The Obsession (4 page)

She looked sick, like she’d been sick for days, and bad sick so it had eaten away at her. She looked thinner than she had when Naomi had gone to bed the night before. And her eyes were all red, swollen, and tears still stood in them. Her hair was every which way, like she hadn’t taken a brush to it, and she wore the baggy, faded pink dress she mostly wore for garden chores.

Naomi got shakily to her feet, wanting nothing more at that moment than to press her face to her mother’s breast, find comfort there, find promises she’d pretend to believe there.

But the tears just rolled out of her mother’s eyes, driven by guttural sobs. She sank right down to the floor, covered her face with her hands.

So the child went to the mother, gathered her in, stroked and soothed. “It’ll be all right, Mama. We’ll be all right.”

“Naomi, Naomi. They’re saying terrible things about your daddy. They’re saying you’re saying them.”

“We’ll be all right.”

“They can’t be true. This can’t be true.” Susan pulled back, grabbed Naomi’s face in her hands, and spoke fiercely. “You imagined it. You had a bad dream.”

“Mama. I saw.”

“No, you didn’t. You have to tell them you made a mistake.”

“I didn’t make a mistake. Ashley—the girl he had—she’s in the hospital.”

“She’s lying. She has to be lying. Naomi, he’s your daddy, he’s your
blood
. He’s my husband. The police, they’re going all over our house. They put your daddy in handcuffs and took him away.”

“I cut the ropes off her myself.”

“No, you didn’t. You’re going to stop this lying right
now
, and tell everybody how you made it all up.”

A dull throb filled Naomi’s head so her own voice sounded flat and hollow through it.

“I pulled the tape off her mouth. I helped her get out of the cellar. She could hardly walk. She didn’t have any clothes.”

“No.”

“He raped her.”

“Don’t you say such a thing.” Her voice pitching high, Susan shook Naomi. “Don’t you dare.”

“There were pictures on the wall. A lot of pictures, of other girls, Mama. There were knives with blood dried on them, and rope, and—”

“I don’t want to hear this.” Susan clamped her hands over her ears. “How can you say all this? How can I believe all this? He’s my husband. I lived with him for fourteen years. I bore him two children. I slept in the same bed, night after night.”

The fierceness shattered, like glass. Susan dropped her head on Naomi’s shoulder again. “Oh, what are we going to do? What’s to become of us?”

“We’ll be all right,” Naomi said again, helplessly. “We’ll be all right, Mama.”

—

T
hey couldn’t go home. Not until the police and now the FBI cleared it so they could. But Lettie brought them all clothes and their own toothbrushes and so on, and made her guest room theirs—hers and her mother’s—with Mason bunking in with her son.

The doctor gave her mother something to make her sleep, and that was good. Naomi took a shower, put her own clothes on, tied her hair back, and felt more herself.

When she walked across the hall from the bathroom and cracked open the door to check on her mother, she saw her little brother sitting on the bed.

“Don’t wake her!” Naomi hissed, then felt bad for the sharp order when he turned his head to look at her.

He’d been crying, too, and his face was splotchy from it, his eyes red-rimmed on the outside, lost on the inside.

“I’m just watching her.”

“Come on out, Mason. If she wakes up, she’ll start crying again.”

He did what she said without arguing—a rare thing—and then walked straight into her, wrapped his arms tight.

They didn’t hug much anymore, but it felt good to have somebody to hold on to, so she hugged back.

“They came right into the house, and we were still sleeping. I heard Daddy yelling, and other people, and I ran out. I saw Daddy fighting with the deputy, and they pushed him against the wall. Mama was screaming and crying, and they put handcuffs on Daddy, just like on the TV. Did he rob a bank? Nobody will tell me.”

“No, he didn’t rob a bank.”

If they went downstairs, Miss Lettie would be there, so instead she sat down with her brother on the floor.

“He hurt people, Mason. Ladies.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but he did.”

“Maybe it was their fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. He took them to a place in the woods, and locked them up and hurt them.”

“What place?”

“A bad place. They have to put him in jail for it.”

“I don’t want Daddy to go to jail.” The tears started up again. All she could do was wrap an arm around his shoulders.

“He did bad things to people, Mason. He has to go to jail.”

“Does Mama have to go to jail?”

“No, she didn’t hurt anybody. She didn’t know he was hurting people. Don’t go pestering her about it. And don’t go fighting either. People are going to say things about Daddy, and you’re going to want to fight about it, but you can’t. Because what they’re going to say is true.”

His face went belligerent. “How do you know what’s true?”

“Because I saw, because I know. I don’t want to talk about it anymore right now. I talked about it enough today. I wish it was over. I wish we were someplace else.”

“I wanna go home.”

She didn’t. She didn’t ever want to go back to that house again, knowing what was back in the deep woods. Knowing what had lived in those same rooms, eaten at the same table.

“Miss Lettie says they’ve got Nintendo down in their family room.”

Belligerence changed to a look of hope mixed with doubt. “Can we play it?”

“She said we could.”

“Do they have Donkey Kong?”

“We can find out.”

They didn’t have video games at home—or a computer—but they both had enough friends who did to know the basics. And she knew Mason dearly loved video games. It was simple to set him up in the family room with Miss Lettie’s help—and better yet when she hard-eyed her teenage son into playing with Mason.

“I’m going to make some lemonade. Why don’t you come in the kitchen with me, Naomi, give me a hand with that?”

The house was so nice. Clean and pretty, with lots of colors on the walls and in the furniture. She knew Mr. Harbough taught English and literature at the high school, and Miss Lettie worked for the sheriff. But the house looked
rich
to her.

And the kitchen had a dishwasher—which was her name at home—and a counter of snowy white in the middle with a second sink right in it.

“Your house is so nice, Miss Lettie.”

“Why, thank you. It makes me happy. I want you to be comfortable while you’re here.”

“How long will we be here, do you think?”

“A day or two, that’s all.” Lettie put sugar and water in a pot to boil. “You ever made lemonade from scratch?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It’s a treat. Takes a while, but it’s worth it.”

Lettie puttered around. Naomi noted she didn’t wear an apron but just tucked a dish towel in the waist of her pants. Daddy didn’t like Mama to wear pants. Women were supposed to wear skirts and dresses.

Thinking of it, of her father, hearing his voice in her head, made her stomach tie itself up again. So she made herself think of something else.

“Miss Lettie, what do you do at the sheriff’s office?”

“Why, honey, I’m the first woman deputy in Pine Meadows, and still the only one after six years.”

“Like Deputy Wayne.”

“That’s right.”

“So you know what happens next. Will you tell me what happens next?”

“I can’t say for certain, as the FBI’s in charge now. We assist them. They’re going to gather up evidence, and take statements, and your daddy will have a lawyer. A lot of the next depends on the evidence and the statements, and what your daddy says and does. I know it’s hard, but it’d be best if you try not to worry about all that just yet.”

“I can’t worry about Daddy.” She’d already figured that out. But . . . “I have to take care of my mama, and Mason.”

“Oh, baby girl.” Lettie sighed, and after giving the pot a stir, she came around the counter. “Somebody’s got to take care of you.”

“Mama won’t know what to do without Daddy telling her. And Mason won’t understand what Daddy did. He doesn’t know what rape is.”

On another sigh, Lettie pulled Naomi into a hug. “It’s not for you to hold everybody else up. Where’s your mother’s brother now? Where’s your uncle Seth?”

“In Washington, D.C. But we’re not allowed to have anything to do with him because he’s a homosexual. Daddy says he’s an abomination.”

“I knew your uncle Seth. He was a couple years behind me in school. He didn’t seem like an abomination to me.”

“The Bible says . . .” It made her head and her heart hurt, what the Bible said—or what Daddy said it said. No, she couldn’t worry about that now. “He was always so nice to us. He has a nice laugh, I remember. But
Daddy said he couldn’t come visit anymore, and Mama wasn’t to talk to him on the phone.”

“Would you like him to come?”

Just that, just those words made Naomi’s throat slam shut so she could only nod.

“All right, then. When I take the syrup off the stove to cool, I’ll see about getting in touch with him. Then I’m going to show you how to squeeze lemons. That’s the fun part.”

She learned how to make lemonade from scratch and ate a grilled cheese sandwich—a combination that would forever become her comfort food of choice.

As her mother slept through the day, Naomi, for the first time in her life, begged for chores. Lettie let her weed the flower garden out back, and the vegetable patch, and put fresh seed in the bird feeders.

When she was done, Naomi gave in to fatigue, stretched out on the grass in the shade, and slept.

She woke with a start, just as she had in the night. Something, there was something.

She sat up fast, heart pounding, half expecting her father to be standing over her with a rope in one hand, a knife in the other.

But the man who sat in the shade with her on a summer chair wasn’t her father. He wore khaki pants and loafer shoes without any socks, and as her gaze traveled up, a bright blue shirt with a little man on a horse where a pocket might have been.

He had her eyes, that medicine bottle green, in a face smooth and handsome as a movie star, all topped with waving brown hair under a Panama hat.

“I fell asleep.”

“Nothing better than a nap in the shade on a summer afternoon. Do you remember me, Naomi?”

“Uncle Seth.” Her heart hurt, but not a bad kind of hurt. She feared she might faint again, though it didn’t feel the same as before, but everything felt light and bright.

“You came. You came,” she said again, then crawled right into his lap, weeping and grasping. “Don’t leave us. Please don’t leave us, Uncle Seth. Please, please.”

“I won’t, I won’t leave you, baby girl. I promise you. You stop worrying right now, because I’m here, and I’ll take care of you.”

“You gave me a pink party dress.”

He laughed, and the sound eased the ache in her heart even as he pulled a snowy white handkerchief out of the pocket of his khakis and dabbed at her tears.

“You remember that? You weren’t more than six.”

“It was so pretty, so fancy and fine. Mama’s sleeping. She just keeps sleeping.”

“It’s what she needs right now. Look how tall you are! Those long legs. Got ’em scratched up some.”

“It was dark in the woods.”

His arms tightened around her. He smelled so good, like lime sherbet. “It’s not dark now, and I’m here. As soon as we can, you’re coming home with me. You, Mason, your mama.”

“We’re going to Washington, D.C., to stay with you?”

“That’s right. With me and my friend Harry. You’ll like Harry. He’s in playing Donkey Kong with Mason, getting acquainted.”

“Is he a homosexual?”

Something rumbled in Seth’s chest. “Why yes, he is.”

“But a nice one, like you.”

“I think so, but you’ll judge for yourself.”

“I’m supposed to start back to school soon. Mason, too.”

“You’ll go to school in D.C. Is that all right with you?”

Relief nearly made her faint again, so she only nodded. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Miss Lettie, she’s been real nice. And Deputy Wayne. And the sheriff, too. He gave me his number so I could call if I needed. But I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“As soon as we can, we won’t be.”

“I don’t want to see Daddy. I don’t want to see him. I know that’s bad, but—”

He drew her back. “It’s not bad, and don’t ever think that. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

“Will you tell Mama? She’s going to want me to, me and Mason. I don’t want to see him. He didn’t see me. Can we go to Washington, D.C., now?”

He cradled her again. “I’m working on it.”

—

I
t took more than a week, though they didn’t spend even one night at Miss Lettie’s. The reporters came—the sheriff was right on that. And they came in herds and packs, with big vans and TV cameras. They shouted questions and swarmed any time someone went outside.

No one remembered her birthday, but she didn’t care. She wanted to forget it herself.

They ended up in a house, not nearly so nice as Miss Lettie’s, outside Morgantown. And FBI people stayed there, too, because of the reporters, and because there had already been threats.

She heard one of the FBI people talking about it, and how they were moving her father, too, to somewhere else.

She heard a lot, because she listened.

Mama arguing with Uncle Seth about going to D.C., about not taking the children to see their father. But her uncle kept his promise. When her mother went to see her father, she went with the FBI lady.

The second time she went, she came back and took the pills. And slept more than twelve hours.

She heard her uncle talking to Harry about how they’d change things around so three more people could live in their house in Georgetown. She did like Harry—Harrison (like Indiana Jones) Dobbs. Though it had surprised and puzzled her that he wasn’t white. Not exactly black either. He was like the caramel she liked so much on ice cream when she’d earned a special treat.