Page 42 of The Obsession

Ugh.

I stood up and started gathering the plates noisily. “Yeah, thanks for cooking, Logan. You should go back to school. Wouldn’t want to miss curfew.”

“Delilah! Don’t be so rude,” Mom scolded, but the bite in her words was blunted by all the carbs she’d stuffed in her face. “But I agree, Logan, as much as I love having you around, I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, ma’am,” Logan said. He made a big show of looking at his watch. “Still got another forty minutes before curfew, and I’ve finished most of my homework.”

Mom’s eyes widened. “Wow! Dee, this boy is amazing.”

Seriously, Mom?

“It’s so rare to find someone so well-adjusted. Your parents must be very proud of you,” Mom said.

“They’re okay, yeah,” Logan said, smiling shyly.

This might be what I hated most about all of this. Seeing Logan charm Mom into trusting him, unable to do anything about it. And that tiny, traitorous part of me was falling for it, getting charmed, batting its eyelashes at him and going,Gosh, isn’t he just amazing?

“All right,” I said loudly. “Logan may have finished his homework, but I’m far from finishing mine, so…”

“Okay, hon. I get it.” Mom stood up and winked at Logan. “She’s been worrying over her grades ever since she decided to apply for early admission to college.”

“Early admission?” Logan’s voice was totally calm, but I caught the flare in his eyes. Panic pounded through me.

“Yes, to the National University of Singapore. It’s her father’s alma mater, and—”

“There’s no need to bore him with all that stuff, Mom,” I said quickly, my heart thumping out a new rhythm so hard, I could feel my fingertips throbbing:shitshitshitshitshit.

Logan was nodding his head thoughtfully at me. I could practically read what he was thinking:gotcha.

“Pick you up at seven,” he said, standing up.

“You don’t have to,” I said. Still beating the same rhythm:shitshitshitshit.

“No, but I want to.”

And that tiny part of me fluttered. I tightened my lips into a sexless, matronly smile. “Thanks. See you.” As soon as I closed the door, my breath released in a tired exhale.Shit. He knows about NUS.I could cry, I really could. It was too much. Everything was too much. But surely even Logan wasn’t invested enough to change his entire life plan and move to a foreign country for a girl. Right? There was hope. And I’d prepared so hard for NUS. I’d read up on everything I could find on Singapore, and not even just Singapore, but the entirety of Southeast Asia. Plus, it was my dad’s alma mater. I had a better chance of getting in than he did. Things were bad but not catastrophic. I slouched toward the kitchen to start doing the dishes, but I found Mom there, pouring hot water into two mugs. She handed me one when she saw me, and the scent of tea with orange peel wafted out of the mug, sweet and soothing.

Mom gestured at me to take a seat.

“I should go up and get a start on my schoolwork,” I said, not quite meeting her eye, not quite able to forgive her for loving Logan so quickly, for not being wary, for failing me yet again.

“I know, this won’t take long.” She smiled and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I stopped myself from shuddering at the memory of Logan doing the exact same thing only hours ago. “Sweetie, I have to ask, are things between you and Logan okay? I mean, he seems like a nice boy, but you seem a bit…offaround him, and admittedly, I haven’t been the best judge of men, so I’m asking you now, is everything all right?”

There it was, my chance to open up the door, my chance to let everything spill out of me. Mom would be able to assess the situation and tell me what to do to minimize the damage. My insides pushed at me to do it, to vomit out the truth that had been festering deep inside me. It would be such a relief to get it out. I opened my mouth, the words teetering on the tip of my tongue.

Mom sighed, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, you must think I’m a hypocrite, asking you a question like that when I’m the one who invited Brandon into our lives. You’re so much wiser than I am, in many ways, and I should give you more credit.”

“That’s not—”

“I just—when I think of how stupid I was, letting Brandon move in and run our lives like that…and to think of how he treated us, how he treated you, I—how could I have let that happen? I used to be so strong, Dee. I believed I could do anything.”

“You can, Mom,” I said. “Look at you, you’re a powerhouse at your company—”

Mom snorted. “I’m a woman working in tech. I had no idea how much that was affecting me. I spent years making my skin thick, so all of the comments and snide remarks about how women are ruining tech wouldn’t get to me, but…it all adds up. And I was so scared of losing yet another man after your dad…” she said in a broken whisper. “I’ve failed you, Dee. I should have been strong. I should—I don’t know what I was thinking, what happened to me.”

“It’s not all your fault, Mom,” I said, tasting tears at the back of my throat. I’d been angry at her for so long, blaming her for Brandon, but now, I realized I meant what I said. “What Brandon did, it’s not on you. He was the perfect gentleman just long enough for us to trust him, and then…”

We lapsed into silence for a few moments, both of us lost in the past. I was reminded of how insidious Brandon’s abuse had been, at first. How it didn’t feel at all like abuse, how we both mistook it for concern, for love. By the time he raised his hand against us, it was too late. His poison had seeped under our skin, twined itself like roots around our hearts, making us believe in him, believe that the wall of blue would shut us out and protect him. Worst of all, by that time, he had stripped us both of our sense of self-worth, so much so that Mom, who was a grown-ass adult, had been turned into a trembling, watery mess. And me, who knows what he’d turned me into? A broken thing, monstrous—a killer.

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