It’s Thursday.
He goes on Tuesdays. I know this. I have data.
Maybe his schedule changed. Maybe he goes every day. Maybe he never goes at all anymore because that restaurant is a crime scene and a bad memory.
Maybe I’m about to drive four and a half hours for nothing.
I should call Saul.
I should absolutely call Saul and tell him I’m having a mental health crisis and need him to talk me down from doing something catastrophically stupid.
I don’t call Saul.
I shower. Dress. Jeans, plain shirt, nothing memorable. Find a hat. Add sunglasses even though the sun isn’t up yet.
There. Disguised. I look like a suburban mom avoiding someone from PTA, not a federal witness about to violate literally every rule of witness protection.
I grab my keys. My phone. The containers of cookies and candy. Stand in my kitchen surrounded by the smell of butter and bad decisions.
This is insane. This is genuinely unhinged behavior.
I’m going anyway.
I get in my car. Set the containers carefully on the passenger seat like they’re precious cargo and not evidence of my complete psychological collapse.
GPS: Carmine’s Restaurant, Fifth Street.
4 hours 32 minutes.
It’s not even Tuesday. It’ll only be lunchtime when I get there. He probably won’t even be there. This is a four-and-a-half-hour drive to stalk a restaurant on the wrong day of the week.
I pull out of the parking lot anyway.
The highway is empty at this hour. Just me and a handful of long-haul truckers who’ve made better life choices.
My brain tries to catch up with what my body already decided.
You’re driving to see Dario.
You’re violating witness protection.
Saul is going to find out.
You’re going to get caught and relocated again and this time you’ll be blonde in Nebraska.
But my hands stay steady on the wheel. My foot stays on the gas.
Because Dario is out there.
And I’m not.
I’m Beth Taylor, entering medical billing codes in a beige apartment, slowly fading into nothing.
And he’s Dario Marchetti, eating pasta and living his life and walking free.
And I just need to see him.
Once.
