Mortal Danger

eyes, and kiss your wonderful lips. We always kissed so beautifully, We did it so perfectly. Waking up with you in my arms, holding you at night, Just being with you. Walking with you, giving you a hug. Just sharing life with you. What an incredible loss, knowingthis (likely) is the only life we will ever have to be together. To have found each other and now we no longer [are] experiencing all we have and feel for each other….
    My mind and feelings never stop. My every thought and every breath are painful. I am so alone, what a punishment I have imposed upon myself. What will happen to me now? I have no idea, I just live one day at a time, never knowing when or how it will end for me.
    I am glad you have a place to live (our house) and the support of Bill and Doris and your supportive group of family & friends. I have none of that. What I do have are all my thoughts and memories of us. I lost all my personal belongings at Bonnie’s. The only personal item I still have is the ring you gave me. I have always considered that my Wedding Ring from you. I still wear it and am loyal to you and have not been with anyone else. I love you always!…The next time in another time and place, I will do it right. You will know it’s me when I say “Connect With Me.”
    It was his time-tested clincher: “Connect With Me.”
    Kate felt goose pimples prickling on her arms, even though the day was warm. John believed that she was going to remain in the cottage, that she would come to understand his explanations for his violent behavior, and that she would surely connect with him and plead for a lighter sentence for him at the Curry County district attorney’s office.
    He clearly felt he still had the ability to control her, and he thought he was pulling all of her strings in this letter.
     
    Kate folded the pages and slipped them back into the envelope. John seemed convinced that she would stay in the cottage. That was good; she would have a better chance of moving to Orcas Island, and she and her dad could probably leave Gold Beach without John’s knowledge. John might be clever about pretending to be a police investigator, but if he had no idea where to start calling, or hadn’t followed close behind her, it wouldn’t do him any good.
    Before she left Oregon, Kate used one of John’s tricks. She wrote letters on Nepalese stationery to her friends and family, and sent them to a friend in Nepal to remail for her. “That way,” she pointed out, “if John showed up looking for me, my friends and relatives could show him the physical evidence that I was far, far, away living in Nepal.”
    In October, Kate and Mittens started their new life on Orcas Island. Her mother and father stayed for a month but left before Thanksgiving—long enough to realize, along with Kate, that the “cute” summer cottage was drafty and cold in the winter.
    She didn’t know anyone, and she was living under an alias—“Chris White.” But then she learned that on this lightly populated island, there was already a Chris White—a male optometrist. So she changed the spelling of her first name and became “Kris White.”
    On many days, she felt as though she was in a surreal world. “I didn’t know who to say I was,” she said. “I wouldintroduce myself as Kris. When I got to know people and was comfortable enough with them to mention my story, I told them my real name was Kate. But it was a really unsettling, confusing situation.”
    At American Airlines, Kate kept her real name, as well as her actual Social Security number; she was concerned that the government might not credit her with all the years she’d worked when it came time to collect her Social Security.
    “I finally decided that my name was basically all I had left, and I’d be damned if John Branden was going to take that away from me, too. He’d already taken my house, my new career, my mind, my soul, and almost my body!”
    After she went to great lengths to explain to American how dangerous it would be for her if John ever managed to find her, they agreed to protect her by putting DNGO [Do Not Give Out] next to all her information. They wouldn’t tell anyone that she even worked there, no matter what. That made her feel somewhat safer.
    “But it’s hard to get people to understand,” Kate said. “No one really does understand domestic violence unless they’ve experienced it themselves.”
    It was a long time before she could fly again. Her new rental had lots of