Obsessed With You

by Jennifer Ransom

  His mother had coffee and breakfast waiting in the kitchen. His father had just finished his breakfast and was reading the paper. During the growing season, he would be long gone by then. Aaron sat down across from his father, and his mother poured him a cup of coffee.

  “What’s got you so excited?” his mother asked. “You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”

  “I remembered something that might be important in all this mess,” he said. His father put the paper down and looked at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “Somebody I knew in my first office,” he said. “I don’t know how important it is, but I had forgotten it and now I remember it.”

  “Be careful, son,” his father said. His mother gave him his breakfast and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Just like I said,” she whispered.

  After breakfast, Aaron brushed his teeth and packed his bag. He hugged his parents hurriedly, then flew out the door. He was going back to Atlanta, back to Randy. He drove a little too fast and somewhat recklessly to the city.

  Randy looked up at him when he came through the door. The sunlight was streaming through, showing every bit of dust in its rays.

  “I thought you fired me,” Randy said.

  “I remembered something,” Aaron said ignoring Randy’s comment.

  “What’s that?”

  “When I was at my first firm, there was this woman who had only been working there about a week. I didn’t know her well at all.”

  “Was she attractive?” Randy asked.

  “Yes, she was very attractive, as I remember. But I didn’t really know her. And I was leaving the firm. But she was there at the bar that last night, when my coworkers took me out. She was there. And I think I slept with her.”

  “Thought you didn’t do one-night-stands,” Randy said.

  “I don’t. I didn’t. It was an unusual night. I was young and had too much to drink. I ended up going to a hotel down the street with her.”

  “What else?” Randy asked, giving Aaron his full attention.

  “I think we must’ve had sex. I remember being in the room with her and she took off my clothes and her clothes.”

  “What did she look like?”

  Aaron tried to bring the faint memories into his brain. He envisioned the woman at the table in the bar, the same one as in his dream. She had shoulder-length brown hair and he recalled her as being thin. She had a wide grin and a little mole on her upper right forehead. The dream had brought that little detail back to him. He couldn’t recall her eye color, if he’d even been able to determine it in the hazy light of the bar.

  “Did you ever see her again?” Randy asked.

  “No, but she called me on my cell phone. She must’ve gotten my number that night in the hotel room.”

  “What did she want when she called?” Randy asked, already knowing the answer.

  “She wanted to see me again, but I told her I wasn’t interested. When she called a couple of more times, I changed my number!” Aaron felt triumphant at having remembered all of that. He had completely put the woman out of his mind.

  “What was her name?” Randy asked.

  Aaron wracked his brain for the hundredth time since his dream, trying to remember her name. He couldn’t grasp it.

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “I want to say something like Marilyn or Martha. I don’t know why I think that.”

  “How about Marsha?” Randy said.

  Aaron felt like a brick hit him in the face.

  “Why do you say that?” Aaron asked. “How could you think that?”

  “What if I put a last name on it?” Randy said. “Marsha Dillinger. Ring any bells?”

  His last week at work and his party at the bar swam through his mind. Dillinger, like the gunslinger. Had he joked with her at the table that night about her name? It was sounding so familiar. He tried to grab the memory, but it eluded him. The harder he tried, the more it slipped from his grasp.

  “That sounds kind of familiar,” Aaron said. “How do you know that?”

  Randy turned to his computer. “Even though you fired me, I kept doing some research. I know you were pissed, but I wanted to get to the bottom of it; take your fiancé out of the loop of suspicion. Call it worker’s pride. I found out that your secretary was married very briefly to a man named Gardner several years back. Her maiden name was Dillinger.”

  Aaron stared at Randy at a loss for words.

  “I had suspicions about her, but couldn’t get anything to stick,” Randy said. “When you mentioned that mole just now, that was it. Look at this.”

  Aaron peered over at Randy’s screen, onto Marsha’s Facebook site. Her chubby face looked out at him, her dog up next to her cheek.

  “See that mole,” Randy said, pointing his finger at one of the photos. “Could this be the same woman?”

  Aaron stared at the photos. Marsha definitely had that same wide smile, but her face was so fat it was hard to find a thin person in there.

  “Marsha’s hair is blonde, not brown,” Aaron said. “And she’s fat.”

  “Hair can be dyed, my friend. People gain weight. She’s got the mole. She probably knew you wouldn’t recognize her like that. I’m guessing you’ve got something of a fatal attraction on your hands here.”

  “I don’t know,” Aaron said studying the photos.

  “Who can you call to verify?” Randy asked. “Anyone?”

  “There’s a guy who worked there during that time. He’s still there, as a matter of fact. I see him every now and then at conferences and stuff. I saw him a few months ago at a restaurant with his new wife.”

  “Was he at your party?”

  “Yes,” Aaron said. “I’ll call him. Can you get me the number of Beacon and Marks?”

  Randy found the number in an instant and called it out. With shaking hands, Aaron punched in the number. He stared at Randy while the phone rang.

  “David Winston,” he said into the phone.

  “Mr. Winston is out of town,” the secretary told him. “Can I take a message?”

  “I’m a colleague of Mr. Winston’s and I need to speak with him,” Aaron said. “Could you possibly call him on his cell and ask him to give me a call. It’s an important matter.”

  Aaron set his phone on Randy’s desk. “Now I’ve got to wait to hear back from him,” he said. “I don’t know who else I can call.”

  “I’ll order some sandwiches,” Randy said picking up his phone. “You’re paying.” He winked at Aaron.

  During the wait, Aaron began to regroup. If it turned out to be Marsha, his devoted secretary, who had done this to him, she was going to pay. He wasn’t sure what the laws were about it, but he was going to find out.

  Randy broke into his angry thoughts. “Did you tell Marsha about your sister?” Randy asked.

  “Yes,” Aaron said. “I told her one day when the power had gone out and we were just sitting around waiting for it to come back on. She started asking me about where I grew up and I ended up telling her about Allison. I trusted her. She was my secretary, dammit!” Aaron slammed his fist onto Randy’s desk.

  Randy ignored his burst of rage. “Now that you think back, did Marsha ever behave in a way that maybe wasn’t appropriate? Or maybe was suspicious?”

  Everything Marsha had ever done was suspect to Aaron now.

  “She was always hovering over me, wanting to touch me. Like straightening my tie before a meeting or. . . .” He trailed off, thinking. “She was always touching me, on my arm when we were talking or on my back as I went out the door. But touching me.”

  “Hmmm,” Randy said.

  “My mother told me she called her a couple of weeks ago to ask where I was,” Aaron said. “That was strange.”

  “Did Cathy say anything about the voice of the woman who called her, anything distinctive that might be linked to Marsha?”

  “She said she had a throaty laugh.”

  “I think I already know th
e answer to this,” Randy said, “but does Marsha have a throaty laugh?”

  “She sure does,” Aaron said, recalling the many times he had heard Marsha laugh. He’d never thought a thing about it, even after Cathy said that about the caller.

  The delivery person came with Reuben sandwiches, chips, and big plastic cups of sweet tea. Aaron gave him a twenty and told him to keep the change.

  Halfway through the Reuben, Aaron’s phone rang. He threw his sandwich on the plate and answered with his greasy fingers. It was David Winston.

  “Hey, man,” David said. “My secretary sent me a message that you called. Sorry to not get back right away. I was on the beach.”

  Aaron didn’t even ask David where he was, like he normally would have in polite conversation. There was nothing polite about his world now. He launched straight in.

  “When I left the firm, there was a woman who had just started working there. She was thin and had brown hair. I need to know her name.”

  “What’s up, buddy?” David asked.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later. I just need her name right now.”

  “If I’m thinking of the same person you are, her name was Marsha Dillinger. She worked there for about a year after you left. I’m not sure where she went after that.”

  “Thanks, David,” Aaron said. “I owe you one.”

  “Okay,” David said. “I trust you’ll tell me all about it when I get back to the States.”

  “I definitely will,” Aaron said. He ended the call and stood up. He shook Randy’s hand.

  “It’s her,” he said. “I’m going to take care of business now. Send me your bill. Thanks.”

  Aaron was so angry when he drove through the city that he nearly had a wreck when he pulled out in front of someone to get in another lane. The guy in the other car gave him the finger and Aaron waved his hand apologetically. Not that it did any good.

  He parked in the garage and stalked down the sidewalk to the building. He tried to calm down as the elevator took him up, but it was useless.

  Jeanie smiled at him when he entered the reception area, but he just waved her away. He stalked all the way down to Marsha’s office. He had forced his face into a placid demeanor by the time he walked in.

  Marsha seemed startled but pleased to see him. “What are you doing back in our neck of the woods?” she asked coyly.

  “I was thinking about that reference letter. I’d like to add something to it,” he said.

  “Oh,” Marsha seemed flattered that Aaron would go out of his way on a letter for her. She fished it out of the drawer beside her desk and handed it to him.

  Aaron accepted the letter and proceeded to tear it into shreds in front of Marsha’s horrified face. “Why are you doing that?” she sputtered.

  “I know what you did to me, Marsha,” Aaron said. “You’ll never have a good reference from me as long as you live. I’m going to pursue you as far as the law will allow me to.”

  Marsha held her hand to her chest. Her eyes were terrified. “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I’ve got the goods on you,” Aaron said. “You called Cathy and pretended to be someone I was having an affair with. And you stole my tie and took photos with it to send to her. Just to break us up, because in your demented mind you think that you and I can be together.”

  “I never thought that!” Marsha said indignantly.

  “Or, you were so pissed off at me for shunning you ten years ago that you decided to take revenge,” he said. “Either way, I’m going to sue you.”

  Marsha crumpled then and started sobbing. She looked at him with tears streaming from her eyes. “You couldn’t even do it!” she shouted. “The big man couldn’t even go all the way!”

  That was music to Aaron’s ears. He had passed out that night with her. Yes, she had stripped him and yes he was going to do it, probably tried to do it, but failed.

  Bob came out of Aaron’s old office. “What’s going on here?” he asked looking from Marsha to Aaron. Aaron went over to Bob and shook his hand. Bob looked completely confused.

  “I’m about to sue Marsha for defamation of character,” Aaron said. “If you’ve got any sense, you’ll get rid of her right now. She framed me.”

  “Marsha?” Bob said. “What’s this all about?”

  Marsha grabbed her purse and pushed past Bob and Aaron. She didn’t say a word as she ran down the corridor. Her photographs of Delilah still sat on her desk, and Aaron picked them up and threw them in the trash.

  “It’s a long story, Bob,” Aaron said. “And I’ll tell you all about it later. For now, just know that Marsha is the one who broke Cathy and me up. She called her and pretended to be some mysterious person having an affair with me. She’s an obsessed and crazy woman.”

  “Okay,” Bob said. “I trust what you’re telling me. I’ll make sure she doesn’t come back to work here.”

  Aaron shook Bob’s hand. He didn’t know what trouble Bob had gotten into financially, but if he could help him down the road, he would.

  Aaron got out of the city as fast as the traffic would allow. It was three o’clock by the time he got on the highway and could drive fast, all the way to the bay.

  It was Valentine’s Day.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cathy really did need to think about going to work, but somehow she didn’t feel ready for that. She had mentioned working as a waitress and cook at the B and B to Zachery once and he strongly voiced his opinion against it.

  “I’ll give you a job at the office,” he said. “You don’t need to be working your ass off trying to make a few bucks at the B and B.”

  Of course, now Cathy knew how Zachery felt about waitresses. He was not kind to them and blamed them for everything wrong with their meal, which was mostly imagined on his part. That had been a big red flag to her that she had let slide way too long.

  When she got back home that Monday from her lunch with Lindy, she called Zachery right away. She would have loved to procrastinate about it, but Valentine’s Day was looming and she couldn’t have him thinking she was keeping that date. Even though he was at work, she told him that she was breaking the date.

  “Aww, come on, Cathy,” Zachery said. “I thought we were gonna see how things went after Valentine’s.”

  “I know I said that, Zachery,” Cathy told him. “But now that I’ve thought about it without you here pressuring me, I know it’s not right to go. I’m just not ready for anything right now.”

  “You mean you’re not ready for me,” Zachery said. “Maybe you’re scared of your feelings for me.”

  Cathy was tired of pussyfooting around with Zachery.

  “No,” she said decisively. “I’m not scared of anything. I just know that this isn’t right. I’m not over my fiancé, and I don’t know if I ever will be.”

  “That guy’s an asshole,” Zachery said vehemently. “I can’t believe you’re still jonesing for him after what he did to you.”

  Cathy regretted telling Zachery about what happened with Aaron. She hadn’t told him every detail, but enough so that he knew why she left Aaron.

  “You can think what you want,” she said. “I’m sorry I ever trusted you with any information. I’m going to go now. Goodbye.”

  She ended the call before Zachery could say a word. She felt relieved that she had finally ended it with him.

  Zachery had distracted her from the real issue for a while, but she had to face it now. She still loved Aaron, even if she didn’t have all of the answers to what had happened between them. She admitted to herself that she loved him even if he had cheated on her and lied to her. She loved him even though he left her to play golf.

  But even though she loved him, it didn’t mean she should be with him. She knew that much.

  Over the next few days, Cathy stayed at home. She painted some window frames, a job she hated because it was so tedious. But it had to be done. Near the end of the week, she’d had enough of that and went over to her grandfather’s hou
se to make him a fried fish dinner.

  “I’m going up to the inn tomorrow night for Valentine’s Day,” her grandfather said as they were eating. “Want to come with me?”

  “I don’t think I’ll horn in on you and Eileen,” she said with a laugh. “I just want to be by myself.”

  Her grandfather looked at her for a moment. “Okay, honey. I think I understand that. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  On Valentine’s Day, Cathy woke up feeling depressed. She couldn’t stop thinking about Aaron and what they might be doing on this day, the first Valentine’s Day of their marriage. She did what she promised herself she wouldn’t: she went online and gazed at photos of Aaron. There were plenty of them, mostly from society events. And then there was the one on his firm’s page where he looked so handsome. She keyed in the page and clicked the link that said “Our People.” But Aaron’s photo wasn’t there. Bob’s photo was there and several other people she knew from the firm, but Aaron was gone.

  He left! There was no other explanation for it. But where did he go? Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming need to know where Aaron was. Her Google searches proved fruitless. She only found old listings, but nothing current about Aaron at all. If he had started his own company, which he had been hell-bent on doing, then she would have found something about it on the Internet. You couldn’t have a financial consultant business without being on the Internet.

  Cathy stared at the ceiling fan in her bedroom. It had been four months since she’d seen Aaron, but she still had some tears left. She cried into her pillow for several minutes before hauling herself up and dressing in jeans and a light sweater. She stuck her phone in her jeans pocket, part of it sticking out.

  The weather was cool, but not cold as Cathy walked out on the pier. It was a mostly a clear day with only a few wispy clouds in the sky. The bay was a deep blue, beckoning her. She went down the full length of the pier and stared out at the water. Boats floated in the distance and would make their way to her part of the bay soon.

  As she headed back toward her cottage, trying to decide how she was going to kill this most horrible of days, her phone slipped out of her pocket. She tried to grab it before it hit the pier, but she was too late. The phone hit the wood, then slid straight off the side of the pier into the dark water.