Page 22 of Love Obscene
“I do like them,” I answered quietly.
Five points for honesty.
“Are these all of them?”
“Katie-Kat, I’m thirty-two years old. There have been way more than just four.” He smiled against my neck, maneuvering me away from the wall.
He was thirty-two? That meant he had a good eleven years on me.
“How did you know what I did?” The question burst from my mouth like a balloon losing helium. Turning me around, he looked down at me as if debating how he wanted to respond.
“When I realized I couldn’t trust your mother, I put cameras in your house. I just happened to be around that night. I saw it on my phone.” He didn’t bat an eye after dropping that bomb. “It must have been fate for me to save your life.”
“There is so much wrong with everything you just said. Mostly that you know my mother. I thought you knew my dad.”
“Come with me. There’s something I need to show you.” He kept one arm around my waist, guiding me out of the room and down the back hall.
We walked into an office that sat all the way at the end; it was a room that had been locked shut the night before.
There was a large mahogany desk in the center of the room; a thick black leather chair sat behind it. Rows of dark shelves were built into the back wall. A leather sofa was directly across from it, and a large arched window made up one entire wall. I assumed it gave him a full view of his backyard.
“Sit here.” He walked me around the desk and sat me in his chair. I watched him fiddle with the computer mouse and pull up a white screen with various dates logged on a spreadsheet.
“Do you see these dates?” He dragged a little black cursor up and down the screen.
“Yes,” I answered, nodding.
“Do you see today’s date?” He pointed across the room to where a calendar hung on the wall, then moved his cursor to the bottom part of the monitor to show me it said the same thing.
“I see it,” I acknowledged they were a little over a year apart, wondering where he was going with this.
“Good. Now listen.”
He hit a play button, and a woman’s robotic voice started speaking, reciting the date was May eleventh, year two thousand and seventeen. Two voices began speaking after that, a conversation I could immediately tell was between Mason and my mother.
Mason: “I’m beginning to think you’re obsessed with me. What do you need at three in the morning?”
Glenda: “You would know all about obsession, considering Katie is all you seem to be interested in.”
Glancing at Mason, I wondered if he had heard the blatant hostility in her voice when she said my name.
As the conversation continued, the way she felt about me became even clearer.
Mason:Are you drunk?
Glenda:I wish I were drunk. I wanted to be sure we were still on the same page. You never answer when I call, so I figured now was a great time.
Mason:Some people actually work, Glenda. I know the concept is strange to you, but I like having money to afford the finer things in life.Nothing has changed. We tell her nothing. We both know she can’t handle the truth.
Glenda:Ah, yes. Money. I had the privilege of affording nice things too, once. Then that bastard gave me two kids, and all the money seemed to vanish.
Mason:The next time you feel the need to have an emotional one on one, call a fucking therapist.
Glenda:I’ll be coming to see you soon, Mason.
There was a little beep after that, and the audio ended. I sat staring at the screen long after he hit the big X in the corner.
“Mason, what are you trying to tell me?”
