Please Come Back to Me by Jessica Treadway

Author:Jessica Treadway
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8203-3751-7
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2010-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Revelation

DO NOT FEAR WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SUFFER. Anne found the note tucked into the flap of her purse where she kept her cell phone. At first she thought it was her own grocery list, or a receipt she intended to save; it was written on a scrap of white paper, in black ballpoint pen. The handwriting looked neither masculine nor feminine, and was a cross between printing and cursive.

The first time, it didn’t bother her. She figured it had found its way into her bag by accident, dropped in the flurry of human traffic she navigated each day.

But a week later, she found a postcard in her mailbox, blank except for the same message in the same nondescript hand. Her name and address had been printed in block letters, and the stamp in the corner said LOVE.

She asked her friends what they thought, and several of them advised her to call the police. She did, thinking that they would ask to see the messages; but the officer she spoke to said that it wasn’t enough to go on. If and when she received a third communication, he told her, she should call again.

She tried to forget about it, but she was on guard now. Every time someone brushed near her, she looked the person over, then searched among her belongings for a piece of paper with a scrawl. A month went by, six weeks. She was just starting to relax when, on a Friday afternoon, she got into her car after work and found another note tucked under her windshield wiper. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. She had been brought up on TV movies; she was afraid to turn on the car. But finally she did, and when it failed to blow up with her inside it, she drove straight home to pick up the first two notes, then straight to the police station.

The officer whose desk she sat at was a woman named Phyllis Jones. She took Anne’s name and address and phone numbers, then sat back in her chair, out of which stuffing poked through slits in the green plastic. “Do you have any enemies?” she asked Anne. Anne couldn’t tell whether Phyllis Jones was a cold fish or extremely bored, or both. She might have been asking if Anne wanted an order of fries.

“Not that I know of,” Anne said.

“Anybody you can think of who might want to hurt you? Or at least scare you?”

Anne thought. She could feel the line between her eyes grow deep as it creased down the center. Phyllis Jones watched her thinking and added, “Anybody you hurt, lately, maybe?” Her voice became canny, as if she had figured it out.

“Well, I broke up with someone,” Anne said. She was looking off to the right, as if remembering the scene of the rupture itself.

“When would this have been?”

“It was two months ago.”

“And the notes started when?”

“Right after that! Oh, God! No, I can’t believe it would be him—he would never do anything to hurt me.

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