Chapter 9: What Chloe Came Back With
She came back Sunday evening, earlier than I expected.
I heard the door before I saw her — the particular way she pushed it open when she was tired, with her shoulder instead of her hand.
She dropped her bag on the floor and sat on her bed without taking off her coat.
I closed my laptop.
"How bad?" I asked.
"He knows your dad didn't scare." She pulled off one boot, then the other.
"That made him angrier than anything else."
"Did he hurt you?"
She looked up.
"No.
He doesn't do that." A pause.
"He just talks.
For hours, if he has to.
He goes over and over the same points until you agree with him just to make it stop."
"Did you agree with him?"
"No." She said it quietly but without hesitation.
"I told him I wasn't going to be his instrument anymore.
That's the word he used — instrument.
He said I was a poor instrument if I couldn't follow a simple plan."
I didn't say anything.
"He's going to cut my allowance," she said.
"He mentioned it three times, which means he's already decided." She looked at her hands.
"He also said he'd contact the housing office and request a room reassignment.
Said the current arrangement clearly wasn't working."
"Can he do that?"
"He can try.
He donates to the university.
He thinks that means people move when he calls." She finally took off her coat.
"Maybe it does."
"Chloe." I waited until she looked at me.
"I want to show you something."
I pulled up the screenshot of the text on my phone and handed it to her.
She read it.
Read it again.
"He sent this to you?"
"Unknown number.
But yes."
She set the phone down on the bed between us.
"He's threatening your father."
"He's trying to."
"And your dad — "
"Said it was exactly what he needed."
She was quiet for a moment.
"What does that mean?"
"It means my dad has a lawyer.
And documentation.
And now a written threat from an unknown number that we can trace if we need to." I paused.
"Your father thought he was the only one who came to that breakfast prepared."
Something moved across her face.
It wasn't quite relief.
It was more like the specific exhaustion of someone who has been holding a weight and has just been told they can set it down.
"He's not going to stop," she said.
"Even if your dad has everything clean.
He'll find another angle.
He always does."
"I know."
"So what do you actually do with someone like that?"
I thought about what my dad had said.
*I want the board set before he realizes we're playing.*
"You let him make the next move," I said.
"And you make sure there are witnesses."
She looked at me for a long time.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked.
"After everything — the questions, the roommate form, the dinner.
You could just walk away from this.
From me."
I thought about the girl who had pulled her sleeves over her hands and said *that part was me.* I thought about her ending the call with her father while her hand was shaking.
"Because I think you've been in his plan so long you forgot you were allowed to have your own," I said.
She didn't answer.
But she didn't look away either.
Her phone lit up on the bed.
A calendar notification: *Dad — call — 9 p.m.*
She looked at it.
Then she picked up the phone, opened the calendar, and deleted the event.
May you like
It was a small thing.
But it was the first thing she had done, in all the weeks I'd known her, that was entirely hers.
