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"Well, that sounds delicious." Andrea gives me a smile, and then stands up from the island. "Do you mind if I go take a bath while I wait for dinner?"
"Not at all."
She rounds the counter and over to me. Her lips catch mine as she deposits a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth, before she dances away upstairs.
I watch her leave and, for a while I amuse myself with the dinner preparations, not thinking about anything else and enjoying the momentary calm.
After seasoning the meat, I grab the ingredients for dinner and head to the backyard so I can prepare dinner on the grill.
And then I see something strange. Someone who shouldn't be here.
My first impression of the man on the other side of the glass wall is vague. For a moment, I think maybe one of the security guards has gone off his route for some reason. But then I see the face with the familiar, hysterical expression, and those comically crooked glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, and I understand who this is.
I leave dinner on the counter, and slowly walk out of the house toward the patio, locking the door behind me.
"Brandon, what are you doing here?"
As I slowly walk down the steps, I notice that this man doesn't look entirely in his right mind. His suit of gray is wrinkled, and his glasses are nearly falling off his face, more crooked than they should be. His hands won't stop shaking.
He ignores my question, and instead looks around. He seems slightly absent for a reason I can’t place.
"Must be nice growing up in a place like this," he mutters.
"It wasn't. Answer my question," I command.
He ignores me again. A strained smile tugs over his lips.
"Rich kid problems. It sure was hard for you to cry on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea for your troubles. No hunger, no cold. No need."
I stay silent on my end, waiting for him to continue.
"That's why you don't understand her, you know? But I do. We have similar stories. Abusive fathers and absent mothers."
"A lot of people have been through things like that," I argue. "But that doesn't bind you to her.”
"It binds me a lot more than you think," Brandon states in a cold tone, and then I see it.
The gun dangling from his right hand.
I look down to his feet next, trying to connect the dots. His shoes have little dark stains on them that I had mistaken for mud at first, but that could very well be blood.
I put all the pieces together inside my head, and then I say. "You're ambidextrous, aren't you?"
Brandon chuckles. "You've been slow to find out," he says.
"But that doesn't make sense. An ambidextrous person writes the same way with either hand."
"Not always. Not if you train your hands to write differently. She needs me and I need her."
Obsessed. The word spins around inside my head.
"She doesn't know."
"Of course she doesn't," Brandon states bluntly.
His right hand raises to point the gun directly at my chest, but I remain calm.
Andrea is safe, I repeat to myself. No matter how hard he tries, he won't be able to get inside the house.
