…”you. You typed it all at work, honey. Every word. I put the app on your work laptop the weekend you brought it home.”
I stood there in the parking lot with my bag on my shoulder, and for one second I almost walked back to Marcy’s car. That’s how good he was at this. He made me feel like I’d already lost.
Then the shelter’s back door opened. A woman in a gray cardigan stepped out, holding a walkie-talkie, and said, loud and clear, “Hi, Anna. We’ve been expecting you. Come on in.”
She didn’t look at him. She just held the door. I walked past my husband, one step and then another, and he didn’t move, because there was a camera over that door and now he knew it.
The woman’s name was Gail. She’d watched the whole thing from the window. By the time the door closed behind me, she’d already called the police. “We see this more than you’d think,” she said, handing me a cup of tea. “They always think showing up proves they’re in control. All it does is give us a witness.”
The police took a report from me, and from Gail, and pulled the camera footage. My advocate helped me file for a protective order that same afternoon. When my work’s IT department checked my laptop, they found the spyware exactly where he’d said it would be. He’d confessed to it in a parking lot, in front of a camera.
He was charged with stalking and unlawful computer access. My company’s lawyers took it personally.
I stayed at the shelter for six weeks. Then I moved into an apartment on my own, with a phone that only I have ever touched.
Marcy still doesn’t know the whole story. When I gave her keys back, she said, “Did the car get you where you needed to go?” I hugged her for a long time. “Further,” I said.
