Page 128 of Obsession
No answer.
My boots clomp on the marble flooring, the sound echoing in all directions.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge, and I spin around.
I hold my phone out in front of me, lighting up the empty aisle.
Whispering shadows greet me as they crawl along the bookshelves, caressing each spine like swirling mist on a forest floor. It’s all in my mind; I know it is. But fear still has me in its grip, exhilarating and frightening, a heady combination that makes my heart beat everywhere in my body.
Swallowing, I slowly turn on my heel and sweep my flashlight over every nook and cranny. I set off down the aisle. The note said to walk to the back of the library. I don’t know what I’ll discover there, but I’m determined to find out.
The aisle opens to a small seating area framed by a row of tall windows and heavy, burgundy curtains, but that’s not what has caught my attention. In the middle of the table sits a lone, flickering candle inside a lantern, and beside it, a book and a can of cola, still cold and covered in condensation.
I clench my hands and stare at it until my eyes burn, but it’s still there, taunting me with my secrets.
Secrets that now belong to someone else.
Scanning the immediate area around me, I slowly approach the table. My eyes fall to the book, and I pull out a chair before sliding it closer.
It’s a yearbook, to be correct.
I plop down and unwind my mustard scarf from around my neck, studiously ignoring the can beside me. After placing the scarf on the chair beside mine, I scan the page of smiling faces before taking note of the date.
Twenty-five years ago.
A chill that has nothing to do with the cold seeps in through the tall windows at my back, covering me with goosebumps from head to toe.
Glancing around, I feel eyes on me. The candle flickers in the silence as I let my gaze drift across the rows of tall mahogany bookshelves, suddenly glad the windows are at my back.
I look back down at the yearbook and pause.
Is that?No…
I pick up my phone and shine the flashlight on the page.
“That’s my dad,” I whisper, my hand shaking.
He’s younger, with a full head of hair and gleaming teeth, but it’s unmistakably him. Not only that, but my mom is seated in the first row, toward the left.
My eyes sting from staring too long at her smiling face, framed by dark tresses and hoop earrings, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Dad kept a photograph of them together inside a shoebox in his closet, and I found it one day when I hid in there while he played poker with his friends.
I’d picked it up out of sheer curiosity and looked through its contents as rowdy laughter filtered through the paper-thin walls. I knew instantly it was her. We share the same brown eyes and the same pronounced Cupid’s bow. In the photograph, she stood beside my father, cradling a newborn baby in her arms. Months later, she packed up a bag and left.
My chest tightens, and I blink back tears. I’m about to close the yearbook when my eyes catch on another familiar face Iknow well in the same row as my father’s—a face I’ve studied in the moonlight while wrapped in his strong arms.
Robbie Hammond.
I stare and stare, but he’s still there, tall and lanky with a mop of raven hair, gazing, unsmiling, at the camera.
“It can’t be,” I breathe, but it is.
And now it all makes sense.
How he seemed to know so much about me and the evil men in my life.
Scanning the page, I pause on their faces.
