The Obsession(29)

When he rushed off, she sat a moment, a little stunned, a little sick. Why was she surprised? she wondered. Because she’d thought he was, at least a little bit, a friend? Should she be grateful he hadn’t already published what he knew in the school paper?

The hell with it, she thought. Just the hell with all of it.

She got upbefore someone could sit down and try to comfort herand made her way back to the kitchen. She could slip into the storeroom from there for the belated alone.

But Harry was right behind her.

He pointed to a stool. “Sit.” And sat himself on a stack of boxes. “Now tell me what that boy said to upset you.”

“It wasn’t anything.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

She jerked back. He never used that sharp, angry tone. “Harry.”

“We’re going to stop lying to each other. I knew your mother was lying about going to the prison, about keeping in contact. I knew, and I kept it from Seth. I didn’t tell him because it would upset him. And that’s a lie. Omission is a lie.”

“You knew?”

“And maybe if I’d said something . . .” He rubbed his tired eyes. “We’ll never know.”

“We knew. Mason found out and told me. We didn’t say either.”

“Well, where did all that get us, baby? Look where we are now. No more lies, no more omissions.” He leaned forward, took her hands. His eyes, so blue against the caramel, held that innate kindness he showed her every day. “When Seth asked me about taking you, your brother, your mother into the home in D.C., I said of course. But I thought, It won’t be for long. Of course we have to helpSeth needs to help his familybut they’ll get on their feet and get their own in, oh, six months or a year. I could open our home for a year. I did it because I love Seth.”

“I know you do.”

“What I didn’t count on was falling in love with you. With Mason. With your mother. That’s what happened. When we talked about selling the house, moving to New York, I didn’t do it just for Seth. I did it for all of us. Because we’d become a family. You’re my girl, Naomi. Same as if we were blood. I mean that.”

“I love you, Harry. I do, so much.” The tears came then, hot but clean. “I know how much you’ve done for us, all you’ve given us.”

“I don’t want to hear about that. I could tell you what you’ve done for me, what you’ve given me. I bet it balances out pretty square. What I want, and need, I think what we all want and need from today on, my baby, is truth. Let’s start right here. What did Anson say to put that look on your face?”

“He knows who we are. He heard some of the police talking, and he figured it out. He wants to be a journalist, and he wants the story. From me.”

“I’ll have a talk with him.”

“No, sir. No, Harry. What’s the point? He knows, and you can’t make it so he doesn’t. He said he wouldn’t say where Iwe are, would leave out some details, but”

“You don’t trust him. Why should you?”

She thought of Mark’s hand sliding down to her butt, of Chaffins’s blind ambition. “I don’t trust anybody but you, Seth, and Mason.”

“We can put you and Mason in private school.”

“It’ll just happen again. We can move again, and it’ll happen again. Mama’s gone, and it was hardest on her. We couldn’t protect her from him or herself.”

“Nobody’s going to hurt my baby girl.”

“I thought he was a friend. But nobody stays your friend when they find out who you are.”

“If they don’t, they weren’t worth your friendship.”

“But how do you know, ever, who is?” She remembered the card the policewoman who looked like she could play one on TV had given her, and took it out of her bag. “Detective Rossini.”

“What about her?”

“I think, maybe, she’s a friend. He smokes potChaffinssells it a little, too.”

Harry sighed. “Naomi, I understand peer pressure and the need for experimentation, and this isn’t the time to”

“I don’t do drugs. Neither does Mason.” She frowned at the card as she spoke. “He wants Harvard and the FBIMason won’t take any chances with that. Chaffins wants Columbia, and the New York Times. It wouldn’t look good for him to get arrested for possession, maybe suspended from school.”

Harry’s eyebrows lifted. “Blackmail?”

“That’s what he’s doing. I’d be ratting him out to the copsand I’m not proud of it. But I think Detective Rossini would go have that talk with him, and it might work, long enough for me to write the story.”