He brought it up over eggs.
I was standing at the stove when he came downstairs, already dressed, already composed, like the previous night had been filed away under things we weren't going to discuss directly. He poured himself coffee. He sat down. He waited until I set the plate in front of him before he spoke.
'About last night.' He cut into his eggs. 'The footage was—look, I hear you. But smashing her phone, Lara. In front of her. That's the thing people are going to remember.'
I sat down across from him.
'She staged a suicide attempt,' I said.
'She was upset. People do extreme things when they're upset.' He set down his fork. 'The point is, Imran called me this morning. He's concerned about how I'm handling the situation. And honestly—' He paused, choosing the word carefully. 'Honestly, I think an apology from you would go a long way toward putting this to rest.'
I looked at him.
He looked back at me with the patient expression of a man who believed he was being reasonable.
'She's fragile,' he said. 'You know that. Whatever her methods were, she genuinely spiraled, and you walked in and destroyed her property and—'
'She used my photos without my consent,' I said. 'She faked a crisis to make me look responsible for it. And you want me to apologize.'
'For the phone.' He picked up his fork again. 'For the aggression. For workplace harmony.'
Workplace harmony.
I straightened my coffee mug so the handle pointed exactly right. I thought about the footage. Baylee laughing on the dock. Baylee smoothing her hair. Baylee typing with both thumbs before the tears had even dried.
'Okay,' I said.
He looked up, surprised by how quickly I'd agreed. He didn't know me well enough anymore to understand that quick agreement was never a good sign.
'Good,' he said. 'I'll set it up for this afternoon.'
---
The apology took four minutes.
I kept my voice even. I said I regretted the way I'd handled the situation. I said I understood she'd been in a difficult emotional state. I said I hoped we could move forward professionally.
Baylee received it with her eyes slightly wet, her hands folded in her lap, her head tilted at the exact angle that read as gracious on camera.
I didn't know there was a camera until the next morning, when Nadia posted the clip with the caption: *She finally did the right thing. Healing is possible.*
Two hundred thousand views by noon. The comments were generous toward Baylee. Several called me robotic. One said I looked like I was reading from a script.
I added the screenshot to my folder. I made a note of the date.
Then I went and bought a new notebook.
---
The first call came eleven days later. 2:17 a.m.
I felt Dario's side of the bed shift. Heard him moving in the dark, phone already pressed to his ear, voice dropping to something low and careful. He was dressed and out the door in under six minutes.
He said, when he got back at 4:50 a.m., that Baylee had heard something outside her apartment. That she'd been scared. That she hadn't wanted to call the police because of the attention it would bring.
I wrote it down. *October 4th. 2:17 a.m. Stated reason: noise outside apartment. Duration: 2 hrs 33 min.*
I didn't say anything. I closed the notebook and put it in the drawer under my winter sweaters.
---
The stalker appeared three weeks later. A man, supposedly, who'd been leaving notes under her windshield wiper. She had screenshots of the notes. She had a voicemail she played for Dario over the phone while I sat across the dinner table and watched his face go tight with concern.
He left at 11:40 p.m. He came back at 2:15 a.m.
I wrote it down.
---
By December, the pattern had its own rhythm. A crisis would surface—always at night, always something that required his physical presence rather than a phone call, always something that couldn't wait. A panic attack. A strange car parked outside. A text from an unknown number. Once, memorably, a gas smell she couldn't locate.
Dario always went. He never asked me if I minded. I think he'd stopped registering that there was someone to ask.
Seventeen times in three months. I know because I counted. Date, time, stated reason, duration. The handwriting in the notebook got smaller as the weeks went on, more compressed, like I was trying to take up less space on the page.
I never confronted him. Not once.
I just documented everything.
I'd learned something from watching Baylee work. The people who react are the ones who get photographed. The people who record are the ones who win.
I wasn't ready to win yet. But I was getting ready.
I straightened the notebook in the drawer. I finished my coffee.
I waited.
