A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

I can’t help but notice how her word choice is a carbon copy of the
threatening texts I’ve been receiving. The language of the texts
returns to me. I know what you did. I hope you die. You’ll never get
away with it, bitch. I hope you rot in hell, Meredith.
Cassandra has been the one sending me these texts.
I wheel around to face her. “It was you,” I say, more shocked than
anything. There’s a tremor in my voice. “You’re the one who’s been
sending me those awful texts. You’re the one who’s been trying to
scare the shit out of me.”
“Did it work?” she asks, satisfied in herself because she can see
that it has.
“Were you following me?” I ask, aghast, thinking of the time a text
arrived just as I was leaving the hospital, as if the sender knew I was
on my way home and alone.
“If I was,” she asks, “would it be anywhere as awful as what you’ve
done? As what you’re still doing?”
I consider the threatening, hateful wording of the texts. Was she
hyperbolizing only or does she want me dead? Do I have a reason to
be scared for my safety, for my life?
“I’ve done nothing,” I say, trying to justify again how Marty and I
withheld the information about our past for her sake. For Josh’s. We
didn’t do it to hurt anyone. But I barely get the words out before the
door slams closed, a dead bolt slipping into place on the other side.
I won’t let Delilah play with Piper. Delilah begs, “Please, Mommy,
please.” She wants to know why.
When I tire of making excuses, I snap at her, “Because Mommy
said so,” feeling guilty for losing my patience with Delilah. It’s not her
fault. It’s mine. I can’t go outside and face Cassandra, but I also can’t
trust her to watch my child.
The next day they have Lily Morris over to play. Cassandra must
purposefully send the girls into the front yard to rub it in Delilah’s
face. She sits in the front window and cries, heartbroken that she
hasn’t been invited, not that I would have allowed her to go even if
she was. Piper and Lily dance around the front yard, laughing,