The Obsession

by Nora Roberts

  took home the gold, and the now-fifteen-year-old actress who’d played Naomi Bowes walked the red carpet in Alexander McQueen, after the movie-tie-in release of the book hung for sixteen weeks on the bestseller list, the New York Times ran a three-part article on consecutive Sundays.

  She wasn’t at all surprised to receive an angry email from Anson Chaffins.

  First you sic that cop on me, now this! You’re a lying bitch, and I’ll tell everybody who you are, where you are, what you are. I gave you the idea. You stole my article.

  She wrote back only once.

  My life, my story, and I never agreed to your deal. Tell anyone you want.

  But he didn’t tell anyone. On her own she sent Detective Rossini flowers as a thank-you. She changed her email address, her phone number, and buckled down to focus on her schoolwork, her photography, and her family.

  She told herself she’d put the past in the past now, where it needed to stay. And she’d really begun her life as Naomi Carson.

  DEPTH OF FIELD

  Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.

  There are only middles.

  ROBERT FROST

  Six

  Sunrise Cove, Washington State, 2016

  It hadn’t been impulse. Naomi assured herself of that as she roamed the rambling old house on the bluff. A little rash, maybe. A gamble, absolutely. She’d taken plenty of gambles, so what was one more?

  But holy shit, she’d bought a house. A house older than she was—about four times older. A house on the opposite side of the country from her family. A house, she admitted, that needed work. And furniture.

  And a serious cleaning.

  An investment, she told herself, wincing at the grimy kitchen with its dated appliances—surely older than she was—and cracked linoleum floor.

  So she’d clean it up, fix it up, paint it up. Then she could put it back on the market, or rent it out. She didn’t have to live there. That was a choice—something else she’d made plenty of before.

  It would be a project. Something to keep her busy when she wasn’t working. A home base, she considered, and tried the faucet of the chipped porcelain sink.

  It coughed, banged, and then spewed out fits of water.

  A home base with bad plumbing.

  So, she’d make a list. Maybe it would’ve been smarter to have made a list before buying the house, but she’d make one. Plumber went straight to number one.

  Gingerly, she opened the cabinet under the sink. It smelled a little dank, looked dingy, and the ancient bottle of Drano didn’t inspire confidence.

  Definitely find a plumber.

  And a whole bunch of cleaning supplies.

  She blew out a breath, pulled her phone out of a pocket of her cargo pants, opened an app.

  Hire plumber went on first.

  She added more as she wandered back out, through a dining room with a wonderful fireplace of carved black wood. A chimney sweep. Did people still become chimney sweeps? Somebody must inspect and clean chimneys, and since there were five fireplaces in the old house, chimney sweep definitely went on the list.

  Why had she bought a house with five fireplaces? And ten bedrooms? And six and a half baths?

  She wouldn’t think about that now. Now she’d work on what to do about it.

  The floors were solid. They needed refinishing, but the real estate agent had really sold the wide-planked ponderosa pine. She could do some research, see if she could refinish them herself. Otherwise, flooring guy.

  And then there was tile guy—would that be the same person?

  What she needed, Naomi thought as she started up the creaky stairs, was a contractor. And bids. And a plan.

  What she needed, she corrected, as she stood on the landing where the hallway shot left and right, was her head examined. How the hell could she manage a house this size, and one in this shape?

  Why in God’s name had she tied herself to this remote dot of land in Washington State? She liked to travel—new places, new views, new ideas. Just her and her equipment. Free to go anywhere. And now she had this anchor of a dilapidated house weighing her down.

  No, it hadn’t been impulse. It had been lunacy.

  She walked past dingy walls and, okay, gorgeous old doors, by far too many rooms for one solitary woman, and felt that old, familiar pressure in her chest.

  She would not have an anxiety attack because she’d been an idiot.

  Breathing slowly, deliberately, she turned in to what the real estate agent had billed as the master.

  It was big and bright, and yes the floors needed work, and the walls were an awful faded blue that looked like cloudy pool water, and the old glass slider needed to go.

  But she pulled and tugged it open on its rusted runners and stepped out onto the wide, sturdy deck.

  And this was why, she thought as all the pressure lifted into sheer bliss. This was why.

  The inlet, deep gleaming blue, curved and widened, split around knots of land green with the earliest whispers of spring. Shorelines climbed up, upholstered with trees, as the water traveled out through a narrow channel into deeper blues. In the distance just west, mountains rolled up against the sky to back a thick forest of green shadows.

  And straight out, beyond the inlet, the channel, the knots and knuckles of land, spread the deeper blue of the sound.

  Her bluff wasn’t particularly high, but it afforded a pure, unobstructed view of water and sky and land, and for her, an indescribable sense of peace.

  Her place. She leaned against the rail a moment, breathed it in. She’d known it was her place the moment she’d stepped out here on that breezy February afternoon.

  Whatever needed to be done to make the house habitable would be done. But no one could take this view, this sense of hers away.

  Since she’d left her equipment downstairs, she took her phone, switched to camera mode. She framed in a shot, checked it, took another. She sent it to Mason, Seth, Harry—what she listed in her contacts as My Guys—with a simple message.

  This is why.

  She tucked her phone away, thought the hell with lists. She was going into town and buying supplies. She’d figure out the rest as she went.

  The little town made most of its living off the water with its marina, dive shop, the kayak and canoe rentals, the fish market. On Water Street—naturally—gift shops, coffee shops, restaurants, and the Sunrise Hotel faced the curve of the marina with its bobbing boats.

  She spent a couple nights in the hotel when she’d followed her nose into Sunrise Cove. She’d wanted to add to her portfolio of stock photography, beef up her portfolio of fine photography, and had found plenty of studies for both.

  She’d caught sight of the house—just a piece of it—outside her hotel window, and found herself amused and intrigued by the way it angled away from the town, its people, toward the water and the wood.

  She’d wanted some photos of it, had asked for directions. Before she knew it, she was heading out to what the locals called Point Bluff with John James Mooney, Realtor.

  Now it belonged to her, Naomi thought, and parked in front of the grocery store.

  A few hundred dollars later she loaded up food, cleaning supplies, paper products, lightbulbs, laundry detergent—which was stupid, as she didn’t know if the old washer worked—plus a basic set of pots and pans, a coffeemaker, and a vacuum cleaner she’d purchased at the neighboring hardware store.

  She’d also gotten the name of a contractor from both places—the same name, so obviously a popular guy. Deciding there was no time like the present, she called him then and there, made an appointment to meet him for a walk-through in an hour.

  She headed back, pleased it took a solid ten minutes on winding roads to reach the house. Far enough away for privacy, close enough for convenience.

  Then she opened the back of her 4Runner, looked at the haul, and swore the next trip in she’d make a list.

  That list, she realized when she started unloading groceries,
would have included cleaning the refrigerator before buying food to go in it.

  By the time she’d cleaned it, filled it, and started out for the next load, she saw the black truck winding up the road toward her.

  She slipped a hand in her pocket, closed it over her pocketknife. Just a precaution.

  The truck pulled up. A man in a ball cap and sunglasses leaned out one window. A big black dog with a polka dot bandanna leaned out the other.

  “Ms. Carson?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Kevin Banner.” He said something to the dog that had its head retreating before he got out of the truck.

  She judged him early thirties, sandy hair curling out from under the cap. A good strong jaw, a compact build. He held out a hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Workingman’s hand, she thought, and relaxed. “Thanks for coming.”

  “I heard somebody from back east bought the place. It’s something, isn’t it?”

  “It’s something.”

  He grinned, shifted his weight. “It’s been sitting empty about ten years now—I guess Mr. Mooney told you—since Mr. Parkerson died, and Mrs. Parkerson had to let it go. They ran it as a B-and-B for more than twenty years. She just couldn’t keep it up, and ended up moving to Seattle to live with her daughter. Rented it out for a while here and there, but . . .”

  “A big place, a lot of maintenance.”

  He hooked his thumbs in his front pockets, rocked back on his heels as his gaze traveled over the long rectangle of building.

  “You got that. I threatened to buy it a while back—it’s got history and that view—but my wife threatened to divorce me. Now maybe I’ll get my hands on it, and get to keep my wife.”

  “Let’s take a look. Is your dog okay in the truck?”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  The dog rested her head on the dash, sent Naomi a soulful look.

  “I like dogs. You can bring her if you want.”

  “Thanks. She’s a good dog, used to job sites. Come on, Molly!”

  The dog leaped straight out of the window, landed neat as a gymnast, then pranced over to sniff Naomi’s boots.

  “Nice jump, pretty girl.” When Naomi stroked Molly’s head, the dog did a full-body wag.

  “Maybe you can give me an idea what you’re looking to do.”

  “Bring it into the twenty-first century. I don’t mean the look,” Naomi added. “But the plumbing, the lighting, the kitchen, bathrooms. I’m hoping a lot of it’s cosmetic,” she said as they started inside. “I can paint and handle simple DIY, but there’s a lot of clunking and hissing when you use the water. And I don’t know if it’s safe to use any of the fireplaces. I considered tackling the floors myself—refinishing—but realize that would probably take me two or three years.”

  “Windows?”

  “What about them?”

  “Replacing them with double-paned, low-E glass, that’s going to be more energy efficient, and while it costs now, it saves you in utility bills. It gets drafty in here during the winter.”

  “That can go on the list, and we’ll see.”

  “I’m going to want to take a look at the wiring, make sure it’s safe and up to code. We can look at the chimneys, make sure you’re good there. You want to keep them wood burning?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  The dog wandered around, sniffing, exploring. It struck Naomi that Kevin did nearly the same.

  “You’ve got some fireplaces upstairs, right? If you don’t want to haul wood upstairs, you could think about gas logs on the second floor.”

  “That is a thought—cleaner.”

  “You thinking of a B-and-B?”

  “No, I’m not. Not right now.”

  He nodded, made notes, muttered a little to himself as they toured the first floor. When they came to the kitchen, he took his cap off, scratched his head, fixed it back on again.

  “I’m going to tell you straight, this kitchen’s a pure gut job.”

  “If you’d said different, I’d wonder why everybody I asked recommended you.”

  “All right then. Now I’m betting the hardwood runs right on through, under this ugly-ass linoleum.”

  “Really? Do you think so?” The idea balanced out against the notion of needing to replace a zillion windows. “Can we check?”

  “If you don’t mind me messing up a corner.”

  “You can’t make ugly-ass more ugly.”

  He chose a corner, pried it up with his own pocketknife. “Oh yeah, got your ponderosa pine.”

  “Hot damn. Take this crap up, sand, refinish, seal, right?”

  “That’s what I’d do.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “All right then.” With his sunglasses hooked on the breast pocket of his T-shirt, Kevin ran steady hazel eyes over the space. “I can work up a couple designs for you in here.”

  “I’ll take a stab at it. I haven’t designed a kitchen, but I’ve shot plenty of them. Photography,” she explained. “For catalogs, websites, stock photos.” Hands on hips, she walked the room, imagined it down to the bare walls and floor.

  “It’s roomy, and that’s a plus. I’d want an island, good size, for prep and for eating. I don’t want sleek, but I don’t want country either. More contemporary rustic, so dark cabinets, glass-fronted, go light on the countertops, figure out an interesting backsplash, and have fun with the lighting. There’s room for double wall ovens there—I don’t know what I’ll do with double ovens, but my uncles swear by them. Gas cooktop and a snappy exhaust—like a focal point. Farm sink under that window, and that bathroom’s awkward anyway. Take that out, make it a walk-in pantry. And get rid of this poky little back door. Open it up to that deck, that view. Big-ass double doors—full glass, no panes.”

  He’d been making notes, nodding, but looked up now.

  “Ms. Carson?”

  “Naomi.”

  “Naomi. I love my wife.”

  She sent him a careful smile as she turned. “That’s good.”

  “I fell for her when I was sixteen, and didn’t get up the courage to ask her out for nearly a year. I might still be thinking about kissing her for the first time if she hadn’t taken that bull by the horns, so to speak. I was twenty-three when we got married—she took that over, too, or I’d be working up the nerve to ask her. We got two kids.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I’m just saying I love my wife, and I tend to move slow in some areas. But if you and I had a longer acquaintance I’d kiss you right on the mouth.”

  “Should I anticipate that for later?”

  He grinned again. “It could happen if you keep realizing my hopes and dreams. It was taking out that skinny door there that did it. It needs the view. Why have that view, and keep it outside? If you let me take out that wall there, I’d give you open concept into the dining room. It would make it more of an entertaining space.