Page 39 of The Obsession

“That was the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” she said flatly, grabbing a box of Goldfish crackers.

I shook my head, and god, I loved what an asshole Delilah could be. I couldn’t wait to laugh about this with her months down the road. I’d pull her close and remind her what an absolute brat she was to me in the early days and she’d grin and tell me it was worth it, and then our lips would meet in a kiss as hungry and sweet as the kiss we had after our first date.

Back in the car, Delilah retreated once more into a shell. I didn’t push her. We had all the time in the world, and the silence wasn’t entirely uncompanionable. When I pulled up in front of her house, she started to open her door then stopped with a sharp intake of breath. She stared out the windshield, her mouth slightly open, her face pale.

“What is it?” I asked.

She pointed to a car parked on the curb across the street. “That’s Mendez’s car. Brandon’s ex-partner,” she added when I didn’t reply.

“I take it she doesn’t often drop by unannounced?”

Delilah clenched her jaw. “Not before he died. Now she likes to drop by with doughnuts and all these questions about Brandon—” She swallowed and looked at me, her eyebrows knitted together. “What if she suspects something about Brandon’s death? He was always complaining about how she could never leave things alone. What if she’s been digging and she knows—”

“Hey, calm down,” I said, taking her hand. Delilah was so scared about Mendez, she didn’t even recoil at my touch. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Her eyes narrowed, and the curl appeared again in her upper lip. “Right, my seventeen-year-old stalker is going to protect me from the big bad cop.”

“Dee—”

“Whatever, it’s fine. I’ll be fine.” She took a deep breath. “All right. I’m okay. Let’s go find out what the hell she knows.” She got out of the car and wiped her palms on her jeans.

We walked slowly, the distance from the car to the house stretching impossibly long. Delilah’s anxiety was contagious; I half expected cops to jump out of the bushes and pounce on us.

Delilah unlocked the front door and led the way in. “Mom?” she called out.

No answer. She turned back to me and shrugged, closing the door. “Maybe I was wrong, maybe that wasn’t Detective Mendez’s—”

As though the very mention of Mendez summoned her, there was a knock on the door. We stared at each other, then Delilah frantically motioned at me to hide in the kitchen.

“Why?” I mouthed.

“Just go!” she hissed. She watched as I left and hid behind a corner. Once I was out of sight from the front door, she took a deep breath, brushed down her top, and plastered a halfway-decent smile onto her face. I slunk behind the wall so I wouldn’t be seen.

“Detective Mendez, hi,” Delilah said.

“Hi, Delilah.”

A slight pause, then Delilah said, “Can I help you with anything?” the same time Detective Mendez said, “Is your mom in?”

“She’s still at work,” Delilah said.

“Right. Well, that’s okay. I’d like to speak with you, actually.”

The note of fear was sharp in Delilah’s answer. “Me?”

I closed my eyes. Her voice came out too high, brittle with fear.

“Yeah, we got a call earlier today claiming that Brandon’s death wasn’t an accident, and I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by, see if you might have heard anything…” Detective Mendez’s voice trailed off. It was an old trick that begged the person you were questioning to fill up the silence.

Delilah fell for it. “Oh, wow. Do you know who made the call?”

My hands tightened into fists. I hated having to listen to my Delilah being tricked into making mistakes like this.

“That’s not for me to disclose.” Meaning she didn’t know. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Do you have any idea who might have done anything to Brandon?”

“Well, he was your partner. Your guess is as good as mine.”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, squeezing my pendant with frustration. Now Delilah sounded defensive. She was really bad at this. Was it just me, or was her distaste for Brandon painfully obvious? If she revealed Brandon had been abusive, Detective Mendez would know Delilah had a strong motive for killing him, and from there, it wouldn’t take long at all for her to piece together what happened.

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