The last thing I should be doing right now is pursuing a relationship. How can I? I don’t even feel safe getting groceries. I certainly can’t take Mia out the way I’d like to. I’m still looking over my shoulder all the time, waiting for the next “accident” that feels all too intentional.

I know I’m just being paranoid, but in the weeks following that last big fight with Calvin, it had happened three times. There hadn’t been anything I could prove, and I still can’t, but it had all seemed like far too much to be a coincidence.

First, there had been the scaffolding at one of our warehouses that had come apart and toppled with me on top of it just as soon as I’d reached the top. Sure, it was old and needed work. It was just old, I’d told myself at the time. But it had also fallen right when I was on it and the first time I’d been in that warehouse in months as part of a trip that had been planned weeks in advance. Luckily, I had grabbed a shelving unit and pulled myself to a ladder on the other end of the wall or my limbs might have been just as shattered at the scaffolding bits.

Then there had been the incident with my car, a fault in my brake line that had sent me squealing towards an overpass, unsure if I’d stop in time. The mechanic had said it looked like the brake line had worn out. Maybe it had. I’m sure it had. That sort of damage can happen at any time. It causes accidents every day. But I’d just gotten the car inspected, complete with new brakes, earlier that year. I usually left the car locked in my garage, but Calvin has broken into my house drunk more than once in the past, and I know he has so-called friends who are capable of much worse.

When an entire wall filing cabinet unit had crashed onto my desk just two days later, only missing me because I’d gotten up to refill my coffee, I couldn’t shake the feeling anymore. They were all things that could be accidents. All things that would have looked like freak accidents had they actually killed me. Like really convenient, tragic, random accidents. And I just couldn’t get that fight that Sunday afternoon out of my head every time one happened. It looked like Calvin was carrying his threat through and it wasn’t just something he’d said in anger. Like maybe he really had wanted me dead.

I knew I was talking crazy, thinking like that. Of course, they’d been freak accidents and nothing more, just a string of bad luck on top of my terrible year thus far with the company and the music festival PR debacle. But I’d decided I need to leave to get some space. I thought if I left, Calvin might see some sense and stop his behavior. I didn’t want to turn my suspicions over to the police. I didn’t really have anything to go on other than a hunch and a childish shouting match, and most likely all I’d end up doing would be hurting my father and making things with Calvin so much worse, accusing him of trying to do something as outlandish as conspire to commit murder against his own brother. I shuddered to think of what he’d tell those magazine interviewers, the PR mess I’d have to clean up for the company if I made a scene and it turned out to be nothing. If anything, the paranoia was surely a sign I needed time away from the company to let the whole situation fizzle out and hope Calvin would finally start to grow up a little in the interim without me to lean on.

So, I’d told everyone I was taking a leave from the company and finally, finally going on that months-long backpacking trip my friend Todd had wanted us to take since college. Todd lives off the grid, no social media, no real contact with a lot of people other than the ones he meets on his world travels, so I knew he’d be a safe cover story. No one would be expecting me to be posting Facebook pictures of the exotic sights I was seeing if I were with Todd, and I’d hoped the absence would be enough of a statement to Calvin about how serious I was about being done with his behavior.

I told my father that work was starting to make me so stressed that I was getting anxiety and I needed the time away for my mental health. I didn’t tell him anything about Calvin.

I’m hard on myself now, thinking about how I should have handled it differently, but I’m not sure how I could have done so. I don’t know how a confrontation wouldn’t end with one or both of us getting hurt over what’s probably nothing, and I don’t know how involving anyone else wouldn’t destroy the family and maybe the whole company. I can’t imagine what the press would make of a brother-versus-brother episode of violence. I don’t want to imagine it.

But the interviews Calvin has given since I left make it clear he hasn’t let it go, and it’s frustrating me more with each one. Little jabs about me to the press, some of them almost sounding like threats, are made constantly. Comments like, Well, Julia, I think everyone can agree that I’m the future of whiskey or we’ve shaved off some of the dead weight around here lately are played off as jokes, but that I can’t help but think are meant for me. Like he knows I might be reading them and he wants me to know he’s still after me.

It’s not fair to Mia to bring her into a situation like that. Not only can I not take her out or even see her – it could be dangerous for her, too. I’m sure if Calvin knew I was seeing somebody, it would make Mia a target. I can’t subject her to that.

But I can’t get her off my mind.

Lately, I feel like Mia is all I can think about. Like she’s in my thoughts all the time no matter what I’m focusing on. Talking to her is my favorite part of every day. It’s been giving me something to look forward to, to fill my days here in this cabin that’s getting lonelier the longer I’m away. It’s starting to feel more like a stakeout than a mental-health retreat.

Maybe there is some way to talk to my brother and just end this so I can date Mia. So, I can stop hiding and things at the company can finally go back to normal, or at least however normal a day with Calvin around could ever be.

I know I should wait until I know what that answer is before I take things any farther with Mia, but I don’t want things to stop.