felt Isabella’s eyes on me. “I’m not crazy.”
“I never said you were. I’m just saying that I love it here. I want to raise my family here at the lake house. Please, Brooklyn. Just take a deep breath.”
I wasn’t crazy. But I knew my hormones sometimes made me feel that way.
“I’ve always protected you,” he said. “Let me keep protecting you. Don’t you trust me?”
I breathed in slowly and exhaled even slower. “Of course I trust you.”
“We’ll figure out if it was her.” He grabbed my hand. “Come with me.”
I walked with him back into the restaurant.
He started talking to Alice. Telling her that I hadn’t been in earlier.
Alice shook her head and laughed. “Yeah, as soon as I saw the surprised look on your face, I knew I must have made a mistake. I was slammed with tables this afternoon. I must not have gotten a good look at the girl.”
“Did you see what car she was driving?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Do you mind if we look at the security footage?” Miller asked. “Just to see if we recognize her? It may have been family from out of town.”
“Of course. My office is unlocked.”
“Thanks, Alice.” He guided us into her office. Instead of going to the computer on Alice’s desk he went over to the corner and lifted up this secret cubby thing. There was another computer hidden behind the wooden façade.
I stared at Miller and then back at the screen.
He typed in a password and the security footage came up.
I looked back at him. “How did you know the password?” Alice hadn’t just told him. How did he even know to use this hidden computer?
“Because I set it up.”
“What?”
“I have security cameras everywhere, Brooklyn. I figured you knew that. Do you really think I’d let you stay home all day without surveillance?” He clicked a few buttons and then there was a video of the girl that looked like me walking into the restaurant.
But for just a minute I was a little more concerned about the surveillance comment. “You have cameras in our house?”
“No, outside the house.”
“Miller, it’s not your job to watch me all the time anymore.”
“I don’t watch you.” He turned to me. “I’m busy all day here. But yeah, I have an alarm on my phone that will go off if there’s any motion outside our place.”
“So when I go outside to garden…”
“I get an alert, yes.”
“And you click through and see that it’s just me in the garden.”
He sighed. “I don’t understand the issue here.”
“I just told you the issue. It’s not your job to watch me anymore.”
He ran his hand down his face. “I’m not watching you. I’m protecting you and our kid. And I’d set up most of this before you even came back.”
“You put up all these cameras before I moved in?”
“Do you think you’re the only one freaked out about Mr. Pruitt finding us? I used to lie awake at night holding a gun in my hand. The woods make terribly creepy noises in the middle of the night. I kept thinking he’d found me. I was pretty sure I was going crazy without you.”
I knew the noises that the woods made well. I remembered how spooked we’d both been when the deer had woken us up. But it was the last part of what he said that hit me the hardest. That he was going crazy without me. I’d felt that same way without him.
“So yes, I set up cameras to make sure I was safe. And then when you came? I set up a few more. He said he’d kill me if I touched you, Brooklyn. What would he do to me now? You’re pregnant with my kid.”
I swallowed hard. “I’d hope that he wouldn’t hurt the father of my child.”
Miller shook his head. “You’re giving him grace he doesn’t deserve.”
I’d had a lot of time to think about what my father had done to me. I thought about it more than ever now that I was pregnant. Now that I was about to have a kid of my own. My dad swore he thought I’d agreed to the kidney thing. I’d seen the tears in his eyes. I’d seen how grateful he’d been. He’d made a mistake.
But I still resented him. I felt exploited. He made me feel weak. And used. When he kept me a prisoner it twisted things even more. Was he trying to keep me safe from Isabella? Or keeping me safe for himself, just in case he needed me again. I liked to think it was the first one. That he was scared of Isabella too. I hated my father. But now I wasn’t as sure that he was the monster I’d made him out to be in my youth. Or maybe Miller was right. That I was giving him grace he didn’t deserve. That the years apart from him had made me forget who he truly was. Time played tricks on me sometimes. Making me remember the good instead of the bad.
Miller looked over his shoulder at the open door of Alice’s office. “We can discuss this more at home. Let’s see if it was Isabella, okay?”