Surviving Valencia

“Is there any reason you’re so concerned? I mean, it’s just, I’ve never seen you get worried like this before.”

“I always worry a little. I just don’t say anything.”

“Okay.”

We drove around in silence until Adrian belched and started to laugh. “Too many fucking pancakes,” he said.

“Adrian?”

“Yeah, Honey?”

I looked out the window, the words choking in my throat. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I whispered.

“What is it?” he asked.

Instead of confiding in him, I heard myself say, “It’s about the twins. Do you ever think about what you were doing that Thanksgiving when my brother and sister died?”

“You’re thinking about that again?”

“Yeah, I still am.”

“I suppose I was with my family. I usually went home for Thanksgiving before I was married.”

“Do you mean your parent’s house?”

“That or my grandparents, or some aunt or uncle. It just depended on what happened to be going on.”

Adrian’s relatives were in Madison, Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Minneapolis. He could have been anywhere across the Midwest.

“Do you think you were in Minneapolis?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe if I sat down I could figure it out but I can’t remember right now. But honey, back to what I was saying, I think someone might be trying to mess with us and I don’t want to overreact, but, you know, I don’t want to underreact either. I just want to be careful.”

“Trying to mess with us?”

He drew in a deep, seemingly painful breath. “I’ve gotten a few letters in the mail.”

I nodded but did not say anything.

“I should have talked to you about this sooner, but I didn’t think they were anything to get excited about. They’re just stupid letters.”

“Go on.”

“Twice I got letters with photos of me having lunch with a client and they said something about me having an affair. Like, some idiot was hoping I could be blackmailed over that. They were ridiculous. So, I thought I had a grasp on what was going on, but then I got something else than kind of threw me. It seemed like it was from the same person and it had a picture of you with your head ripped off and ripped into little pieces. That rattled me. But it seemed really amateurish. I showed them to the police, just to be safe, but nothing ever came of it. They said most likely that kind of thing is something bored kids do.”

I nodded some more, glad I had not gone to the police. I was caught for a moment in my own little world over what Adrian had just told me. Me, with my head ripped into little pieces? I felt flattered to have not been left out for once.

“Are you sure it was me?” I asked him, not convinced.

“Yeah, I recognized your clothes, then I put the pieces together and it was you.”

“Where was I? What was I wearing?”

“You were wearing a sun dress with a blue sweater over it. You were sitting by the river, on a bench, reading.”

“So someone followed me. Here in Savannah? Oh my god, I remember that day! It was really warm. It was before we went to Madison. I had no idea someone was following me and taking my picture. Wow. That’s scary,” I said.

“Yes it is.”