“Yes,” Jack said, looking pleased with himself.
“You got Glenn on board with that?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Glenn, Bobby, and a bunch of police.”
It was so strange to see his face again, even through the phone. Since leaving, I had tried to avoid anything that might force me to see it—watching television, scanning magazines in the checkout aisle, or even, since that whiskey endorsement, glancing at buses as they drove by.
I hadn’t anticipated getting a FaceTime call.
“Look,” I said, “I hate to disappoint you, but it’s almost impossible to do anything about stalkers.”
“Thanks for the negativity.”
“I’m not sure if what you just described is even legal.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a whole team of advisors.”
“Why would you even care about the stalker? You’re leaving after Thanksgiving, anyway. Two more days, and you’re out.”
“That’s the thing, though. I might not be.”
I didn’t mean to, but I held my breath.
“My mom had this idea that I should maybe stay for a while. Do some fishing. Hang out. Do a little personal healing.”
“That’s a great plan,” I said.
“You still don’t like my stalker plan, though, huh?”
“I don’t even know the details. But I can tell you already that it’ll never work.”
Jack smiled. “But guess what?”
“What?”
“It already did.”
I leaned closer to the phone. “You did it already?”
“We did it already.”
How did I not know about this? “And it worked?”
“It worked. I’m a genius. I’m also very lucky.”
“Nobody tells me anything.”
“I put some posts on social media as a lure saying I couldn’t wait to spend a lazy weekend at my house in Houston.”
“That was enough to lure her to your house?”
“The Kennedy Monroe video didn’t hurt, either.”
“I need to talk to you about that.”
But Jack was celebrating his triumph. “And then, when the Corgi Lady showed up, we arrested her for trespassing.”
“That’s not going to stick.”
“No. We were going try to scare her with lawyers and threats and doomsday scenarios, but then something better happened.”
“What?”
“She used her one phone call when they booked her to call her sister—who wasted no time hopping on a plane to Texas, packing up her conversion van, and moving her, corgis and all, home to Florida.”
The sister had apologized profusely to Jack and promised to keep her on her meds. “She’s always been mostly harmless,” she’d said. “She was fine until the divorce last year. We should have made her come home sooner. We’re on it now.”
“That was easy,” I said to Jack. Then I frowned. “Was it too easy?”
“There’s no such thing as too easy.”
“But I mean, how reliable is this sister?”
“I don’t know, but a stalker with her sister in Florida has got to be better than a stalker all alone right here in town.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Anyway,” Jack said. “That’s why I’m calling.”
“To say I’m less likely to get murdered now?”
“To invite you to Thanksgiving.”
I paused. Then I said, “I can’t come to Thanksgiving, Jack.”
“Why not? Your would-be assassin is halfway to Orlando by now.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“That’s not a real reason.”
An image of Kennedy Monroe spreading herself over Jack like he was a cake and she was his icing appeared in my head. “I think it’s best,” I said, “to make a clean break.”
“Just one day. One meal. To say a proper goodbye.”
“We already said goodbye.” I didn’t want to do it again.
“I have something to give you, though.”
And then he lowered his phone down past his famous mouth and his legendary Adam’s apple, angling the camera down and down until he stopped on his necklace. And there, just leaning against his collarbone, in remarkably sharp focus, was my safety pin.
“You found it,” I said, touching my finger to the phone screen. I’d known it, of course—but I hadn’t entirely believed it.
“I did.”