the truth. So, if it’s no inconvenience, do you think the two of you could come to dinner Friday? Let me know as soon as possible. And thank you, Liz.
Sincerely,
Garret
The email address contained Garret Sloan’s name and was registered with Yahoo. It was not Garret’s email address, but it certainly looked like it could have been. Garret didn’t write the email and was not aware of its existence. It had, in fact, been written for Dave Kroupa’s benefit. Liz showed Dave the email she claimed Garret had sent her, along with her brusque reply to him: One, Friday is Dave’s date night—or alone night without me. Second, I really don’t want to double date with you and Cari. You two haven’t even met yet.
In the bizarre, alternate universe where Garret’s cyber-double was developing a romantic interest in “Cari,” the two apparently met two days later, after Liz had coolly pointed out to “Garret” that he and “Cari” had yet to meet. If the email sent to David on January 5 was any indication, the set up between the digital versions of Garret and Cari was working beautifully: So, Cari is here and said I had to email you. So, me and Liz talked a while ago about you, and what she was looking for. So, I just want to say she deserves someone good. She has been hurt so much the last 10 years from abusive to verbal-abusive relationships. I know it’s not my place to say shit, plus Liz isn’t talking to me, and this will piss her off more. Well, Cari won’t let it go, and you know how it is when a beautiful woman asks you to do something. All I ask is that you don’t hurt her, and if you don’t want her, to let her go. I am not going to tell you to leave her or anything. So, what is going on with you and my girl?
Garret
Garret was unaware emails were being sent in his name, and Dave gave them little thought. Dave was a drowning man, swept away in a deluge of words, a tsunami of bizarre emails and text messages that washed over him in an inexplicable, never-ending wave of hate. He could make no sense of “Cari’s” motives, and the weird emails from “Garret” had all the impact of a drop of rain on a sinking swimmer.
It didn’t dawn on Dave that Liz had written the emails from Garret, just as he didn’t guess that she was behind the thousands of threats. In reality, Liz was having a grand time dreaming up nightmares for the men in her life. Dave was no more plotting to sic the stalker on Garret than Garret was sending Dave emails because “you know how it is when a beautiful woman asks you to do something.”
When we scrutinize Liz’s concoctions with the wisdom of an outsider’s retrospect, they quickly disintegrate as fakes, particularly in the case of the Garret letters. What man proposes setting up a double date so that he can see if his new love interest still has feelings for another? It’s the kind of scheme a pair of giggling preteen girls might come up with, not a forty-year-old man. And why would a casual male friend of Liz’s write to Dave, begging him to treat her right? For someone so good at manipulating males, Liz had some curious gaps in her understanding of them. What was Liz trying to accomplish with the Garret letters? While it’s possible she had a complex plan that went beyond the obvious, a reasonable guess at her motive suggests two goals. One, she hoped Dave would take to heart “Garret’s” plea for him to treat her better. Maybe it would be just the nudge needed to inspire him to embrace his true, deep feelings and finally commit to her.
Also, Liz hoped that the letters from Garret would confirm for Dave that Cari was alive. If he believed Cari was hanging out with Garret, then he’d have no reason to suspect she had died. While Dave showed no sign that he doubted the stalker’s identity, Liz needed to make sure that he would never question that. So far, Dave had told the police exactly what Liz had wanted him to. He had unwittingly served as her alibi. He was so sure Cari was terrorizing him, that he spoke of it as fact, with all the certainty of an eyewitness.
While the phony emails that Liz had written in Garret’s name