…”my daughter. She’s a paralegal at the legal aid office on Fourth Street. And I think she’s been helping you.”
She had. Her daughter’s name was Maya. For two months she’d been driving me to and from my appointments with a domestic violence attorney, because my husband checks my car’s mileage and the bus would have been too obvious. She was helping me fill out the paperwork for a protective order.
“I didn’t tell him I recognized her,” the woman said. Her voice cracked. “I told him I’d never seen her before. But he’s going to find out who she is, and when he does, he’ll find you both. That’s why he doubled it. He wants me to follow her next.”
The bus pulled up. Neither of us got on.
“Walk with me,” she said. “Not toward the van. Into the coffee shop. There’s a back door.”
Inside, I called Maya. She didn’t panic. She told me to stay exactly where I was, and that she was calling the attorney and the police. Then she asked to speak to the woman at my bus stop. I handed her the phone and watched a mother listen to her daughter tell her everything was going to be okay.
The police came within fifteen minutes. My husband’s van was still across the street. He’d been watching the bus stop. He didn’t know we’d left through the back. They pulled up beside him, and an officer knocked on his window.
My attorney took the woman’s statement that afternoon. The payments, the texts, the photo of Maya in my passenger seat. A judge granted my emergency protective order before the end of the day. It covers Maya, too.
The woman’s name is Diane. She cried in the attorney’s office and said she’d never forgive herself for taking his money. I told her the truth. “You were the one who walked across the street.”
I still take the same bus. Diane still stands at the stop some mornings, with the same coffee cup. Now she stands right next to me, and we talk about our daughters, and her grandkids, and anything else in the world. Nobody is watching. Nobody is paying anyone to watch.
