Chapter One: Fear of Parole

Stacey

January 15

Oh my God.

I closed my eyes, the cordless telephone still wrapped tightly up in my fingers. It was only once it started to beep loudly and obnoxiously that my eyes fluttered open and I raised the phone even to my face. I stared at it for a long, tense moment, willing it to ring again and have the previous caller laugh as she told me it was all one big, sick joke. Then I could hang up on her in self-righteous disgust.

Instead, I hit the red "end" button on the right hand side of the phone and set it down into the cradle with trembling fingers. I stared hard at my hand, this time focusing my seemingly nonexistent mental powers on it to stop, or at to calm down a little bit. Just enough so that I didn't look quite like I was losing my mind, which, I felt at that moment, I could very well be.

Sinking down onto the floor in the miniature atrium by our front door, I stared blankly up at the ceiling for a long time before sighing heavily and slowly beginning to take a survey of the items in the atrium. It would give my mind something to do, to think about categorizing items. It would make me think in terms of sorting, which was kind of like math, which always made me feel better. There was something so soothing and calming in working on a problem, an actual problem, where there was an actual, conventional solution that only needed to be figured out by following the rules.

Our atrium wasn't an atrium in the same sense of the atrium in the house of my friend Shannon's family. Both of our houses had walls directly across from the front door. Both of our houses had two different hallways, leading to each side of the house and connected in the back of the house. Both of our houses had a staircase which led up to the second floor of the house in the atriums. That's pretty much where the similarities end.

The Kilbourne family were millionaires while my family (my mother, who received alimony checks from my father, and I) were most decidedly not. The Kilbournes had this absolutely gorgeous marble floor that extended down both hallways and, I knew from experience, didn't end until you reached the living room when you took the right wing and didn't end until you reached another staircase, which led straight to the third floor. On the wide, sterile white wall across from the front door hung an antique, full length mirror. Surrounding the mirror were tiny little wooden frames, inside which were very simplistic Japanese artwork and characters. The stairs leading up to the second floor were wide and appeared to be carpeted in Oriental rug, but I think I remember Shannon telling me that the carpeting on the stairs was the one "mock" item in the atrium since the flow of traffic on those stairs was so heavy a real Oriental rug would've been destroyed way too soon and would've been a waste of money to have installed in such a fashion. Oh, and the Kilbournes also have a fountain with a naked statue of the goddess Venus pouring water from a bowl in that wide, open space as well.

Just from taking a category of the items in the Kilbourne home, I could feel my heart rate beginning to slow a little. I closed my eyes again. This was good. I needed to keep myself calm so that I could think rationally and logically. There was no sense in running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Which, thank God, I have never had to see before in my entire life and, with any luck at all, will never have to see in my entire life. I sighed and let my eyes flutter open once more. Time to take stock of the McGill family atrium.

Ours was far simpler and much more down to Earth compared to the Kilbourne family's atrium. Not that we really had much choice. Even if we had a million dollars, the little semi-room was too tiny to do very much with at all. Still, Mom and I didn't live like hogs or anything, so it wasn't like it was some disgusting, rotting mess.

The one thing that my mother is the proudest of in our house is our gorgeous hardwood floors. They were here when we bought the house, only we didn't know it on account of the fact that the previous owners hid them under ugly carpeting that Mom and I were too lazy to rip up for years. When we did, we found the hardwood and Mom went wild. Now, you can practically comb your hair in your reflection, she keeps all the floors so waxed and buffed. As if to show off our house and give off the impression of what good standing people lived here, the hardwood started right as soon as you walked through the front door and into the atrium, which is why Mom insists everyone take off their shoes as soon as they step inside and onto the welcome mat (two exceptions: if you're an infant or cannot walk under your own power).

The wall across from the front door isn't very wide at all, so we couldn't do much else to it besides hanging a framed, blown-up picture of Mom and I at my college graduation in the center, along with a handful of other, smaller pictures of Mom and I at other various functions and events scattered in a mostly orderly way around the wall. We repainted the wall a couple of years ago from the hideous maroon Mom had insisted on when we moved in to a more tolerable shade of forest green. Still, she had snuck in those wallpaper trimmings with little patterns of green and off-white on them.

Shoved up against our wall was the desk I used to keep at Dad's while I was still in high school and college. It's now mostly filled with bills, loose leaf papers, index cards, and tons of weird little odds and ends. On the top, though, it's always spic and span. There's the cordless phone and its base, a notepad, a pencil cup, and vase with a collection of somewhat dusty, dried out roses from a date Mom had been on years ago.

I sighed again and leaned my head against the wall of the hallway that led back into our kitchen. Mom wasn't home right now, and wouldn't be for another few hours, so she had no way of knowing that her only child was sitting on the floor next to the front door of her house, taking deep, soothing breaths, and trying not to have a completely meltdown. Again. I patted my thighs.

"Come on, Stacey," I murmured quietly, though I could've shouted for all anyone else could've heard. "Get up and get a grip. Maybe you're just overreacting."

Of course, almost the instant I said that, a gnawing little voice that I hadn't heard in years snapped to attention inside my head.

"Overreacting? Don't be an idiot, McGill. Don't you remember the last time you and Teddy met up?" I groaned miserably.

After years of intense therapy, I had never worked up the courage to tell anyone about the development of this one little voice which always seemed to know me better than I knew myself. I figured that since it had never told me to do anything stupid like dive off the Empire State Building or crazy like take a hacksaw to one of my friends, I needn't mention the voice's existence. Besides, as much as I hated to admit it, it was usually right. I knew that it meant that I probably had schizophrenia or something, but I wasn't surprised, really, after everything I had been through.

"I remember perfectly well," I snapped. It was as though the voice had never recessed back into the deeper corners of my mind. "I'm just trying to remain calm so that I don't turn into a babbling lunatic."

"If I were you, honey, I'd rather be the babbling lunatic. After all, think about it. Teddy's out of jail now." I winced, feeling an actual physical twinge of pain. "You know that you're the only thing that he's going to be thinking about now that he's out and you know that you're the first thing he's going to be making a move for."

"Let's just drop this," I muttered. "This really isn't something I want to think about right now."

"Well, tough!" the voice shouted and I felt my head rattle on the inside from the force of it. I closed my eyes, tighter than I had since I had first heard the news. "Listen, Stacey, you need to start acting and you need to start right now. You don't have any time to waste. If we know anything about Teddy, it's this: he doesn't waste any time getting what he wants."

"Have I ever mentioned just how damned crazy I feel whenever you start talking in my head?" I whispered. I hung my head down so that my chin was pressing down against my chest.

"Yeah, a few times," the voice said, in a tamer tone. "Come on now. Get off your ass and get up. We need to get to the drugstore and pick up some supplies. Hopefully, if we can finish everything before Mom gets home, she won't even have the chance to try and stop us from doing what we have to do it."

"None of this is going to hurt, will it?" I asked, not moving. The voice laughed.

"Only to your ego, blondie."

ONE

"Hey, pretty girl."

I looked around in alarm. None of the staff would think to call us names like that, especially those of us who were suffering from sexual assault and abuse, like I was. I could have whoever had just called me pretty sued. I could have them fired. I could have their license to practice medicine ripped away from them so fast that their head would spin. I could-

"Easy there, killer. Don't go getting so bent out of shape. I just thought that I'd get your attention by drawing your attention back to the fact that you're pretty. I know you've been feeling anything but lately."

"Who are you?" I demanded. "Where are you?"

"I'm you and I'm inside of you," the voice said calmly. I felt the sudden urge to crawl out of my own skin. I grabbed both sides of my hospital bed and held on with a white knuckled grip to make sure that I wouldn't try to do anything to act on that urge.

"Stop playing games with me," I whimpered. After just being exposed to an email that had sent me reeling into a near comatose-like state of shock, the last thing I could handle were more games and more horrifying shocks. There was a sad little sigh.

"No, darling, I'm not playing any games with you. Everything I just told you was the honest to God truth," the voice said. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt hot tears spill suddenly down my cheeks. I hadn't even been aware that they had been pooling in my eyes.

"Why?"

"Stacey, you need me." There was such a long period of silence that I opened my mouth to say something in reply, but the voice spoke first. "You are a smart girl. Maybe you can look this all up once you get out of this place."

"I probably ought to tell my doctors if I start hearing voices in my head," I retorted weakly. It was although the voice nodded in reply.

"Yes, but you won't tell on me because I'm you. I'm not some strange, bizarre new personality. I'm just a part of you who wants to help look out for you when you're not always able to."

"So, how come you didn't come out when Teddy was hurting me?" I asked, venom in my voice. I was surprised at the rage I suddenly felt. "How come you didn't come to help me then?"

"What could I have done?" the voice asked. "There's not much that a little voice can do in a place like that, is there?" I shook my head slowly, feeling foolish. "Don't worry about it, Stacey. I can help you now."

"What can you do now?" I demanded. "I'm crazy."

"No," the voice snapped. "You most certainly are not. The only crazy inside of you is the part of you that thinks you're crazy." I blinked. "Understand? Good. See, what we're going to work on together is how to build a new Stacey McGill who isn't afraid of Teddy Thomas and now, very sadly, her own shadow."

"How?"

"That's where I come in." The voice was quiet and I waited. "But, you have to promise to trust me, Stacey."

"Trust a voice I hear in my head? That sounds kind of crazy to me, don't you think?"

"It's all relative."

I smiled. "Well, I don't suppose it would hurt. After all, as far as that bastard's concerned, the only place I have to go is up."

ONE

The voice had been quiet ever since we had argued and bickered over what to purchase at the corner drugstore. I would've found it strange that the normally talkative voice was so sedate during this so important process, but I knew the reason why she was. It was because the voice was me, my own. The part of me that I had thought had been lost, but had really only just been thrown violently into the back recesses of my mind in shocked terror when Teddy had first lashed out at me with his fists. Since I didn't have much to say, or even much to think right now, it wasn't surprising that she didn't either.

I was watching TV, or at least staring at the screen and following the movement of colors with my eyes. I found that my ears weren't able to hear the sound on the television, but instead of finding that alarming, I only found it of vague interest. It was only something to glance at in passing, especially since I knew that there wasn't really anything wrong with my ears besides the roaring fear cascading down in my mind between them.

I stood up too quickly when a soft buzzer went off and upset the tray table in front of me. I had set a glass of water and half a peanut butter sandwich in front of me for an afternoon snack, but hadn't touched it. I knew I wouldn't be touching it when the water spilled over the wheat bread and soaked it through. I groaned in exasperation. I felt ill and clumsy, like I was too sick to stand or walk without the aid of another person. I sunk back down onto the couch again.

"Come on, Stacey," the voice urged gently. "Let's go rinse that stuff out. At the very least, we have to turn off that alarm. It's going to make you completely crazy, you know, if you just sit there and listen to it."

"I don't feel good," I admitted.

"You need to eat something first then."

I climbed to my feet once more and stood up without knocking anything over again. I started to clear up my mess then changed my mind. What was the point? Who cared how the house looked when a madman was stalking you?

"All right," I agreed and walked with unsteady feet back into our kitchen. Usually, I would've fixed myself something well balanced and healthy. Instead, I saw the peanut butter still sitting out from making my sandwich, walked over to it, unscrewed the top, and dipped two fingers into it deeply. Dragging out a wad of gooey brown peanut butter, I stuck it into my mouth and closed my eyes, savoring the sensation of behaving so irresponsibly. My voice cleared her throat.

"Only one of those, I think," she said warningly. I'm diabetic. It would be good if all the peanut butter I had just shoved into my mouth decided not too spike my sugar too severely. I nodded, feeling ashamed of myself. "Now, into the shower and wash that dye out of your hair. Let's see how Stacey McGill looks like as a redhead."

I never realized just how long it takes to rinse out all of the dye involved with dying one's hair, especially dying a darker color like the shade of auburn that I had selected from the shelf. Eventually, once the water ran clear again and once I had finally managed to stop sobbing hysterically at what looked like blood pouring down around me, I turned off the tap and stood stock still in the shower. Thus far, since entering the bathroom, maybe an hour or so ago, I had not only applied hair dye to my hair, but had also placed an order from a catalogue for brown tinted contact lenses. That ought to help me be less recognizable and less noticeable in a crowd instead of being the "blonde bombshell" who everyone who first met me assumed that I was.

I toweled myself off and looked in the mirror. It was interesting to see my face looking back at me, but with someone else's hair surrounding it. Luckily, it was still damp, so it wasn't so different looking from what I was used to seeing. I don't know if I could've stood the shock of immediately seeing a redheaded version of myself standing naked in my bathroom.

I sighed and wrapped a long, body length towel around myself. The temperature between the steamy bathroom and the chilly hallway made me suck in my breath as I opened the door and, for a moment, I almost shut the door and retreated back inside the warm bathroom. Suddenly, it felt a lot safer than venturing out into the hallway.

"Calm down, Stacey," I whispered to myself, clutching the towel firmly where it was clasped together under my arms. "You're at home, for God's sake."

I'd probably have to take some of my anti-anxiety pills. I still saw a therapist, though I only saw him every third week instead of twice a week, like I had to do immediately following the email Teddy sent to me that threw me into a nervous breakdown. My therapist still wrote me the prescription, but now for a lot less pills, to use if I felt especially panicked or distraught. Up until now, I was feeling really proud of the fact that I hadn't needed to swallow a single pill in nearly four months.

I'd have to call Dr. Stein and tell him that I was going to need a much larger prescription to be filled and that we were going to need to see one a lot more often once more.

In my bedroom, after closing and locking the door behind me, I dropped my towel to the ground and flung open my closet doors with something of intense aggravation. I wanted to take this out on something, but I had nothing to take these rippling feelings of terror and panic on. So, I settled for ripping blouses and sweaters out of my closet, one by one, and throwing them to the other side of the room if I decided that I did not want to wear them.

In fifteen minutes, my closet was looking frighteningly bare, my room was a war zone of fashion labels, and my chest was heaving from exertion. I sunk down onto my knees and let out a sob. My voice said nothing, so I let myself continue to weep until my chest felt heavy and my eyes dry. I dropped my chin down to my chest again and closed my eyes weakly.

"This isn't getting any easier," I accused.

"You're not even dressed yet."

"I need to call my mother."

"No! Put on some clothes!"

I sighed and nodded. The first piece of fabric my fingers closed around I picked up and looked at seriously. It was a loose, mint green button down blouse with tiny embroidered roses running down the middle on a slightly darker shade of green vines. It was conservative and, ironically, it was going to show off my freshly dyed hair wonderfully. I rolled my eyes. I'd wear it.

ONE

Waiting outside of Mary Anne Spier's office is an awkward place to be. She's a social worker now, who does a lot of private practice counseling, so her office is usually filled with an assortment of people who are down and out and clearly need her help. I felt out of place sitting there in my gold and brown designer coat and Calvin Klein sunglasses over my eyes. I looked like I ought to be waiting in an office where I would pay $200 for an hour instead of letting Medicare cover my appointment fees.

I swallowed tightly when a little girl wandered over to me. I adored little kids, I really did, but I suddenly felt my entire body tighten at the prospect of any stranger, even a four year old, approaching me. I closed my eyes for a moment and scolded myself for being such a basket case. The girl smiled at me and I obediently removed my sunglasses.

"Hi," she said.

"Hello," I replied quietly.

"What's your name? Mine is Michelle."

"I'm Stacey," I told her. She grinned proudly, as though exchanging names with me was something of an accomplishment for me. I decided to try to relax and go along with her. "How old are you, Michelle?"

"I'm going to be four in three weeks," she said, holding up three fingers. I reached out and softly touched her hand. When she didn't pull away, I carefully pulled a fourth finger loose from the fist she was making.

"There. That's four fingers," I told her with a smile.

"Well, how many fingers do you have to hold up?" she asked, giving me a sassy little stare. I giggled softly.

"I don't have enough fingers to hold up," I admitted.

"You're that old?" she asked.

"I'm ancient."

"My mom's really old, too," Michelle confided in me. "She's twenty. When we hold up all of our fingers together, Mom says, then we're how old she is."

I did the math. Michelle's mother was sixteen when she had her. "I'm a little older than your mom is."

"How old?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Why?"

"Ladies don't like to tell how old they are," I told her. Michelle's eyes widened and she glanced over at her mother, clearly worrying that she had just told me how old she was. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone how old your mom is." She smiled with relief then nodded. "OK. I'm twenty-six."

"Whoa," Michelle breathed, her eyes wide as china plates. I couldn't help but laugh. Suddenly, a very tired looking blonde girl was standing beside Michelle, clutching her hand tightly.

"I'm really sorry that she's bothering you," the girl said. I shook my head.

"Michelle and I are becoming fast friends," I told her, giving Michelle a wide grin. Michelle returned it, glanced up at her mother, and the grin slid off her face.

Michelle's mother was skinny and looked like she didn't eat much. I could tell by the stains on her fingers and the smell of her body that she was a smoker and I was surprised that I hadn't been able to smell the scent on Michelle's hair and clothing. Maybe her mother had enough sense not to smoke around her little girl. Besides looking malnourished, the girl who already had a little girl also looked dead tired and worn down. Her eyes kept darting around like she was worried or nervous about something. Maybe she had a Teddy in her life, too.

She tugged at Michelle's hand. "Come on. Come sit down with me."

"But I want to talk to Stacey!" Michelle whined, gazing up at her mother with sudden tears in her eyes. An embarrassed blush began to heat my face and I looked away.

"No!" her mother snapped. "I don't want to argue with you. Come on."

She dragged Michelle back to where they had been sitting and I was lucky enough to have the door to Mary Anne's office open as they sat down.

"Stacey?" my best friend asked. "You can come in."

I grabbed my purse with both hands and practically raced inside the office, not looking back. Mary Anne shut the door behind me as I sank down gratefully in one of her cushy chairs. As she passed around me to sit across from me, I felt her give a lock of my hair a gentle tug.

"What happened to your head?" she asked with a laugh.

"It's Teddy," I blurted out, not bothering with small talk. Mary Anne's smile dropped off her face instantly and she paled. She'd met Teddy and seen what he was capable of, even though he hadn't ever hurt her directly. I swallowed tightly and went on. "He's out on parole now… God, Mary Anne. He's going to come for me, isn't he?"

Mary Anne was out of her chair and squatting down in front of me before I knew was happening. She took both of my hands in her own and stared up at me.

"Stacey, it's going to be all right. I promise you that he will not hurt you, ever again," she said. I felt hot tears start to roll down my face again. Damn it. I thought I had cried them all away.

"Apparently not."

"Mary Anne, I'm so scared," I whispered, ignoring the voice. "Please, you have to help me. Isn't there something you can do?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I mean, we can help to protect you, but we can't do anything to Teddy, if that's what you're thinking. Unless he violates the restraining order, he can't go back to prison or anything."

"How are you going to protect me?" I asked through my tears. Maybe Mary Anne was some kind of a magician because there was suddenly a tissue in her hand and it was suddenly wiping at the streams of tears running down my face. "How?"

Mary Anne looked down for a minute before looking back at me. "Logan and I talked about it when we moved into the farmhouse. We knew that one day Teddy was going to be released from prison and that one day you were going to need to be protected. I mean, he already knows where your mother lives, Stacey." I whimpered and she squeezed my hands tighter. "You can't stay there."

"I can't live alone," I gasped. The very thought of it sent my heart racing. If I was alone, it wouldn't be any challenge whatsoever for Teddy to come and do whatever he damn well pleased to me. "He'll find me and he'll… he'll…"

"Stacey!" Mary Anne snapped, jerking me away from the thoughts which were beginning to make me hysterical. "Stop it. You have to stay calm right now."

I nodded. "I know. I'm sorry, it's just so hard."

"I know," she whispered. "Listen, though. This is important. Logan and I agreed that when the day came that Teddy was out of prison that we would have you move into the farmhouse with us."

I shook my head. "I couldn't ask you to do that."

Mary Anne laughed and I felt a smile creep unwillingly onto my face as she did. "You didn't ask, Stacey. I invited you. No, actually, I am demanding that you come and stay with us. Think about it. Logan is a cop. What better place for you to be than living with two of your best friends, one of whom happens to be a police officer?"

"You'd do that for me?"

She smiled. "Of course we would. Besides, there's so much room in that house, we need another person living there. I mean, we want to fill it up with kids, but I want to get my Masters before we start doing that."

I laughed. "When are you going to get your Masters?"

"Whenever I can find the time and money to get away from my practice a little bit," she told me with a groan. "Which, will probably never happen, so you're going to be the closest thing to a baby in our house for a long time."

"Gosh, thanks."

Mary Anne laughed. "So, it's settled? You're going to move in with us?"

I nodded once more, suddenly feeling sad. "Yeah, but I have to figure out how to tell my mother. She's going to be crushed."

"We could cook her dinner tonight," Mary Anne suggested. "I mean, Logan and I could come over and make her favorite recipe and we could help you explain why you have to move out."

"She'll understand," I said quietly. "It'll just crush her that her only child has to leave her just to be safe."

Mary Anne released my hands to wrap me in a hug. "I'm so sorry, Stacey."

"Thanks," I whispered into her natural brown hair and let myself start to cry once more. I also let Mary Anne hold me until I slumped weakly into her chair and she called Logan, who was off that day, to come and pick me up so that I wouldn't have to try and drive home on my own.

I closed my eyes on the drive home and pretended to be asleep so that I wouldn't have to answer any more questions. I wondered all the while what kind of guy Michelle's mother was scared of and if he was anything like Teddy. I wondered how many Teddy's there really were, out there in the world, making so many women and children's lives completely miserable.

I fell asleep on the couch the moment Logan left my house.