Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel the pulse in her wrists, hear the blood thumping in her head. Farther down the street, she saw Nick’s friend Victor walking his dog. Wasn’t he supposed to be in school? He looked over at her as if he didn’t recognize her, then turned his attention to the sidewalk in front of him.

He knows! was her first thought. It didn’t make any sense, but it was easy for her to imagine that he’d walked his dog over to the nursery and had been about to come in when he saw Steven with his exposed erection.

Oh God, Anita thought. What if he tells Nick? Or Kyle? Or his parents? Or anyone?

But that was the guilt talking. He couldn’t have seen anything. The event had happened in the greenhouse, away from the street. He would have had to come into the building in order to see anything—and he hadn’t.

Still, she remained nervous and jumpy, and she found herself driving up Airport Road and then back to the downtown along Frontier Street, next to the creek, in order to calm herself down. She still had nearly a half hour to spare, and though she’d brought her lunch today, she’d left it back at the office. Not yet ready to face people, she went through the drive-thru at Burger King and ate in the car in the Safeway parking lot before heading back to work.

Her phone rang when she was halfway between her car and the office door. After checking to make sure it wasn’t Steven, she picked up. “Hello?”

A woman’s voice with a Southern accent: “Am I speaking to Anita Decker?”

“Yes,” she said suspiciously.

“This is Marjorie with Citibank. We are detecting attempted activity on your Visa account at—” There was a second’s hesitation. “—the Best Buy at 7400 Brookpark Road in Cleveland, Ohio.”

“What?”

“The purchase location triggered an automatic warning, which is why we are contacting you. Would you like us to put a stop to this transaction and place a hold on your card?”

“Yes!” she said frantically.

Another short pause. “The transaction has been denied and the account placed on hold. We are alerting local authorities of an incident of attempted credit card fraud and providing them with the location.”

Holding the phone between her neck and shoulder, Anita rummaged through her purse, where she found her Visa card. “How can they be using my card?” she asked. “I have it right here.”

“Thieves engaging in identity theft often make their own cards—”

“Is there anything else I need to do?” she interrupted. In her mind, high-tech thieves were simultaneously making online purchases, cleaning out her bank account and opening new lines of exploitable credit using her identity.

“In the event of an identity breach, we suggest that you immediately call the credit monitoring companies Experian, Equifax…”

She stood in the center of the small parking lot, listening to the litany of steps she needed to take to ensure that this attempted identity theft intruded no further into her life, stunned that such a thing could happen.