And You Will Find Love - Page 66/287

Two weeks later, Barbara went to see Gail. They sat and talked in the parlor of the small coach house in Evanston while Paul was in St. Louis.

"I moved, changed my phone number, and again had it unlisted, but Chet found me again," Barbara said. I don't want to go to the police. It wouldn't do any good to file a complaint that Chet Armstrong the Fourth is hounding me. Chet's rich and his father must have influence everywhere."

"I'll tell Paul," Gail said. "I know you've asked me not to, but maybe he can do something."

Barbara was adamant. "No, I don't want him to know. He might punch Chet out, or worse, and Chet would get back at him somehow. And Paul might somehow find out that Chet once tried to take you. I don't want him to ever know about that, or that Chet tried to do the same to me."

"Then what will you do?" Gail asked, feeling helpless. She held her stomach which had grown large with Paul's and her son or daughter kicking inside her.

Barbara had given it a lot of thought. The solution, or at least one she thought she had to try, came fairly soon to her.

It was living with the idea that took some time. But after Chet appeared at the apartment house she moved to after leaving the one he traced her to, and getting more annoying phone calls from him, she felt she had no other choice.

Barbara's words frightened her almost as much as they saddened Gail: "I've got to move away. Leave Chicago. Leave Illinois. Go somewhere he can't find me."