Chapter 7: The Lawyer Threat
I showed Dan the message.
He read it twice.
Then he set the phone face-down on the coffee table, very deliberately, and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"He's rattled," Dan said.
"He's threatening me."
"He's threatening you because he's rattled." Dan looked at me.
"There's no legal case here.
He spoke in a public place.
Maria recorded in a public place.
You consented to the video being posted.
He has nothing."
"I know that logically."
"But it still feels like something."
"Yes."
He picked the phone back up and looked at the message again.
"Do you want to respond?"
"No," I said immediately.
"Good." He put it down again.
"Don't.
Not tonight.
Not without talking to someone first."
I nodded.
Nora made a sound from the bassinet and I went to her automatically — picked her up, settled into the chair in the corner, and she latched on without any trouble, both of us quiet in the low light.
Dan sat on the edge of the bed and watched us.
"You know what I keep thinking about?" I said.
"What?"
"That I apologized to him.
Three times.
In six seconds." I looked down at Nora.
"I didn't even know what I was apologizing for.
I just — heard his tone and started apologizing."
"That's a conditioned response," Dan said.
"It doesn't mean anything about you."
"It means I was trained to make men like him comfortable."
He didn't argue with that.
He just sat with it, the way he does.
"What are you going to do?" he said finally.
"I'm going to call Carol Reyes in the morning," I said.
"I'm going to talk to her.
And I'm going to find out what Maria needs from me to handle whatever comes next with the video."
"And the lawyer message?"
"I'm going to screenshot it and save it," I said.
"And if he sends another one, I'm going to talk to someone who actually knows the law."
Dan nodded slowly.
"And Gerald Patton?"
I looked up at that name in Dan's mouth.
It sounded strange — real in a way it hadn't been when Maria said it.
A real person with a real name and a LinkedIn profile and a pattern.
"I don't want anything to happen to him that I caused," I said carefully.
"I don't want to be the reason someone does something I didn't ask for."
"But?"
"But I also don't want to pretend it didn't happen." I paused.
"He's done this before.
That screenshot — he's looked at women feeding their children and called it disgusting.
More than once.
In public.
On record."
"So what does that mean to you?"
Nora had fallen asleep mid-feed, her mouth slack, her whole body heavy with it.
"It means," I said slowly, "that I'm not the first woman he's done this to.
And if nothing happens, I won't be the last."
Dan was quiet for a long moment.
Then his phone lit up on the nightstand.
He glanced at it.
"Maria," he said.
"She says to check the video again."
I looked at my phone.
The share count had passed 80,000.
And in the comments, a new name had appeared — a woman named Deborah, posting from a town forty minutes away.
*This happened to me too.
Same man.
Different store.
May you like
Two years ago.
I have a photo.*
