The Obsession

by Nora Roberts

  girlfriends today, but—”

  “Mama, I love doing this with you.”

  “It all went so fast. I see that now. It seemed so slow, and some days—and nights—lasted forever. But I see now, looking at you, so grown-up, how fast it all went. I wasn’t with you.”

  No, no, the sparkle was dying out. “You always were.”

  “No.” Susan laid her hands on Naomi’s cheeks. “I wasn’t. I’m really going to try to be. I . . . I’m sorry about the movie.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry.”

  “I love you so much.”

  “I love you back.”

  “I’m going to take the pink dress out to the saleslady, have her get started. You go on and change, then we’ll have lunch.”

  They bought the dresses, and shoes, and a pretty bag that sparkled—and made her mother smile again. At Naomi’s urging Susan bought herself a red sweater and suede boots. They came home flushed and exhausted, modeled everything all over again.

  When Naomi dropped into bed that night, she thought she’d had the best day of her life.

  October turned brisk, and the light Naomi loved best slanted gold over the burnished trees of the parks.

  To please her mother she wore the pink instead of the black to homecoming, and though it wasn’t a date, she asked Anson Chaffins, a friend—and the editor of the school paper—to pick her up.

  And saw the glimmer of tears in her mother’s eyes from joy instead of sorrow when she and Anson dutifully posed for pictures before she could get out of the house.

  On Halloween Susan dressed up as a flapper, coordinating with Seth and Harry in their zoot suits to hand out candy to the ghosts, goblins, princesses, and Jedi knights. As it was the first time Susan had dressed up for the holiday, Naomi browbeat Mason into spending part of the evening at home instead of out with his friends doing God knew what.

  “It’s like she’s turned a corner, and she’s really moving forward now.”

  Mason, who’d made himself into a vampire hobo, shrugged. “I hope you’re right.”

  Naomi gave him an elbow in the ribs. “Try to be happy because I am right.”

  But she wasn’t.

  —

  The third week of January, in a quick cold snap that blew in some thin snow, she rushed home at lunch. Anson came with her.

  “You didn’t have to come,” she said as she dug out her keys.

  “Hey, any excuse to get out of school for a half hour.”

  Anson Chaffins was a senior, gawky and on the geeky side, but he was, to Naomi’s mind, a good editor and a really good writer. Plus, he’d done her a favor at homecoming.

  He’d put what she thought of as half-assed, clumsy moves on her that night, but hadn’t pushed anything.

  As a result, they got along just fine.

  She let him in, turned to the alarm pad to key in the code.

  “I’ll go up, get my camera bag. Which I’d have had with me if you’d told me you wanted shots of the drama club rehearsing.”

  “Maybe I forgot so we could get out for thirty.” He grinned at her, shoved up his dark-framed glasses. He shoved them up constantly, as if his eagle-beak nose served as their sliding board.

  Behind them his eyes were pale, quiet blue.

  He glanced around. “Maybe you’ve got like a Coke or whatever. No point leaving empty-handed.”

  “Sure, we’ve always got Cokes. Do you remember where the kitchen is?”

  “Yeah. This house is totally cool. You want a Coke while I’m at it?”

  “Grab two.” She yanked off her gloves, stuffed them in the pocket of her coat.

  He gave her that half-smirking grin, the one that curled the side of his mouth. “Maybe you got chips?”

  She rolled her eyes, plucked off her cap. “Probably. Get whatever. I won’t be long.”

  “Take your time—we got twenty-five left on our pass. Hey! This yours?”

  He walked up to a black-and-white photo study of an old man dozing on a park bench with a floppy-eared mutt curled beside him.

  “Yeah. I gave it to Harry for his birthday a couple weeks ago. And he put it up right in the foyer.”

  “Excelente work, Carson.”

  “Thanks, Chaffins.”

  Amused—he called everyone by their last name, insisted everyone use his—she started upstairs.

  It surprised her to see Kong sitting outside her mother’s bedroom door. His habit was to wait in Mason’s room, or, in better weather, belly out through the dog door to sun on the patio—or do what he had to do in the corner designated for it.

  “Hey, boy.” She gave him a quick rub as she passed, glanced back when he whined. “No time. Just passing through.”

  But he whined again, scratched at her mother’s door. And Naomi felt something flutter and drop in her belly.

  “Is Mama home?” Had the good stretch come to a dip?

  Her mother should be at work, with Harry and Seth. There was, she knew, a party of twenty-two coming in for a retirement lunch, so it was all hands on deck.

  Naomi eased the door open, saw that the curtains had been drawn closed—a bad sign. And saw in the dim light her mother lying on top of the bed.

  “Mama.”

  She wore the red sweater they’d bought on their shopping spree rather than her white work shirt and black vest.

  Kong jumped on the bed—something he was only allowed to do in Mason’s room—licked her mother’s hand, and whimpered.

  Her mother lay so still.

  “Mama,” Naomi said again, and switched on the bedside lamp.

  So still, so pale—and her eyes weren’t quite shut.

  “Mama. Mama.” Naomi gripped Susan’s shoulder, shook. Took her hand, found it cold. “Mama! Wake up. Wake up!”

  The pills were right there, there by the lamp. No, not the pills, the bottle. The empty bottle.

  “Wake up!” Gripping her mother’s hands, she pulled. Susan’s head lolled, fell forward. “Stop it. Stop it.” She tried to get her arms around Susan, pull her off the bed.

  On her feet, on her feet, make her walk.

  “Hey, Carson, what the hell are you shouting about? You need to chill— What . . .”

  “Call an ambulance. Call nine-one-one. Hurry, hurry.”

  He stood frozen for a moment, staring as Susan’s limp body fell back on the bed, and her eyelids opened like shades to show the staring eyes behind them. “Wow. Is that your mom?”

  “Call nine-one-one.” Naomi laid an ear to her mother’s heart, then began to press on it. “She’s not breathing. Tell them to hurry. Tell them she took Elavil. Overdosed on Elavil.”

  Staring, he fumbled out his phone, punching in 911 with one hand, shoving up his glasses with the other, while Naomi did CPR, puffing out her breath as she worked.

  “Yeah, yeah, we need an ambulance. She overdosed on Eldervil.”

  “Elavil!”

  “Sorry, Elavil. Crap, Carson, I don’t know the address.”

  She called it out while tears ran down her cheeks, mixed with sweat.

  “Mama, Mama, please!”

  “No, she’s not awake, she’s not moving. Her daughter’s doing CPR. I-I-I don’t know. Maybe, um, like forty.”

  “She’s thirty-seven.” Naomi shouted it. “Just hurry.”

  “They’re coming.” Anson dropped down beside her, hesitated, then patted Naomi’s shoulder. “She—the operator—she said they were on the way. They’re coming.”

  He swallowed, moistened his lips, then touched his fingers to Susan’s hand.

  It felt . . . soft and cold. Soft like he could push his fingers through it. Cold like it had lain outside in the winter air.

  “Um, oh jeez, Carson. Ah, man, look, hey.” He kept one hand on Susan’s, put his other on Naomi’s shoulder again. “She’s cold, man. I think . . . I think she’s dead.”

  “No, no, no, no.” Naomi laid her mouth on her mother’s, blew in her breath, willed her to breathe back.

 
But there was nothing there. Like the pictures of the women in her father’s cellar, there was nothing left in the eyes but death.

  She sat back. She didn’t weep, not yet, but smoothed back her mother’s hair. There was no weight pressing on her chest, no churning in her belly. There was, as in her mother’s eyes, nothing.

  She remembered the feeling—the same as when she’d swum through the air toward the sheriff’s office on that hot summer dawn.

  In shock, she thought. She was in shock. And her mother was dead.

  She heard the bell, got slowly to her feet. “I need to go let them in. Don’t leave her alone.”

  “Okay. I’ll, um . . . Okay.”

  She walked out—sort of like sleepwalking to Anson’s eyes. He looked back at the dead woman.

  They wouldn’t get back to school in thirty.

  Five

  She wore the black dress to her mother’s funeral. She’d never been to a funeral before, and this was more a memorial as there would be no burial.

  Seth sat down with her and Mason to talk about that. Did they want to take their mother back to Pine Meadows to bury her?

  No, no, no.

  Did they want to find a cemetery in New York?

  It surprised her how firm Mason had been. No cemetery here either. If she’d been happy in New York, she’d still be alive.

  So they’d had her cremated, and in the spring, they’d rent a boat and send her ashes to the air and the sea.

  There were tears, of course, but for Naomi they came from rage as much as grief.

  She had to talk to the police. For the second time in her life, the police came to her home, went through her home, asked questions.

  “I’m Detective Rossini. I’m so sorry for your loss. I know this is a very difficult time, but I have some questions. Can I come in, talk to you?”

  Naomi knew that some cops on TV and in the movies were female and pretty, but she’d assumed that was mostly made up. But Rossini looked like she could play a detective on TV.

  “Okay.”

  She’d gone to her room because she didn’t know what else to do, not with all the police, with Seth and Harry talking to them. And with her mother . . .

  Rossini came in, sat on the side of the bed, facing Naomi, who sat in her desk chair with her knees folded up to her chin.

  “Can you tell me why you came home today, why you and your friend weren’t in school?”

  “We got a pass to come home, get my camera. We work on the school newspaper. I’m supposed to take pictures of rehearsal—the drama club. Is he still here? Is Chaffins—Anson—here?”

  “My partner already talked to him. We had him taken back to school.”

  “He’ll tell everybody.” Naomi pressed her face to her knees. “He’ll tell everybody about my mother.”

  “I’m sorry, Naomi. Can you tell me what happened when you got home?”

  “Chaffins wanted a Coke, so I told him to go get a couple of them while I went up for my camera. And Kong—our dog—Kong was outside my mother’s room. He kept whining. He usually stays in Mason’s room or in the courtyard when we’re at school, but . . . Her door was closed, and I opened it. I thought . . . I thought she was sleeping or not feeling well. I couldn’t wake her up, and I saw the pills. I mean the empty bottle. Chaffins came upstairs, and I told him to call nine-one-one. I tried CPR. We took a class, and I knew how. I tried, but I couldn’t make her breathe.”

  “She was on the bed when you went in.”

  “I tried to get her up, to wake her up enough to walk. If she’d taken too many pills, I could make her walk, and get her to the hospital.”

  “She’d done that before? Taken too many pills?”

  Naomi just nodded with her face pressed against her knees.

  “When did you see her last, before you came home from school?”

  “This morning. Harry fixed breakfast, but she didn’t come down for it. I went upstairs, and she was just getting up. She seemed fine. She said she had some errands to run before she went to work, and she’d get breakfast later. She said, ‘Have a good day at school.’”

  She looked up then. “My brother. My brother, Mason.”

  “Your uncle’s gone to the school to get him. Don’t worry.”

  “Do you know who my father is?”

  “Yes, Naomi, I do. And I know that for the second time in your life you had to face something no one should ever have to.”

  “Will everyone know now? Even though we changed our names, will everyone know?”

  “We’re going to do the best we can to keep that out of the press.” Rossini waited a moment. “Do you know how often your mother and your father communicated?”

  “She wrote to him, and went to see him a few times, too, since we moved to New York. Mason found out, and he told me. She pretended she wasn’t, but she was. We didn’t tell Uncle Seth or Harry. The movie—she talked to the movie people because he wanted her to. Mason found that out, too. But she’d been trying really hard, and for a couple months or more, she’d been doing good. She’d been happy. Happier. I don’t guess she’s ever been happy since that night I found . . .”

  “All right. Your uncle said he’d call your grandparents, and Mr. Dobbs is right downstairs. Do you want me to have him come up, stay with you?”

  “No, not right now. Ma’am? You asked about them communicating. Did Mama talk to him today? This morning?”

  “I don’t believe your mother and father spoke today.”

  “But there’s something. He wrote something to her, didn’t he? Something that had her coming home, after she’d been doing so well, and taking those pills.”

  “We’re asking questions so we can give you answers,” Rossini said as she rose.

  “You have some. I didn’t see a note in her room. I wasn’t looking. I was trying to . . . I didn’t see a note, but she had to write one. She had to say good-bye.” The sob wanted to rip out of her chest. “However sad she was, she loved us. She did. She’d say good-bye.”

  “I’m sure she loved you. She did leave a note, addressed to all of you. It was in your uncle’s room. She put it on his dresser.”

  “I want to see it. I have a right to read it. It was addressed to me. I want to read what she wrote before she took those pills and left us.”

  “Your uncle said you would. Wait here.”

  What had he done? Naomi wondered, and the rage began to root. What had he done to make her mother so sad, so fast? So fatally?

  She stood up when Rossini came back in. She wouldn’t read this last thing her mother said to her curled in a chair, but on her feet.

  “You’ll need to read it through the evidence bag. It still needs to be processed.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Naomi took the bag, stepped to the window and the thin winter light.

  I’m so sorry. I made so many mistakes, so many bad choices, told so many lies. I told lies to the people who deserved me to tell the truth. I told them because he said I should. No matter how many times I tried to break free, I just couldn’t. Now he has, after all the mistakes I made, all the hurt I caused because Tom said I should. He’s divorcing me so he can try to marry some other woman. One who’s been writing him and coming to see him for more