Chapter 8: What He Didn't Know We Had
I turned the phone face-down on the table before Rebecca could see it.
"I need to step outside for one minute," I said.
"Stay here."
I went to the front porch and called Carol.
She picked up on the first ring.
"It's late, Daniel."
"He sent a photograph.
Sophie.
Getting into my car.
He's been following her."
Silence.
Then: "That's surveillance of a minor.
That changes the filing entirely."
"I know."
"Send me the image right now.
Don't delete anything.
I'm calling the sheriff's office tonight — I have a contact there who owes me a conversation.
This goes in front of a judge first thing tomorrow."
"Carol—"
"I know.
The girl is sick.
I know." Her voice was firm but not unkind.
"That's exactly why we move tonight.
He's counting on you being too careful.
Too worried about upsetting things.
We stop being careful right now."
I sent her the screenshot and went back inside.
Rebecca was standing at the kitchen window.
She turned when I came in.
"What happened?"
I told her.
All of it.
I watched her face move through shock, then fury, then something colder and more settled.
"He photographed my daughter," she said.
"Yes."
"While she was sick.
While she was—" She stopped.
Her hands were shaking.
"I want him to face consequences, Daniel.
Real ones.
I don't want another dismissed complaint."
"That's what we're doing."
Carol moved fast.
By nine the next morning, she called to tell me the harassment filing was submitted, the photograph had been flagged as evidence of surveillance of a minor, and a judge had agreed to hear an emergency motion for a protective order that afternoon.
Gary Pruitt, it turned out, had not expected us to move that quickly.
His lawyer called Carol at eleven.
The tone, she told me later, was considerably less confident than Gary had been in that coffee shop.
I was with Sophie when the protective order was granted.
We were on the couch watching a film she had seen four times and still laughed at in exactly the same places.
Rebecca came in from the kitchen and held up her phone so I could read Carol's message.
*Order granted.
He is prohibited from contact with Rebecca Hartley, Sophie Hartley, and Daniel Calloway.
Violation is immediate arrest.
His lawyer is already advising him to drop the paternity refiling.*
I read it twice.
Then I set the phone down on the cushion beside me.
Sophie looked up from the film.
"What?"
"Nothing important," I said.
"Watch the movie."
She narrowed her eyes at me with an expression so familiar it stopped my breath for a moment.
Then she turned back to the screen.
Rebecca sat down on Sophie's other side.
Sophie, without looking away from the film, leaned her head against her mother's shoulder.
The three of us sat there in the late afternoon light.
But the next morning, Carol called again.
Her voice was different this time — careful in a way that made me sit down before she finished her first sentence.
"Gary Pruitt had a conversation last night," she said.
"With a journalist.
A local one, small outlet, but she covers family court.
He told her a version of the story.
His version.
He mentioned Sophie by name.
He mentioned the foundation.
He mentioned you."
I closed my eyes.
"It's not published yet," Carol said.
May you like
"But it will be.
Probably by end of week."
