…husband.” I said nothing. I finished my pasta. I told him that was fine, that I’d been meaning to tell him, that it was just a will for my grandmother’s estate. He smiled. I smiled. I wore the watch to bed and kept my heart rate steady by counting backward from a thousand, because I knew he’d check.
At work the next morning, I called the lawyer’s office from a coworker’s phone. The receptionist picked up on the first ring. Before I could explain, she said quietly, “I know. He called Friday. I recognized the voice from your intake notes. I told him what you’d told me to tell anyone who called: Monday at ten.” She paused. “There is no appointment Monday at ten. Your real appointment is Saturday at eight. At the courthouse.”
I hadn’t told her to do that. My lawyer had. On my very first visit, she’d asked me one question before anything else: “Does he check up on you?” When I said yes, she set up a fake appointment for anyone who called. “Men like that always call,” she said. “Let him show up to the wrong one.”
On Saturday morning, I left the smartwatch on my nightstand, its little green light blinking. My sister picked me up at the corner at 7:15. By 9:00, a judge had signed a temporary protective order. By noon, I was at my sister’s apartment with two suitcases and my cat.
On Monday at 9:55, he walked into the ninth-floor office in a pressed shirt, holding flowers for “his wife.” The receptionist smiled at him and said, “One moment, sir.” Then a sheriff’s deputy stepped out of the hallway and served him with the order right there in the lobby. In front of the friendly receptionist. In front of everyone.
My lawyer told me he dropped the flowers. I haven’t seen him since. The watch is in a drawer at my sister’s, switched off. Some days I take it out just to look at the screen. Heart rate: nothing. Location: nothing. It’s the most peaceful thing I own.
