The Obsession (15 page)

Why didn’t Alice call?

Annoyed with herself, she broke one of her unwritten rules about poking into whatever the crew was doing unless it was for pictures, and went downstairs.

They’d primed the living room—mostly because she couldn’t quite decide what color she wanted there. The fireplace mantel needed refinishing, and made her think of Jenny. If Jenny did a decent job on the desk, she could do the mantel.

She wandered the space, looked out windows at the views. She wasn’t ready to throw in the towel and hire a landscaper, but most of the outside rehab just had to wait until the bulk of the work was done inside, and men—and women—weren’t tromping all over the place.

She moved on, stopped at the odd jut of a room she’d decided could be a little library. Maybe she didn’t often find or take the time to curl up with an actual book, but she’d imagined doing so there on a rainy day—or in the dead of winter with the fire sparking.

Now Kevin and the buxom Macie set the first of the flanking built-ins in place to the right of the hearth.

“Oh, Kevin.”

He glanced back, grinned as he shoved up the bill of his cap. “Go ahead and say it. You were right; I was wrong.”

“I didn’t know you’d finished them.”

“We figured we’d surprise you. You were right. I didn’t see it, little room like this. Take out that wall, I told you, and you’d have some space. But you stuck, and you had the eye. What you’ve got is cozy, and good light, and—what do you say, Macie?”

“Charm. It’s gonna have charm, especially when we put up the crown molding.”

“It’s beautiful wood—the cherry—and beautiful work.”

“That’s what we do, right, Mace?”

“Damn right.”

“You were right about straight open, floor to ceiling, too. Gives it dimension, makes the room seem bigger.”

“I’m going to have to send for my books. I usually read on my tablet, but I’ve got a couple boxes of books back home.”

“If you need more you can tap Xander.”

“Why?”

“He’s got books everywhere,” Macie told her.

“Oh yeah.” Kevin took a small level out of his tool belt, laid it on a shelf. “Every now and then he’ll box some up, donate them, but mostly he hoards them. If you need to fill some of these shelves, you should tap him about it.”

“I’ll see what—” She jumped when her phone signaled, snatched it out of her pocket. “It’s the vet. Yes, this is Naomi. Okay. Okay. Really?” As relief washed over her like a warm wave, she rubbed her hand over her face. “That’s great. I’ll come now. No, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Thanks.”

Blowing out a breath, she shoved the phone away again. “The dog—he’s out of recovery or whatever. Ready to come home. I’ll be back.”

“Oh, in case I don’t see you—you made the papers.”

“The what?” She stopped dead.

“The papers,” Kevin repeated. “I got a copy in the kitchen.”

She kept her voice even. “What happened?”

“The
Cove Chronicle
. It comes out once a month. Just a few pages, local news and such. It’s a nice story about the house, fixing it up.”

“Oh.”

Local little paper. Nothing to worry about. Nobody but the locals would see it.

“I’ll leave you the copy. Jenny’s got more at home, as I got some ink, too.”

“I’ll read it when I get back. Thanks. I better go get the dog.”

She’d put off the reporter, editor, publisher—she thought the woman who’d wanted to talk to her wore all three hats. But it didn’t matter. Naomi took every precaution to keep her name out of print, to keep her whereabouts out of print.

Nobody beyond Sunrise Cove, or certainly no one outside the county, would read the article. And nobody would connect her with Thomas David Bowes.

And she had more important things to worry about right at the moment.

She dashed into the vet’s, muttered a thanks when the receptionist gestured her to go back. She found Alice fitting the dog with a cone.

He looked a little dazed and confused, but he let out a short, happy bark, and his tail wagged madly when he saw Naomi.

“He’s okay?”

“Came through like a champ. He has meds, and you have instructions. The cone’s to keep him from worrying the site, the stitches. He’ll probably sleep more than anything else. He may be a little sore and not want to walk much for a day or two.”

“Okay. That’s okay.” She got down, stroked his ears inside the cone. “You’re okay.”

She took the meds, the instructions, paid the bill, gave him a boost into the car.

He didn’t sleep. He had to sniff at everything in the front yard—though he walked a little stiffly. He had to sniff and wag at the crew. He and Molly had to sniff and wag at each other.

And he bumped into everything. Walls, tools, her.

She helped him upstairs, gave him the stuffed cat—a mistake, she noted as the cone got in the way.

One of the crew called up with a question. She went down, and in the fifteen minutes she was gone, he’d managed to get out of the cone and was licking away where his balls had once been.

“How the hell did you get out of that?”

Pleased, he thumped his tail.

“You can’t do that anymore. Those days are over.” She fitted the cone back on him—an ordeal, as he seemed to hate it more than the leash.

She got it back in place, gave him a rawhide, and considered the matter settled.

It wasn’t.

—

X
ander figured he’d given it some time—and he had the excuse of paying her for half the ball snipping. Maybe, if he played it right, he could get another dinner out of it. And with that, maybe he could get her a few more steps closer to that big, beautiful bed.

It was worth the drive out.

He pulled up on his motorcycle, with the dog barking and wagging in greeting. The dog would’ve rushed over to finish the hello, but Naomi sat on the porch steps, and had the dog in a death grip.

Holding him in place while she . . . Jesus Christ.

Appalled, sincerely, Xander pulled off his helmet. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re putting pants on that dog.”

“Then that’s what the hell I’m doing.”

She dragged them the rest of the way on—red shorts with a white side stripe—then let the dog go.

She leaned back on the steps while the dog—looking like an idiot—hurried over for a rub.

“What kind of person puts pants on a dog?”

“The kind who isn’t going to keep fighting to keep the damn cone on him. He gets out of it. Kevin duct-taped the thing, and he still got out of it if I took my eyes off him for five damn minutes. And when he was in it, he ran into everything. Including me. I swear on purpose. He hated it.”

“Cone of Shame?”

“Yeah, the damn Cone of Shame. So now he’s wearing the Pants of Humiliation. But the stupid dog seems to like them.”

“Pants of Humiliation.” Xander had to grin. “You cut a hole for his tail.”

“Kevin had them in his truck. His old running shorts. I got creative.”

“Maybe, but how do you expect him to do what he needs to do out here?”

“Why the hell do you think I was dragging them back on him?” She waved her arms, winced, rubbed her right biceps. “I brought him out, took them off so he did what he needed to do. Now they’re on, and he can’t get to the incision site. In fact, he seems to forget about it when he’s wearing them.”

“Maybe you should buy him an outfit.” Impressed with her inventiveness, Xander sat down beside her, rubbed the dog. “I got my half of the deal. Alice said he did fine.”

“Yeah, yeah. He’s fine. I’m exhausted.”

“I can order a pizza.”

“No, thanks, but— Crap, just crap. Yes. Please order. The backs of my calves are covered in cone bruises. My arms ache from painting and from struggling with this dog—who’s putting on those pounds just fine, thanks.”

The dog brought Xander a ball he’d obviously stowed somewhere outside for easy access.

“Don’t throw it. He really shouldn’t run yet.”

Xander pushed up again. “Anything you don’t like on pizza?”

“No anchovies, no pineapple. Anything else is fine.”

The dog dropped the ball between Naomi’s feet, and when she didn’t respond laid his head on her knee.

“What’s the dog’s name?”

She heaved a sigh. “Tag.”

“As in ‘you’re it’?”

“No. As in he tags along.”

“Tag.” The dog couldn’t have recognized his name yet, but apparently he recognized humor as he looked over at Xander, gave a doggy grin. “It works.”

This visible world is but a picture of the invisible,

wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly,

but in equivocal shapes.

SIR THOMAS
BROWNE

O
nce or twice a week Xander and Kevin grabbed a beer after work. Sometimes they actually planned it and met up at Loo’s, but for the most part it just happened.

It just happened that Kevin swung into Xander’s garage after trips to the lumberyard and the tile distributor—and the half an hour huddled with his electrician.

He knew how to juggle jobs. Naomi’s was priority, but he had a couple others going, which meant he spent a lot of time traveling from site to site.

And right now he wanted a beer.

The garage doors, lowered and locked, didn’t mean Xander wasn’t around. Just as his truck sitting in the parking lot didn’t mean he was. Taking his chances, Kevin got out of his own truck and headed around the back of the garage, where a zigzag of steps led to Xander’s apartment.

He heard the music, classic Stones; he followed it around to the rear bay—Xander’s personal bay—and found his friend tending to the love of his life.

The ’67 GTO convertible.

Or, as Kevin thought of it, the Date Car.

“Who’s the lucky lady?” Kevin asked, pitching his voice to ride over Mick’s.

Xander glanced up from polishing the chrome rocker panels. “She is. She needed detailing. I’m just finishing it up.”

Xander had what he considered a damn fine crew of his own, but nobody, absolutely nobody, touched the GTO but himself. He loved her from her chain mail grille to her eight taillights, and every square inch of her Coke-bottle body between.

He rose now to take a critical look at his own work.

She shined, sparkling chrome against the red body. That was factory red—just as his grandfather had driven it off the showroom floor.

“Are you going to take her out for a spin? I’m up for it.”

“Not today. We got rehearsal in—” Xander checked the old schoolhouse-style clock on the wall. “In about an hour. We got a wedding up in Port Townsend on Saturday. Lelo’s cousin.”

“Right, right. I remember. Got time for a beer?”

“I can make time.” Xander took one last look at his sweetheart and stepped out. “Nice evening. How about we do this on the veranda?”

Kevin grinned. “That works.”

They trooped up the steps into the apartment. The main space held the living room, kitchen, and—with the card table and folding chairs—the dining area.

Bookshelves—loaded—rose and spread over an entire wall of the living room. Kevin had built them—and the bookshelves in the skinny second bedroom used as an office, and the bookcase in the bedroom—when Xander bought the property and the business.

Xander opened the old fridge, a cast-off harvest gold number that had been the rage in the seventies, grabbed two bottles of St. Pauli Girl, popped the tops on the wall-mounted opener—a rust-colored naked woman holding the opener in upstretched arms—and tossed the caps in the trash.

They went out the bedroom door onto a postage-stamp porch and sat in two of the folding chairs that went with the card table.

And considered it fine.

“Big wedding?”

“Yeah. I’ll be glad when it’s done. The bride texts me every five minutes the last few days, screwing around with the playlist. Anyway. It’s a living.”

“Did you break your ban on the Chicken Dance?”

“Never happen. I took an oath.” Xander stretched out his legs. He’d positioned the chairs so he could just stretch them out without his feet dropping off the edge. It worked.

“I saw your built-ins in the big house—library? And the tile work in the half bath. Nice.”

Kevin stretched out his legs as well and took his first end-of-the-workday pull. “You were up there?”

“Yeah. The dog was wearing your pants, man. I gotta say, he looked better in them than you.”

“I’ve got excellent, manly legs.”

“With bear pelts.”

“Keeps me and my woman warm in the winter. It was a smart solution. I don’t know how the hell that dog kept getting out of the cone, but once she got the idea for the shorts, and we got them on him, he left his no-balls alone.”

Kevin took a second pull on his beer. “And you’re still trying to move on that?”

“The dog?” When Kevin just snorted, Xander shrugged. “I will move on that. In time.”

“I’ve never known you to take time on a move.”

“She’s skittish.” At least that word came to Xander’s mind. “Don’t you wonder why that is? She doesn’t act especially skittish, look skittish, but she is under there. I’m curious enough to take time. If I just liked the look of her—and I do like the look of her—but if I just, I wouldn’t bother with so much time. Either it’s going to happen or it isn’t. I like that she’s smart. I like the contrasts.”

“Contrasts?”

“Skittish, but ballsy enough to buy that old place, live out there on
her own. She handles herself—and makes you think she’s had to. I like what she’s doing to the old place, or paying you to do.”

“She’s got ideas.”

“Yeah. She’s damn good at what she does. You’ve gotta appreciate somebody with talent who knows how to use it. And then . . .” Smiling, Xander took a long drink. “She named the dog.”

“He’s a good dog. He loves her like you love that GTO. He stole Jerry’s hammer the other day.”

“A hammer?”

“Naomi brought it, a sandpaper block, two work gloves, and a pipe fitting back down the other day. He takes them up to her like presents.”

They sat a moment, in companionable silence, looking out toward the road where a few cars passed, the scatter of houses beyond, and the field where they’d both played Little League what seemed like a million years before.

“Tyler’s got a T-ball game on Saturday.”

“I’m sorry I’ll miss that. It’ll probably be more entertaining than the wedding.”

“I remember playing T-ball, right over in the field. You and me and Lelo. Remember?”

“Yeah. Dim, but yeah.”

“Now I’ve got a kid playing. Makes you think.”

It made Xander think, nostalgically, of Lelo, who’d been scarecrow scrawny with beaver teeth. He’d stayed scrawny, Xander considered, but had grown into the teeth. “We sucked at T-ball, man, both of us. Got a groove on in Little League.”

“Kids mostly suck at T-ball, that’s part of the charm. Maddy starts kindergarten next fall.”

Xander turned his head, gave Kevin a long look. “You’re thinking about having another.”

“The subject’s come up a few times.”

“Well, you do good work there.”

“Yeah, we do. We always said two, and when we ended up with one
of each, hey, that’s a nice balance. Now Ty’s playing T-ball, Maddy’s going into kindergarten, and we’re talking about starting another from scratch.”

“Three’s a magic number. You can look it up,” Xander added when Kevin just looked at him.

“It’s looking like we’re going for the magic number.”

“Have fun with that.”

“That’s the plus side. It sure is fun working on making one. You’re not looking for sex with Naomi.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I mean not just sex.”

Xander contemplated his beer. “Why do married guys think single guys are only after sex?”

“Because they used to be single guys, and remember. Case in point—what was her name. Shit. Ah, Ari, Alli, Annie. The redhead with the rack and the overbite? Worked at Singler’s last summer?”

“Bonnie.”

“Bonnie? Where’d I get all those
A
’s from? That was just sex. She was built, so there’s that. But all the work went into the face and body, none into the brain.”

“It was the overbite.” Even now, Xander could sigh over it. “I’ve always been a sucker for an overbite.”

“Naomi doesn’t have one.”

“It’s a flaw I’m overlooking. Sometimes it’s just sex, as Bonnie illustrates and your memory serves. And sometimes, as you ought to remember, you want some conversation, some meat along with the sizzle. Bonnie had the sizzle, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, even for the summer, when she picked up a copy of
East of Eden
I had on the nightstand and said she didn’t know I was religious.”

“Religious?”

“She figured Eden—so it must be a biblical story. She didn’t even know who Steinbeck was.” And he could still shake his head over that. “Even an overbite can’t make up for that.”

“It’s good to have standards.”

“Oh, I’ve got standards. So far, Naomi’s meeting them, so I can take some time.”

“What if she’s lousy in bed?”

“That’d be both surprising and disappointing, but if so, we can still have conversations. Does she ever talk about her family with you?”

“Her brother, her uncles. Little bits and pieces here and there. Not much elaboration, now that you mention it.”

“Exactly. It’s interesting—what she doesn’t say. It’s interesting.”

—

H
e thought about that, late into the night, long after rehearsal and the cold-cut subs he and his bandmates chowed down on.

In general he liked the company of men more than the company of women. He understood what men didn’t say, didn’t need or want it all laid out in specific words, expressions, freaking tones of voice. Women, to his mind, were work. Often worth it, and he didn’t mind work.

But time spent with women, when it wasn’t before, during, or after sex, was entirely different than hanging out with men or working with them.

In general, he preferred the short, straightforward mating dance and considered the extra steps and flourishes a waste of everyone’s time.

You wanted or didn’t; there was heat or there wasn’t.

For some reason he found himself willing to take those extra steps with Naomi. He didn’t really mind them; in fact, he enjoyed them, all the stops and starts, the detours.

And in his experience once the mating dance was done, the first rush of sex slowed, interest faded.

He liked being interested.

He turned on the bedroom TV, with the sound low as it was mostly to cover the silence so he didn’t miss Milo’s snoring so keenly. He picked up his nightstand book—a worn paperback of
Lord of the Flies
.

He never had a first read on the nightstand, not if he wanted to sleep, so he settled in with the familiar and fascinating.

But he couldn’t get Naomi off his mind.

—

O
n the bluff, Naomi turned off the lights. Her brain was too tired for more work, too tired to pretend to read, even to stream a movie. The dog had already settled down, and it was time she did the same.

Since her tired brain didn’t want to turn off, she let it wander, circling around faucets, lighting fixtures, whether she should do that study of Douglas firs she’d taken that morning, the green eerie through thin mists. It would make a solid cover for a horror novel.

She worked on it in her head, played up shadows until she drifted off, drifted away.

When she walked through that eerie green, the wind rolled through the tops of the trees, a
whoosh
and moan that laid a chill on her skin. She followed the path. She wanted to get to the water, to the blue, to the warm. Her footsteps were muffled on the thick cushion of pine needles, and those deep green shadows seemed to shift into shapes. And the shapes had eyes.

She moved faster, heard her breath quicken. Not with exertion, but with an atavistic fear. Something was coming.

Thunder mumbled overhead, over the rolling, muttering wind. The shimmer of lightning tossed all into an instant of relief, and brought a sick heaviness to her belly.

She had to run, had to find the light again. Then the shadow stepped from the shadow, a knife in one hand, a rope in the other.

Time’s up,
it said in her father’s voice.

She tried to scream, and woke with it trapped in her throat, with the weight crushing her chest.

No air, no air, and she clutched at her own throat as if to fight away the hands that circled it.

Her heart thudded, sharp, vicious hammer blows that rang in her ears. Red dots swam in front of her eyes.

Somewhere deep under the weight, the terror, she shouted at herself to breathe. To
stop
and breathe. But the air wheezed, barely squeezed through her windpipe, only burned her starving lungs.

Something wet ran over her face. She saw it, felt it, as her own blood. She would die here in the woods of her own creation, in fear of a man she hadn’t seen in seventeen years.

Then the dog barked, hard and fierce, chased the shadows like rabbits. So she lay panting—breathing, breathing, with the terrible weight easing as the dog lapped at her face.

He had his front legs braced on the bed. She could see his eyes now, gleaming in the dark, hear his pants along with her own. Struggling to steady, she raised a trembling hand, stroked his head.

“Okay.” She rolled toward him, comforted, let her eyes close, focused on long, slow breaths. “It’s okay. We’re okay. Just a dream. Bad dream. Bad memories. We’re okay now.”

Still, she switched on the light—she needed it—brought her knees up to rest her clammy forehead on them.

“Haven’t had one that bad in a while. Working too hard, that’s all. Just working too hard, thinking too much.”

Since the dog remained braced on the bed, she shifted to wrap her arms around his neck, pressing her face into his fur until the trembling eased.

“I thought I didn’t want a dog. I’d say the way you were wandering you must’ve thought you didn’t want a human.” She eased back, rubbed his ears. “And here we are.”

She picked up the bottle of water she always kept on her nightstand and drank half of it before rising to go into the bathroom and splash cold water on her face.

Still shy of five, she noted, early for both of them, but she couldn’t risk sleep. Not now.

She picked up the flashlight—also handy on her nightstand—and went downstairs. She’d gotten into the habit of just letting him out in the morning, but this time she delighted him by going out with him. For a while they just walked, around the house, around the quiet.

Tag found one of his secreted balls and happily carried it around in his mouth. When she went back in, he watched her make coffee, let the ball drop when she filled his food bowl, picked it up.

“Let’s take it upstairs.”

He raced halfway up the back stairs, stopped, looked back to make sure she was coming, and then raced the rest of the way.