Page 228 of Obsession

When I got out of the car, all my hair stood up, but I couldn’t feel anything.

My father walked into the alley, and I followed him. He stood next to me like I was a bomb he couldn’t stop in time, and that’s exactly how I felt.

When we reached the door, he looked at me.

I raised my eyebrows, a gesture that silently told him to get it over with, because delaying the inevitable wasn’t going to make me feel any better.

He knocked, and I analyzed the house while we waited for the door to open. It seemed older than ours, the white paint on the outside walls was cracked and the lawn hadn’t been mowed in a long time.

I tapped my foot restlessly, stress prickling my skin as my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw a text from Harris asking me if everything was okay.

I don’t know yet.

I sent the reply, then the door opened. I was about to sneeze, but my breath caught in my throat when I saw who appeared in the doorway.

“Christopher!” the blonde woman exclaimed, startled, looking first at my father and then at me.

“Hi, Roberta.”

I felt my knees go weak as my father leaned down to kiss this woman – he was bending a lot - considering she was in awheelchair.

I watched the whole thing, perplexed, frozen in the doorway.

My father straightened up and looked at me as if praying that I wouldn’t explode any time soon.

We entered as she invited us in, having moved back a little.

I had expected many things, but not this. Her situation automatically made me soften, but not completely.

My father was single, spending his time keeping me in the house and constantly under control. A new woman in his life was actually a very good thing for me. I didn’t think of her as my new mother, and I definitely wasn’t going to call her that, but as long as she kept my dad busy and left me alone, maybe I wouldn’t be as much of a bitch as I had planned to be before I met her. But of course I had to find out the circumstances of their rekindled love first, because it all seemed too suspicious.

We followed her into the living room, and I noticed that her whole house was white, from the paint on the walls to the furniture.

The woman stopped by the couch, but my father didn’t sit down, instead standing vigilantly near me, analyzing my every reaction.

“Katherine, you probably already figured out that Roberta…”

“Yeah, yeah, your girlfriend, I get it. Well then,mazel tovor something, I hope your house doesn’t have too many stairs.”

I bit my lip, realizing my words as soon as they came out. Could I have not made a sarcastic remark about her?

Remember, Katherine: be nice and let dad be, otherwise he’ll find out what you have been doing the last few days and you’ll attend his wedding locked in a closet.

He gave me an angry look.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“It’s okay, I get that a lot, and you’re right, I hate stairs.” My father’s new girlfriend – possibly my soon-to-be stepmother – gave me a warm smile.

I believed her that she was crazy about my dad, and she also understood that he came with a foul-mouthed daughter.

Well, at least that was out of the way.

“Yes, we’re together,” he confirmed, trying to get the conversation back on track, “but we’ve known each other for ages.”

And that’s where the suspicious part came from.

“Roberta was my first wife.”

---