The Obsession(19)

“Have you? Have you put it behind you?”

“Yes. Most of the time. A lot of the time.”

“Mama hasn’t. Remember when she said she was going for a weekend with that friend of hers? To some spa deal? She didn’t. She took the bus and went to see him, in prison.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged, then pulled her inside a coffee shop, wound through to a table. “She’s done it before. When the rest of us went to Hilton Head for a week, and she said she had a stomach virus? She went to see him then, too. I found the bus tickets in her purse, both those times, and one other.”

“You went through her purse?”

“That’s right.” He didn’t miss a beat. “Two Cokes, please,” he said with remarkable ease to the waitress. “And I go through her room, so that’s how I know she’s been writing to him. She has letters from him that come to a P.O. box.”

“You can’t disrespect her privacy,” Naomi began, then covered her face with her hands. “Why is she doing this?”

“She’s submissive and dependent—he’s dominated her the whole time. It’s like emotional abuse and battering.”

“Where do you get that?”

“I look shit up, like I said. He’s a psychopath, for Christ’s sake, Nome. You should know. And he’s a narcissist. That’s why he gives the cops another name and location every couple years. Another victim, and where he buried her. It keeps him in the news, keeps getting him attention. He’s a liar and he manipulates Mama. He twists her up because he can. Remember when she OD’d?”

“Don’t say it like that, Mason.”

“It’s what happened. Thanks.” He sent the waitress a quick smile when she set their drinks down. “He’d talked her into giving more interviews to Vance—the writer. I don’t know how he got in touch with her right off, but he talked her into that, and when the book came out, she couldn’t handle it.”

“He knows where we are.”

“I don’t know, but he sure as hell knows we’re in New York.” Then Mason shrugged. “He doesn’t care about us, and never did. Mama’s his target.”

“He cared about you.”

“I don’t think so. Do you think I wanted a buzz cut every freaking month? If he made it to one of my Little League games I could feel his eyes on my back when I came up to bat. I knew if I struck out, fouled out, he’d give me that sneer—that I’m raising a * sneer.”

“But . . .”

“He watched me for signs of ‘Carson blood.’ That’s how he put it. When I was eight he told me if I ever showed any fag tendencies, he’d beat the fag out of me.”

Shocked, she grabbed Mason’s hand. “You never told me.”

“Some shit you don’t tell your sister. At least when you’re eight. He scared the crap out of me—you, too. We just got used to being scared of him, like that was normal.”

“Yes.” She let it out on a shaky breath. “Yes, what kind of mood will he be in? Will he be in a good mood? Everything circled around him. I’ve gotten some of that out of therapy. I just didn’t know you felt that, too.”

“Same house, same father.”

“I thought . . . I thought it was different for you because he wanted a son. It was so clear he wanted a son more than a daughter. More than me.”

“He wanted himself, and I wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Naomi murmured.

“For what?”

“I was jealous because I thought he loved you more. And it’s horrible to think that, feel that, because he’s . . .”

“A psychopath, a sexual sadist, a serial killer.”

Each almost-flippant term made Naomi wince.

“He’s all that, Nome. But he’s still our father. That’s just fact. So forget it. I guess I was jealous some, because he let you be more. You were Mama’s deal; I was his. Anyway. Mama talked to the movie people, too. He pushed her into it, just kept asking and making it like it was the best thing for us—you and me.”

They kept their hands linked, leaned toward each other over the table now. “Why would he want it?”

“The attention, the fame. He’s right up there with Bundy, Dahmer, Ramirez. Serial killers, Naomi. Pay attention.”

“I don’t want to pay attention. Why do they want to make a movie about him? Why do people want to see it?”

“It’s as much about you as him. Maybe more.” He turned his hand over, gripped hers harder. “The title’s you, not him. How many eleven-year-old kids stop a serial killer?”

“I don’t want—”

“True or false? He’d have killed Ashley if you hadn’t gotten her out.”

Saying nothing, she reached for the pendant Ashley had given her on top of the world. Nodded.

“And when he’d finished with her, he’d have gotten another. Who knows how many he’d have killed.

“I look like him a little.”

“No, you don’t! Your eyes are the same color. That’s all.”

“I look like him some.”

“You’re not like him.”