Deadly Obsession (A Brown and de Luca Novel Book 4) (6 page)

Myrtle growled deep in her throat.

I hunkered down and hugged her. “It’s okay, Myrt. It’s a...it’s a puppy. It
is
a puppy, right? Not a piglet?”

“Of course it’s a puppy. I figured it was high time Josh had a dog of his own.”

Ouch. That really hurt.

“And he’s been missing Myrt so much, I thought a puppy would help him get over it.” He carried the little creature around the sofa, then knelt down and set it on the floor in front of Myrtle.

Myrt puffed out her great big bulldog chest and growled. She was shaking. I grabbed her around the neck and held her back. “Jeez, are you nuts? She’s gonna
eat
it!”

“She’s not gonna eat it. Go on, let her check him out.”

“Him?”

“The breeder said Myrtle would be more receptive to a male pup than a female.”

Made perfect sense to me, and I felt a little bit soothed that he’d at least considered Myrtle in this decision. “She’s going to kill him,” I said, but I let her go.

Myrtle leaned forward and put her nose directly on the little guy, sniffing him all over. The pup whined like he was being whipped. “Yeah, I’d be scared, too. Shit, Mason, what were you thinking?”

The pup started to back away. Myrtle plopped a paw on top of him, flattening him to the floor so she could continue her inspection. I quickly lifted said paw and checked to be sure the pup hadn’t popped open. He hadn’t. Myrtle growled at him, and I think she was saying, “You don’t fucking move until I tell you to fucking move. Runt.”

“I think it’ll make Josh happy to have a dog.”

“He already
has
a dog,” I said. “Jeez, where have you been, Mason? Myrtle has been more his dog than mine since she set eyes on the kid.”

“Well, yeah, but you know, I mean
here.
Where we live.”

Yeah. And just like the boys, Mason didn’t live with me. Nor, apparently, did he want to. He didn’t have to beat me over the head with it. I got it already. I sighed heavily but didn’t take my eyes off the dogs. Myrt finished her inspection of the pup, heaved a huge sigh and walked away, crossing the room to plop down on a blanket one of the boys had left on the floor.

The pup stood where he was, staring at her and shaking. Then we heard Mason’s winter rat, a Jeep, pull into the driveway out front. The boys were home. Mason scooped the puppy up again. “You really don’t like him?” he asked.

“Of course I like him. Fucking Attila the Hun would
like
him.”

“But—”

“No buts.” There were a lot of buts, in fact. I could have listed them. But
I thought we’d move in together eventually.
But
I thought Myrtle would be our dog when we did.
But
doesn’t having one dog for each household sort of mean there have to continue to be two households?
But
this isn’t the solution I was expecting you to come up with.

I grabbed hold of myself and gave myself a shake. You know, inwardly. What the hell was wrong with me?

And then it dawned, slow and dramatic. The problem, I realized, was that I had, at some point during his recovery, become ready for more of a commitment in this relationship. Or maybe
not
during his recovery. Maybe it had been during those moments when he’d been inside that burning house and I’d been sure I would never see him alive again. I got it. I got why he’d finally blurted that he loved me after seeing me nearly get shot, thinking I
had been
shot for a horrifying moment. He’d been feeling then the way I was feeling now. And he’d told me so, said he loved me. But I hadn’t reciprocated. And now that I was ready to, he might have already moved on.

I mean, he’d bought his own damn dog. Wasn’t that a pretty big message?

The front door opened, and the boys surged inside carrying pizza boxes and containers of hot wings and bottles of soda in bags.

Josh dropped his burdens on the table, smiling ear to ear. “Hey, Rache! Did you bring Myrtle?”

Before I could answer, Myrt came trotting into the kitchen, right to her favorite human. Josh dropped onto all fours, and the two of them rolled around on the floor together.

Jeremy, watching them, smiled. “Hey, Rache,” he said. Then he blinked. “Wow, you look so much younger.”

I lifted my brows, though my bangs probably hid it. “You bucking for a really huge graduation present or what?”

He grinned. “Yes, but it’s still true.” Then he frowned. “What the heck...?”

He was looking past me at the whining, trembling little piglet that had snuffled and shuffled its way into the kitchen and now stood in the doorway, looking longingly at Myrtle.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Jere. “That’s not what I got you for graduation.”

He was gone, though, blown away by a pair of giant brown eyes in a smooshed-up little white face. He floated across the room, picked up the little puppy and tucked it under his chin, rubbing it softly. “Where the heck did you come from? Huh?”

The pup made little snuffles and whines that sounded as if he was trying to reply. Joshua got up and came closer. “Is it a baby Myrtle?”

“Yep,” Mason said. “Except he’s a boy.”

“Aw. He’s cute. You’re cute, aren’t you, little puppy?” Josh petted the pup’s little head as Jeremy continued to hold it.

“I thought you should have a dog of your own,” Mason said. Then with another look at the sheer rapture on the older boy’s face, he quickly added, “Both of you. You know, ’cause you’ve been missing Myrtle so much.”

Josh turned to Myrtle, who was standing there watching his every move. Then he bent to pet her again. “You got a baby brother, didn’t you, Myrt? Huh? A baby brother.”

Myrtle turned around, putting her back to the boys and their furry little interloper, and sat down hard. I could’ve sworn she said “harrumph.” It certainly sounded like it.

“I think Myrt’s gonna be a tough sell,” I said.

“She’ll come around,” Mason said. “Josh, how you act is going to be the key. You can’t make Myrtle feel threatened by this new guy or she’ll hate him. You have to let her know she’s your number-one girl. And when she’s around, put the little guy second.”

“Okay.”

“I think he’s cold. He’s shaking,” Jeremy said.

“I’ll go get you something to wrap him up in,” Mason said, and he headed up the stairs. I went up with him, because I wanted to talk to him privately about Jeremy’s graduation gift. It was something we’d been planning to discuss and hadn’t quite gotten around to yet.

He headed into Jeremy’s room, not his own. “If I remember right, there’s a little blanket Jere had when he was a kid in here.” He opened Jeremy’s closet door, and a stack of letters fell right out at his feet. I think they must’ve been stacked on the shelf. Mason looked down, and so did I, and then we looked up and straight at each other. There were six of them, all from Jeremy’s mother, Marie Rivette Brown, in care of the Riverside Maximum Security Psychiatric Hospital.

“Marie’s been writing to Jeremy?” I asked, my voice a squeaky whisper.

“Apparently so.” Mason swallowed hard, but he didn’t pick the letters up. Instead he cleared his throat. “Jere,” he called. “Can you come up here for a sec?”

There was barely a pause before the teenager’s size-eleven feet came pounding up the stairs. He stepped into his own bedroom and stopped in the doorway, looking at the letters, then at his uncle.

“I wasn’t snooping, Jere. I was just gonna grab that blanket you had when you were kid. You know, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one.”

“Yeah, I know the one.” He moved closer, reached into the closet and pulled out the blanket. “Mom got it for me when I was two.”

“And you carried it around until you were almost seven.”

Jere smiled and bent to gather up the letters. “I wasn’t hiding these from you. I mean, I was gonna tell you about them, but you got hurt.”

Mason nodded. “Okay.”

“Did you read them?”

“Of course I didn’t read them, Jere. You’re practically a grown man, I’m not gonna read your mail without asking you first.”

Jeremy sighed, then went quiet for a moment. Finally he nodded. “You probably oughtta read ’em.”

“If you want me to.”

Jeremy nodded again. “Yeah. I want you to. Like I said, I was gonna tell you. Most of them have come since you’ve been in the hospital. She heard what happened, and she’s all wound up about it. And about my graduation and wanting to come to it and...just read ’em.” He handed the stack of letters to Mason.

“Okay,” Mason said, taking the stack.

“Have you written back to her, Jere?” I asked.

“Not yet. I’m working on it, though. I mean, it’s cruel not to. I just... I don’t know what to say to her, you know?” He lowered his head. “Especially after what she did. And what she tried to do to you, Rachel.”

I looked him right in the eyes and said, “It wasn’t her fault. She was out of her mind, Jere. You know that. If she’d been herself, your mom never would’ve done any of that. She just lost it. Everything that happened was...it was too much for her to handle. She snapped. Some people just do.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Mason put an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay, Jere.”

“I hope so,” he said.

“It will. Come on, let’s go get some of that pizza before Josh and the dogs eat it all.”

Jeremy nodded, but he hesitated, standing still when Mason would’ve pulled him out of the room.

“What?” Mason asked.

Jeremy looked his uncle in the eye. They were the same height. It was weird seeing Jeremy so grown-up. “Mom...she’s got some crazy idea that someone is after us. You, Josh and me. She thinks we’re in danger.”

Mason nodded slowly. “Like Rachel said, she’s sick, Jere. She can’t help it. Still, I’ll look ’em over. I’ll make sure there’s nothing to worry about, okay?”

“Yeah. And...make sure she doesn’t show up at graduation. Okay, Uncle Mace? I don’t...I don’t want her there.”

“I’ll make sure.”

Jeremy seemed very relieved. “Thanks, Uncle Mace.”

“It’s what I’m here for, kid.”

5

S
o we had pizza, we played video games, and then we streamed a movie that bored the kids into going to bed. Joshua was afraid Myrtle’s feelings were hurt over the puppy, who hadn’t yet been named, so he took her to bed with him. Jeremy surprised us both by muttering something about the pup probably being unused to sleeping alone, then scooping it up to take to bed with him.

I looked at Mason as the closing credits scrolled and asked myself why I’d been so wrought up earlier. So he didn’t want to move in with me. A couple of weeks ago I hadn’t wanted that, either. Why was I getting so damned weird about us?

Because you almost lost him, Rache. That sort of close call has a way of putting things into perspective, don’t you think?

Yeah, Inner Bitch, I think you might be right.

He let the credits keep rolling across the TV screen, got up and brought the handful of letters from the kitchen, then dropped them on the coffee table. He picked up the top envelope, handed it to me. It was addressed to Jeremy, and the return address was stamped in the top left corner: Riverside Maximum Security Psychiatric Hospital. “You sure Jeremy’s really okay with us reading them?” I asked, looking up into Mason’s eyes.

He nodded.

“Including me?”

“Yeah. Funny how they started coming just before my...accident.”

His brave, child-saving, medal-worthy, selfless act of heroism, he meant.

“I totally understand why he wanted to wait till I was home and recovering to bring them up.” He looked at me, waiting for me to agree with him. He did that a lot, I realized. Had his own opinion about what was going on in the boys’ heads but also asked me, without really asking me, for my two cents. I guess because I had a lot of experience with my twin nieces. And maybe because I’d had a much more typical childhood than he apparently had, even though I’d been blind and he hadn’t. That was bizarre, wasn’t it?

I nodded. “Jeremy’s a good kid, and I absolutely believe him about all that. He wasn’t hiding the letters. Didn’t even seem upset that you’d found them.” And he knew what his mother had done, too, which was a hell of a thing for a teenager to have to live with. Josh...well, it was tough to tell how much Joshua knew. It was a small town. His mother had committed three extremely gruesome murders. We hadn’t given him any of the details, and we’d tried to shield him from newspapers and the TV when the killings were being covered nonstop. Of course he heard things. That was inevitable. Mason told him that his mother had become very sick in the brain and had hurt some people but that she couldn’t help herself. And that was why she had to stay in the hospital, because it might happen again.

He reached for the envelope, winced a little and lowered his wounded arm. “Why don’t you read them to me while I try to put a fresh bandage on this?”

“Where’s your nurse, anyway?”

“At home, probably. She hasn’t started yet.”

This, I thought, should make me happy. Except I sucked at first aid. Always had. Still, I had to try. I’d been wishing he would lean on me a little more, after all. “Why don’t
you
read them to
me
instead? Let me play Florence Nightingale tonight.”

“Deal.” The way he said it, I knew he’d been hoping I would offer. He laid his arm across a pair of sofa pillows. The bandages looked as if they’d been applied by Joshua. Or maybe Myrtle. Then again, I wasn’t sure I could do much better.

I got up and went into the kitchen, where the supply of bandages, ointments, tiny scissors and tape was still right on the counter, where he’d dropped everything on returning home from the hospital. He’d clearly used some of them since, but he hadn’t bothered putting them away. Men. I looked around the room, spotted a cute little wicker basket that had probably arrived bearing fruit at some point, and grabbed it. Then I lined it in plastic wrap and scooped all the supplies into it. I added a gallon-size zipper bag and headed back to the living room. Then I sat down next to him and carefully began unwrapping the gauze from his arm.

Mason held the letter in his good hand and started reading. “‘Dear Jeremy,’” he began. “‘I miss you so much that it’s hard to breathe. I’m sorry for everything I did. My mind...it’s not right. Even now, with all the pills they make me take every day, it’s not right. Not all the way. Not to where it should be. I hope someday you can forgive me.’”

It was sad. Heartbreaking, really. And, yeah, I ought to hate the crazy bitch for trying to gouge out my eyes, but she had been completely out of her mind. I remember thinking how much she’d been through and wondering how she’d stayed sane, right before I found out that she hadn’t.

The gauze came to an end, revealing soft pads on the arm itself. I started to lift one, but it pulled at his burns. I winced, he winced. I stopped pulling. “Maybe we should soak them off.”

He nodded. “Good idea.”

I back went to the kitchen with a handful of sterile gauze pads, soaked them in warm water, and brought them back to lay across his arm. “Keep going.”

He nodded, folded Letter One, replaced it in the envelope and took out Letter Two. “‘Dear Jeremy. I only just realized how close your graduation is getting. I would give anything to be able to be there. To watch you walk up on the stage and get your diploma. I’m so proud of you. Maybe they’ll let me out, just for that day. They do that sort of thing, don’t they? Even with hopeless cases like me? Ask your Uncle Mason. If anyone can get them to give me a day pass, it would be him. I love you always, Mom.’”

The wet pads had soaked through the ones on his arm, so I tried again to peel them away. This time it worked with minimal pulling. Oh, but the arm just looked mean. I think meaner now that it was healing. The edges of the worst burns were covered now in a thin layer of bright pink newborn skin, but the centers were still raw and sore-looking. I dropped the old pads faceup on the coffee table and looked at his arm, turning it slightly to one side and then the other. “It looks good, I think.” Then I wondered how the hell I would know.

“It’s gonna scar,” he said. “Badly. I’ll look like I’ve been in a gang fight.”

“You’ll look like you’ve been in a fire.”

He smiled at me. “Okay, you’re right.”

“If you were a woman I’d feel sorry for you. But scars are sexy on men.”

“Yeah?” He lifted his brows, then wiggled them suggestively. Reminding me that it had been a while since we’d rolled around in the sheets together. I was aching to play catch-up.

“Yeah. Especially scars you got saving babies. They’re the sexiest kind. Go on, read the next letter.”

He nodded, and moved on to Letter Three. “‘They won’t let me out for your graduation, son. I’ve asked everyone in this place. I even wrote to the Governor. I said they could send guards with me. I said they could stand on either side of me, holding my arms. Anything. Anything, I told them. Did you ask Mason? Why isn’t he helping me? Jeremy, I can’t miss your graduation. I’m your mother. I have a right to be there. What happened wasn’t my fault. I’m sick. But why I should be punished like this just for being sick?’

“‘They’re probably reading these letters before you get them. They’re probably not even sending them to you. I’m probably writing you for nothing. They’re probably laughing at me. They hate me here. Everyone does. Maybe you hate me, too. Do you, Jeremy? Do you hate me, too?’” I’d been squeezing ointment out of a tube onto a fresh set of gauze pads—we were clearly going to need more of them—but I stopped about halfway through that letter, because it sent chills down my spine. “Sounds like she was losing it again when she wrote that one.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s definitely getting weirder as we go along.” He frowned. “Do you think she’s been writing to Josh, too?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Who’s been picking up the mail since you’ve been sick? I mean, the boys have been with me.”

“Mother picked it up and left it on the counter for us while I was away, but she must not have looked at it closely or she’d have told me about this.”

I nodded, remembering. “A couple of times when I brought the boys home to get more of their things, Jeremy sorted through the stack. He must have been taking these out of the pile and stashing them.”

Mason unfolded the next letter. “Remind me to ask him if there were any addressed to Josh. I can’t believe he wouldn’t have said so if there were, though.” Then he skimmed the page and sighed. “It gets worse. Listen to this. ‘Jeremy, you’re in danger. She’s been asking me questions about you, about Mason, mostly, but about you, too. I didn’t realize at first. She’s crazier than I am.’”

“Who?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. That’s it—that’s the entire thing.” He set it down and reached for another one as I settled the pads into place and started unrolling new gauze around his forearm to hold them there. Not too tight. I didn’t want to hurt him.

“‘I have to protect my family. No one believes you’re in danger. No one believes me about her. But I know. When I looked into her eyes, I saw it. The same sickness I’ve seen before. But she hides it. And no one else can see. There’s a demon inside her. A dragon. She’s hungry. She feeds on misery. I know, I know, I know. Your father had a dragon inside him, too. I saw it there, I knew. Oh, I knew, I knew—’”

Mason stopped reading, lifting his eyes to mine. “It’s still hard for me to believe she really knew what Eric was.”

“She couldn’t have known for very long. I mean, if she did and she didn’t say anything...”

“Then she’s as guilty as he was.”

“Maybe not
as
guilty.” I lowered my head, continued wrapping. “Maybe she only just found out toward the end. Maybe she was still wrestling with what to do about it when he took his own life, then decided, like you did, that it wouldn’t help anyone to make it public knowledge.”

“Maybe.”

“Finish the letter, Mason. What else does it say? God forbid she told Jeremy about his father.”

He looked down, shook his head, kept reading “‘I won’t let the demons get you, baby. I promise. They got me. It’s too late for me. I’ve gone to hell for my sins and I’m not even dead yet. That’s how it works sometimes, the death angel just puts the guilty into hell right on earth, to show us what it will be like after. There are slavering dogs that roam the halls at night. You can’t see them. But you can hear their panting and feel their cold breath on your face. They poison the food here, too. To keep you crazy. They don’t want any of us ever to leave, ever. Because we might tell, if we get out. We might tell that they’re as crazy as we are. But I won’t let them get to you, Jeremy. I promise, I won’t.’”

I sighed, finishing off the gauze with a healthy portion of tape. “She’s still completely insane, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s no way anyone would even consider letting her come to Jeremy’s graduation, is there?”

He shook his head firmly. “No. No way. And if I get any inkling that anyone
is
considering it, all I have to do is show them these letters. It’s clear she’s still a mess.”

“If she’s still this bad, even on meds, think how bad she’d be without them.”

“Yeah.” He sighed and looked over his new dressing. “Nice job.”

“No it’s not. It’s probably going to fall off before morning, but thanks for lying. And I wouldn’t know the early warning signs of an infection any more than you would. You need to get that nurse in here. In fact, that was one of the doc’s conditions for letting you come home, remember?”

“Yeah. I know.” He moved the arm up and down a little, like he was testing it. The gauze hung a little too loosely here and there. “I guess I’d better call her in the morning. Tell her she can start.”

“Good.” I don’t think it sounded very sincere, since it was my ineptitude at first aid that seemed to have convinced him to take the step. He was folding the letters and putting them back into their envelopes, stacking them on the coffee table.

“Has Jeremy seemed okay to you these past two weeks?” he asked.

“He really has. No moodiness. No more than typical teenage stuff, at least.”

“I wonder what he made of that bit about Eric?”

“The same thing he made of the demons and dragons and the invisible dogs, I imagine,” I said. “Don’t borrow trouble, Mason. The boys don’t know what their father was. They’ll never know.”

“Not if I can help it,” he said. He sighed. “You’re good for them, you know that? You really came through for them while I was laid up. I hope you know how grateful I am.”

I nodded, lowered my head.

“And you’ve got the graduation party all planned, according to Jeremy. You just jumped in and took care of everything.”

“Not everything,” I said, blushing a little. “There’s still his present.”

Mason smiled slowly. “I’ve got that covered.” He leaned forward, tugging the laptop closer to him, hitting a few keys and glancing over his shoulder toward the stairs as a page loaded. When it did, my eyebrows went up at the hot-looking green car on the screen. “Whoa. Is that a Camaro?”

“Yep. An ’89 IROC-Z,” he said. “The mileage is low, for its age. I had Rosie check it out for me. He says it’s mechanically solid, almost no rust, decent tires.”

“So you bought it for him?”

“The price was right,” he said, smiling.

“My God, Mason, that boy is gonna dance on the ceiling when he sees this.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I think.” I moved the pillows that had been between us and sat down close to him, leaning against his shoulder and admiring his purchase. “I should get him something car related to go with it.” I bit my lip, thinking out loud. “Snow tires?”

“No way he’s driving it in the winter. Not the first year, anyway.”

“Mmm. Well then, seat covers? A tune-up? A year’s worth of car washes?” Then I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it. I’ll pay his first insurance premium.”

“That’s perfect. I’ll have Mother get him a prepaid gas card, and he’ll be good to go.” He set the laptop back on the coffee table and turned to me, sliding one arm around me and leaning in close. “Don’t go home tonight, Rache. Stay with me and the boys. And the puppy.”

I smiled, slow and sappy. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t ask.”