Quickened my pace, determined to get to my car, then slowed again. What if someone else was waiting at the car? Then fast-walked again. I had no choice. There was no one on the street, just a few cars passing by. I’d reached the part with the fence and the small woods. I got ready to use my phone to call the police. Hesitated. Realized just how complicit I was in … something. I’d broken into an apartment. For example.

I looked back, and the guy had gained on me. A kind of determined calm look on his hangdog face that irritated me. Like I was just all in a day’s work. Like, this woman isn’t going to be a problem. I couldn’t tell if he was just trying to shadow me in his clumsy way or catch up.

I slowed again and could feel a kind of calm come over me. Something about the anonymous nature of it all. Something about still being in the dark. About having Silvina’s journal to defend. How I told myself this was probably the guy who had taken the hummingbird. How I felt that loss like the hummingbird had been alive. Grave-robbing after the grave had already been robbed once.

Slowed still more. I could hear his heavy tread now. What if he had a gun?

But I was angry. A kind of rage building up and spilling over. Too much of this skulking around. Too much of it. The guy watching the house. Fusk with his threats. Larry in the hospital and me unable to connect the dots, recognize the significance. I was bigger than the man following me. I was more dangerous. Why should I be the one to run? Why bother? It was tiring. It was a role that wasn’t me. Just something people thought I should be.

I stopped, pretended to dig around in my purse, as the man approached. Twenty feet, ten feet. I didn’t look up. I don’t know if I imagined him lunging at me or he’d just arrived in my space. But I hit him with my purse anyway. I hauled off and “went for the country mile,” as Dad would’ve said.

Shovel Pig, full force, smashed into his face, and he staggered back, holding his head with both hands, bent over. I rushed him, pulled his head forward and down with my hands behind his head … while I brought my knee up into his chin.

That made a sound. I even felt it in my knee. When I hit a person, they don’t forget it. I don’t know any other way.

He dropped to the sidewalk, rolled over, tried to get up. I kicked him in the chest, and he came to rest against the wooden fence, which buckled but held.

“Who the hell are you?” I screamed in his face. “And why the fuck are you following me?”