Obsessed With You (9 page)

Aaron paced through the house
that day, waiting to hear back from Manly. He finally fell asleep on
the couch out of sheer emotional exhaustion.

Manly called at nine-thirty the
next morning.

“
Sorry it’s taken me so long
to get back to you. The siblings don’t all live in the same place
and they had to confer. They’ll take your deal. I’ve arranged to
have the house inspected this afternoon.”

Aaron stepped outside into the
landscaped back yard surrounded by hardwoods on all sides. He kept
his phone close to him in his shirt pocket. His logical brain told
him he was being foolish to chase after a woman who had left him a
week before their wedding, a woman who clearly wanted nothing to do
with him. His business brain told him he was making a bad investment
in a house he was buying sight unseen that needed a lot of
refurbishment. He was taking a big risk, buying another house when he
had this Craftsman already paid for.

But his heart told him he had to
know that Cathy was all right. He had to find a way to get her back
to him. He would risk everything for her, pay any amount of money, no
matter how foolish.

Manly called him back at
four-thirty.

“
The parents replaced all of
the systems eight years ago,” Manly said. “They thought they’d
be there for a long time, but they both died a few years later. The
house looks like hell, but the systems are good.”

“
Send me the contract,” Aaron
said.

Then Aaron made the hardest phone
call.

“
Sissy?” he said when Sherry
answered the phone.

“
How are you Aaron?” his big
sister said. “We’ve been worried about you.”

“
I know,” Aaron said. “I
need you to do something for me.”

“
Okay,” she said a little
warily.

“
You know that family LLC I
formed for Starlight Farms?”

“
Yeah. Mom was so happy with
that name you gave it.”

“
I need you to sign a contract
for me on it,” Aaron said. “I gave you signature rights,
remember?”

“
I guess so,” Sherry said.
“We’ve never really done anything with the LLC, so I don’t
really think about it.”

“
I’m buying a house in
Florida and I need you to sign the sales contract as a representative
of Starlight Farms.”

“
What are you doing, Aaron?”
Sherry asked.

“
I’m buying a house next door
to where Cathy went,” he said. “I’ve got to see what’s going
on with her.”

“
This is sounding a little
stalkerish,” Sherry said. “Why are you doing this?”

“
Because I love her,” Aaron
said simply.

Sherry sighed. “Okay. Send me
the contract and I’ll sign it. Can we do it by email? I can sign
and scan and send it right back to you?”

“
Definitely,” he said.

“
I hope you know what you’re
doing,” she said.

“
I do know what I’m doing,”
he said.

“
Because it sounds a little
crazy to me,” Sherry said.

He could always count on Sherry
to keep it real.

“
I know. I’ll call you before
I email you the papers.”

Aaron spent the next day
contacting the realtor who had sold him the Craftsman. He told her he
needed to sell it right away.

“
But you just got there,”
Melinda Howton, the realtor said with a little whine.

“
If you’d rather I list with
someone else. . . .” Aaron let her think about that for a
millisecond. His selling the house so soon was none of her business.

“
No, of course not,” Melinda
said. “We probably can’t even make your money back, but I’ll
list it for fifty thousand more than you paid and we’ll go from
there.”

“
I won’t be here in a few
days. The house will be empty. Call me on my cell with any offers.”

Aaron fell asleep on the couch,
as he had every night since Cathy left. He couldn’t bear to sleep
in the bed. He woke up early, staring at the green-tiled fireplace.
Everything in the house was packed except for the couch, the bed, the
coffeemaker, and a package of plastic cups. His life had become
barren in every way.

He was sipping a hot cup of
coffee when Manly called.

“
Mr. Smith?” he said. Aaron
nearly choked on his coffee. He had been using the name Richard Smith
when he called the realtors, and it was a name that was going to
stick.

“
Yes,” he said.

“
I’ve emailed you the
contract, which the siblings have already signed,” he said. “That
was not an easy thing to accomplish.”

Aaron really didn’t care how
easy or hard that was. Manly stood to make a nice commission on the
sale of the Victorian.

“
I’ll get my wife to sign it
and email it back to you as soon as possible,” he said.

In this case, Sherry Smith, was
going to be his wife as far as anyone in Monmarte Bay knew. Even
though Manly had promised confidentiality, Aaron wasn’t taking any
chances. He was too familiar with human nature to be that foolish.

By the end of that day, the
signatures were in place, the money was wired, and the sale was
complete. Manly would leave the house keys under the mat at the front
door. Aaron might never even meet Manly in person. He hoped that was
the case. It was safer that way.

Early the next morning, Melinda
stuck a For Sale sign in the front yard. She came inside wearing her
red business suit and click clacked her way through the bottom floor,
before she stepped up to the upper, carpeted floor where her loud
heels stopped making noise.

“
I’ll just use the photos of
the house we had before since you haven’t made any changes,” she
said. “Are you leaving today?”

“
Yes,” Aaron told her. “Just
as soon as I can take care of a few things.”

After Melinda left, Aaron drove
his Mercedes to the dealer and traded it in for a used white SUV. He
had a feeling that his Mercedes would stick out where he was going.

He stopped by his bank and
withdrew ten thousand dollars in cash in fifties and tens. Back at
the house, he packed the SUV with two large suitcases, a duffel bag,
and his laptop. In a final round through the house, he picked up
Cathy’s engagement ring where he had stored it in the bathroom
vanity and put it on his key ring. It had killed him to see the ring
lying on the counter that last day. That had told him that Cathy
really considered their relationship to be over. She loved that ring.
She could have kept the ring, of course, but Cathy would never do
that.

He closed the door on the empty
house for the last time. And then, on a rainy day in late January, he
set the GPS and drove all the way to Monmarte Bay, stopping once at a
Wal-Mart in a city he couldn’t name to buy binoculars, and once to
get a hamburger.

Chapter
Ten

After dark that day, Aaron turned
off the Interstate that ran parallel to the beach. Then minutes
later, he passed through the little town of Monmarte Bay. The street
was lit with gaslights and he could see activity at a couple of
restaurants, but otherwise, the town was shut down for the night.

He turned where the GPS told him
to and drove for a few minutes. He watched the mailboxes on the
left-hand side of the road, the bay side. He passed 113 and slowed
down. That was Cathy’s grandfather’s property. His heart started
to thump and his breathing became shallow when he realized he was in
the vicinity of Cathy. She was somewhere down that driveway, but he
had no idea what she was doing.

A couple of hundred yards down
the road, he spotted 115 and pulled into the long driveway. There
were no city lights to guide his way. He just kept driving until he
saw a house looming up ahead of him.

The house was dark, everything
was dark, and Aaron cursed himself for not having a flashlight. The
half moon gave enough light for him to find the porch and feel under
the mat for the keys. He opened the door and felt to the right of the
inside wall for a light switch.

Miraculously, an overhead light
came on revealing an empty room. The floors beneath him were some
kind of wood. He went further into the house, flipping the light
switches as he went. In the harsh light, Aaron could see that the
house was in need of paint. He walked all the way through the house,
up the stairs to the bedrooms, into the bathrooms. Not a stick of
furniture graced the old Painted Lady. There was not a bed or a couch
to lay his head on. The floors were all hard.

Aaron went back outside and
opened the back of his SUV. He pushed the back seats down and crawled
in. Hungry and a little cold, he fell asleep in his car.

His muscles were aching when he
woke up at dawn’s light. His cell said it was just after six. There
was no choice but to go into Fort Walton and buy some furniture and
supplies. He really hadn’t planned things very well at all, and
that wasn’t like him. But he had not been like himself for months
now, ever since Cathy left.

In the early light, the house was
a dingy white, with paint worn or peeling. There was no in between.
Aaron didn’t even bother to go inside. He went around to the back
and found a bush to pee in. Back there, in the yard, he could faintly
see the sun rising over the bay. He could make out the pier that was
a part of his new property. But all of that would have to wait. He
needed food and a bed.

On his way down the interstate to
Fort Walton, Aaron stopped at a diner that was already open for
business. He ordered a huge breakfast of fried eggs and bacon, hash
browns and pancakes, and coffee and orange juice. He took his time as
he ate. He allowed the waitress to fill his coffee cup four times
before he paid his bill. Back in his SUV, he located a Wal-Mart in
Fort Walton and set his GPS to take him there.

It took Aaron three hours and two
shopping carts to get dishes, glasses, utensils, pots and pans,
sheets and towels, cleaning supplies, and a few groceries. He had the
flat-screen TV he bought brought out to his car when he checked out.
Afterward, he stopped at a furniture store in a strip mall. A tiny
blonde saleswoman followed him through the store as he pointed at
what he wanted: a queen-sized bed, a dresser, a couch and recliner, a
kitchen table and chairs, a bedside table, a console for his TV, and
two lamps. He didn’t waste any time on it because it didn’t
matter.

“
I need this delivered today,”
Aaron told the teenie woman. She was the size of a child.

“
I think we can do that,”
Teenie said. “There will be a rush fee.”

Aaron waved his hand to let her
know that didn’t matter to him.

He made a final stop at a liquor
store for scotch and beer. He pulled back into his driveway a few
minutes before three. It took several trips to unload his car. When
he dropped the last bag onto the floor, he sat down on the floor.
There was nowhere else to sit. He looked around at the shabby
interior. Even though the walls needed painting, the exquisite crown
molding shone through the dinginess. The floors needed refinishing,
but they were in good condition. The kitchen needed a complete
overhaul, but it would serve his purposes for now.

Aaron wasn’t used to doing a
lot of cleaning. He always had a cleaning service, and then after he
moved in with Cathy, she took care of the cleaning. He winced now to
think of that. He filled the white ceramic sink that had seen better
days with warm sudsy water and wiped down the counters, inside the
cabinets, and the stove. He shoved his groceries into the pantry and
the elderly fridge.

The furniture store movers were
supposed to be there at five, but it was closer to six and already
dark when they finally got there. Aaron helped the young boys who
seemed like teenagers move the stuff in and set the bed up. He gave
them each a tip and shut the door. Finally, he was alone again in his
new lonely house.

He ate a bowl of cereal and
stared around the kitchen wondering if he’d lost his mind, buying a
house next to Cathy’s with the intentions of spying on her. It was
the act of a desperate man, and he knew he was desperate. But he
wasn’t crazy.

After the unsatisfying bowl of
cereal, Aaron made up his new bed and spread two blankets on top of
the sheets. With his laptop on his stomach, he checked his emails,
taking intermittent sips of scotch on the rocks. He keyed in British
clothiers to see if he could remember the name of the shop Cathy had
bought his tie from. But what did that matter anyway? So what if he
could find the shop? What would that accomplish in locating the
person who had set him up?

No shop names seemed familiar,
and Aaron wasn’t sure if he ever even knew the name of the place.
He drifted into an uneasy sleep, waking up several times through the
night, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.

Aaron didn’t fully wake up
until almost ten. He forced himself to make a hearty breakfast of
scrambled eggs and sausage. The eggs were dry and the sausage
slightly burned, but it would do. He needed fortification for the day
ahead.