A car drove by on the road outside. I thought about screaming.

“I figured if I let myself get overwhelmed by the idea that you were more than you really were, then I’d start to see you everywhere,” he said. He rubbed his hands together. Examined his skinned knuckles. “Rose, my wife, she was seeing you everywhere even after you were arrested. Big men hanging around little girls. Fathers with their daughters, you know? No. I’d take out the picture and look at your face and I’d think to myself, He’s a man, and he’s in prison, and he can’t hurt her anymore.”

His lip twitched. I saw a flash of teeth.

“But then they let you out of prison,” he said. “And I didn’t know where you were. And you kept hurting her. Even though you were nowhere near her. She hurts. Every day. Just … Just being alive.”

I was shivering from head to foot. The new calm that had overtaken him was sending my terror into overdrive. This man had the capacity to kill me. Not as he had been before, blinded by fury. But like this. Calm, and methodical. No one would investigate my death very deeply. Any number of people all across the country wanted me dead. They’d have to leave my grave unmarked, so that the vigilantes didn’t come to piss on it.

“Listen to me,” I told him. “I didn’t hurt your daughter.”

“I thought about this for so long. It was the only way I could go to sleep at night. I’d think about buying a plane ticket, coming here, finding you.” He opened his hands, gestured to my kitchen. The shattered glass and plates at my feet. The broken chair by the door. “I thought about all sorts of things. About cutting you. Hanging you, for a while. Shotgunning you in the face. I had all these fantasies. They were so real, I could feel them.”

He was suddenly crying. Manic. He pulled his hair, scratched his scalp hard with both hands. Rubbed his face with his palms like he was trying to wake from a dream.

“And now I come here and I find you’re just a fucking man,” he said. “Just like I told myself. You’re just a man.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. All I could think of was my own survival. I’d heard men talk like this before, about their fantasies falling in a heap, their plans coming undone. In my job as a cop I’d listened to them on the radio, standing in the street looking up at them on ledges, standing just beyond reach of the negotiator. He was going to kill me. It was all he could do. My lips were so dry I could hardly form words.

“Please. Please listen. There’s a yellow envelope among my papers,” I stammered. “In the second bedroom. I’ve been … I was working with a partner. She found some things on the man who really did hurt Claire. Some leads. I haven’t done—I didn’t—”