Posted on my Twitter feed:
And there is more:
A tweet saying we should put guns to our heads and kill ourselves.
A tweet saying we should never have children because we’ll contaminate the gene pool.
A tweet of a crematorium at a concentration camp and the message: I’ll light the match.
A tweet with a photo of a lynching and the message YOU’RE NEXT.
They’re anonymous. Faceless. Hateful people. My hands tremble on the keyboard. I report each one.
I check the time. Dad went out to dinner with a colleague. Should I call him to come home? I want to, but he rarely goes out. I know I come first, but he’s due back within the hour. I can wait, right? I’ll give it a few more minutes, then decide.
I return to Twitter. For the hundredth time, I tell myself to shut down my laptop. But I have this obsessive sick need to know.
Somewhere, there’s a monster disguised as a human being who wants to put a bullet into our brains.
Dead. It reverberates in my head like a plucked wire. Dead.
Goose bumps rise on my arms. Gripped with fear, I stare out the breakfast nook bay window and scan the night, jumping at every shifting shadow. I close the curtains, grab my laptop off the table, and slide to the floor.
Who posted these comments? Someone wearing a white sheet and a hood? Or maybe the white supremacists I saw on TV, marching in Charlottesville, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” It’s easier to believe it’s a man or a woman far away, but it could be someone right here in Riviere.
I shudder. What if these people know where we live? I locked the doors, right? I set my laptop aside and crawl across the kitchen floor, making sure to stay way below the sightline of the bay window. Reaching up, I turn the stairwell doorknob and peek through the crack. I race down the stairs, yank on the door. Locked. Of course it’s locked.
I dash from window to window, pulling down shades, drawing curtains. I run back to the kitchen, grab my phone, laptop, a quart of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, and a spoon.
Safe in my room, I refresh the screen. There are now 132 comments. Lissa had said the article might garner attention. But I never imagined this! I call Cade. It goes right to voicemail. Arrgh! Why can’t he ever leave his phone on?
Should I call the inn? I doubt he even knows that the article was published. It wasn’t supposed to post until tomorrow. Oh God. Did he tell his parents? I hope he told his parents.
My phone rings. But it’s not Cade. My heartbeat kicks up a notch. It’s my neighbor: Police Officer Shawn Sullivan.