Deadly Obsession (A Brown and de Luca Novel Book 4) by MAGGIE SHAYNE

why he wanted to wait till I was home and recovering to bring them up.” He looked at me, waiting for me to agree with him. He did that a lot, I realized. Had his own opinion about what was going on in the boys’ heads but also asked me, without really asking me, for my two cents. I guess because I had a lot of experience with my twin nieces. And maybe because I’d had a much more typical childhood than he apparently had, even though I’d been blind and he hadn’t. That was bizarre, wasn’t it?
    I nodded. “Jeremy’s a good kid, and I absolutely believe him about all that. He wasn’t hiding the letters. Didn’t even seem upset that you’d found them.” And he knew what his mother had done, too, which was a hell of a thing for a teenager to have to live with. Josh...well, it was tough to tell how much Joshua knew. It was a small town. His mother had committed three extremely gruesome murders. We hadn’t given him any of the details, and we’d tried to shield him from newspapers and the TV when the killings were being covered nonstop. Of course he heard things. That was inevitable. Mason told him that his mother had become very sick in the brain and had hurt some people but that she couldn’t help herself. And that was why she had to stay in the hospital, because it might happen again.
    He reached for the envelope, winced a little and lowered his wounded arm. “Why don’t you read them to me while I try to put a fresh bandage on this?”
    “Where’s your nurse, anyway?”
    “At home, probably. She hasn’t started yet.”
    This, I thought, should make me happy. Except I sucked at first aid. Always had. Still, I had to try. I’d been wishing he would lean on me a little more, after all. “Why don’t
you
read them to
me
instead? Let me play Florence Nightingale tonight.”
    “Deal.” The way he said it, I knew he’d been hoping I would offer. He laid his arm across a pair of sofa pillows. The bandages looked as if they’d been applied by Joshua. Or maybe Myrtle. Then again, I wasn’t sure I could do much better.
    I got up and went into the kitchen, where the supply of bandages, ointments, tiny scissors and tape was still right on the counter, where he’d dropped everything on returning home from the hospital. He’d clearly used some of them since, but he hadn’t bothered putting them away. Men. I looked around the room, spotted a cute little wicker basket that had probably arrived bearing fruit at some point, and grabbed it. Then I lined it in plastic wrap and scooped all the supplies into it. I added a gallon-size zipper bag and headed back to the living room. Then I sat down next to him and carefully began unwrapping the gauze from his arm.
    Mason held the letter in his good hand and started reading. “‘Dear Jeremy,’” he began. “‘I miss you so much that it’s hard to breathe. I’m sorry for everything I did. My mind...it’s not right. Even now, with all the pills they make me take every day, it’s not right. Not all the way. Not to where it should be. I hope someday you can forgive me.’”
    It was sad. Heartbreaking, really. And, yeah, I ought to hate the crazy bitch for trying to gouge out my eyes, but she had been completely out of her mind. I remember thinking how much she’d been through and wondering how she’d stayed sane, right before I found out that she hadn’t.
    The gauze came to an end, revealing soft pads on the arm itself. I started to lift one, but it pulled at his burns. I winced, he winced. I stopped pulling. “Maybe we should soak them off.”
    He nodded. “Good idea.”
    I back went to the kitchen with a handful of sterile gauze pads, soaked them in warm water, and brought them back to lay across his arm. “Keep going.”
    He nodded, folded Letter One, replaced it in the envelope and took out Letter Two. “‘Dear Jeremy. I only just realized how close your graduation is getting. I would give anything to be able to be there. To watch you walk up on the