57.
~ Theresa had been a senior at NYU when she found out her father died in Oregon.
Dylan had phoned, late in the afternoon, and said that it was 'about dad.'
He calmly told her how her father passed away while on the ambulance ride to the hospital. That he'd gone to work like always, but at some point during the morning, he started to feel bad. Maria Owens, his long time assistant, called the ambulance and Dylan. The Mayor's step son managing to beat the ambulance there.
Dylan hadn't told Theresa, he never told anyone else, how bad Romero looked at that moment. Hovering so near death. How the older man had been sweating and his eyes looked bloodshot. How he was clutching his left arm in pain.
It had been a private moment between them, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Dylan kneeling beside his chair, trying to assure him that it was going to be okay.
Romero had gripped Dylan's shoulder firmly with his right hand and looked him soberly in the eyes.
"I know it will, son." He stained to say.
It had been the only time he'd ever called Dylan 'Son' and it seemed more tragic now because of it. The paramedics rushed in then, taking him to the hospital, where he was dead on arrival.
"He didn't suffer, Lulu." Dylan said sadly. "He was fine that morning. His heart just gave out."
Theresa felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. Dad was young and handsome still. He was active and still went to work almost everyday. Still driving the pearl white SUV that had been her mother's. He had been Mayor of White Pine Bay for seventeen years. He was tentatively making plans to retire soon.
He was still useful and needed. How could he just be gone?
"We're making the funeral arrangements." Dylan told her. "We need you to come home. Do you need money?"
"No." Theresa said quickly. "No, I don't need money. I'll be on the next flight out."
~ For Theresa, moving to New York was like being reborn. Escaping from her over protective father in the small town where everyone knew all about her. Who her father was and that her mother had died tragically. She'd grown up in that large and impressive house on the hill. Her bedroom painted a blush pink since she was a baby.
She'd once asked her father if she could paint over it. He'd looked at her strangely and told her:
"Your mother painted that room."
That was always the end of the discussion. Once Norma Romero had put her mark on something, that thing was almost sacred to her father. They could never repaint or even change out the family photos on the walls. The house was a time capsule. Forever frozen on the day Norma Romero died.
Growing up, Theresa was never allowed to have friends over. Never host a sleep over. The girls in her class were intensely curious about the fancy house she lived in. Speculation about it being haunted were always whispered behind her back.
She hadn't known the truth about her mother until she started kindergarten. A mean boy in the second grade had hit her and said her mother had been murdered in that house. Theresa not even knowing what that word meant.
She didn't remember anything about her mother. When she tried to remember her, she could only see the color blue.
The pretty blond woman was captured in pictures all over the house. She had died young and by an unwritten rule, was now perfect and ageless. She'd always be this beautiful woman who was a mystery to the daughter she'd left behind.
Her father seemed to want to live his his late wife's memory. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner, they would have the preserves she had made during the pandemic. A way for the family to remember her and have her there with them.
But Theresa knew that she didn't belong here. She didn't want to be entombed in this house forever.
Moving to New York had been a liberation for her. A chance to learn who she was. No one cared about her past. No one knew her father. A small town sheriff turned small town mayor.
New York had always belonged to the future, just like her. Maybe it had been because her parents had her so late in life, but she'd always felt so out of touch with her father. As though he belonged in the past. He had already been middle aged when the pandemic hit, and that was always the defining moment of 'before and after'. It was unbelievable that he'd lived in a time with no internet and no cell phones. Their tastes in everything was radically different and he couldn't understand her when she talked about how the future would change everything again.
New York recharged her. It's energy never stopped and its' people were always fascinating. There was always something to see, do and learn. She'd be so exhausted at the end of the day, that she'd fall asleep faster than she ever did back in Oregon.
She had been happy to leave home at the time and never look back. She had resented her father for forbidding her to have social media or even a smart phone. For not letting her have friends over, or date or even learn to drive.
She had to wait till she was eighteen and get a license on her own because he didn't want her driving and refused to pay for driver's education.
It was when expected her to go to the local junior college, or do correspondence college from home, that she'd decided to leave. He wanted her to stay with him. To be with him forever in this lonely old house. This museum dedicated to a woman she never knew. He wanted her to evolve into a lonely cat lady who lived in that haunted house for the rest of her life. A real life 'Rose for Emily' maybe.
No, she couldn't do it. A week after graduation, she told him how she'd been accepted early to NYU and would be going to New York. He had called her bluff, but she wasn't bluffing. It was real and he could be happy for her, or not.
He chose the latter.
So, Theresa hadn't been home for last Christmas or any of the holidays since moving to New York. Most of the time, she didn't have the money, but also, she didn't want to get into a fight with her dad.
She still called him every week. Still checked in on him. He was annoyed with her, but happy she was doing okay. She knew he lived in fear of her being killed in this strange city she so readily called home.
It was to her first home that she was being called back to now. Just so everyone could see her and tell her how her dad was at peace and was finally reunited with his beloved wife, Norma again. She didn't believe in that. Not really. Her mother seemed distant and unreal. Norma Romero was a photograph. She was a blond, wooden doll in a doll house. A specter that haunted her father.
~ Dylan and Emma had, in typical fashion, taken care of everything. They'd picked out a coffin and the paper was going to do a lengthy obituary about the beloved Mayor Romero passing away. Theresa knew her father didn't want that. She knew he'd only want the plainest of obituaries for himself. Not the overly affectionate ones that took up an entire page of the newspaper with lavish praises.
"Everyone acts like they supported him all along." Dylan said sourly when the two siblings looked over the obituary.
Theresa looked at her brother who nodded.
"The quarantine? Everyone acts like they supported him and he was always supported after. He was vilified and lost the re-election for sheriff because of it. So many people were mad about the quarantine. They don't act like that now." He said.
Theresa saw how sad her half brother looked. Unlike her, he'd stayed in White Pine Bay. He used to say how he always wanted to travel with his wife Emma, but she had been sick her whole life. A problem that had gotten worse in the last few years. He had a good job with the city and he'd chosen to stay with the memory of their mother rather than leave.
"We need to talk about the house. Mom's house." Dylan told her. "It's worth a lot of money. Even with the motel demolished."
Theresa nodded.
Her mother's old house was still a showplace. A house that begged for the historical society to swoop in and proudly boast exclusive dinner parties here. Her father had bluntly turned down all offers to sell it for the past twenty years.
The bottom feeders of this town would be circling hungrily around her mother's house now that he wasn't there to protect it.
"Maybe we should sell." Theresa said soberly. Her brother glared at her and she shrugged.
"I mean, I don't plan to come back here. You and Emma could use the money."
Dylan shook his head.
"This was mom's house." He told her.
"Mom would have wanted us to be taken care of. So would dad." She argued. "The motel has been torn down. We don't get traffic through here anyway and there's a fancy hotel in nearby. We don't have a family business anymore. Why stay here?"
Theresa shrugged and looked into the living room. A room, like all the others, still waiting for Norma to come back home.
"I'm sure we can get a good price. You and Emma can pay off the mortgage on your place." She said hopefully.
"You won't have a home to come back to." Dylan reminded her. "You really want to live in New York?"
She shrugged.
"It feels more like home than this place ever did." She admitted.
~ The funeral had been small. Dylan, Emma and Theresa didn't want the public involved. Her father's assistant, Maria Owens was the only person there that wasn't family.
Alex Romero was laid to rest in a jet black coffin beside his wife. Exactly as he had always wanted.
Norman Bates' headstone looked unloved next to their mother's.
"Do you ever wonder?" Theresa asked her brother. "What happened to him?" She nodded at Normans' simple stone.
Emma, Maria Owens and the graveyard attendees were walking away.
Dylan shook his head.
"He ran away from home." He said. "He was having a lot of trouble. The stress of the pandemic. It was getting to him. He ran away and it hurt our mom. But she had you and that was all she cared about."
That wasn't an answer.
"I mean, do you really think he's dead?" Theresa asked.
"Yes." Dylan said. "I think he died a long time ago."
He shrugged.
"It was nice of Romero to put up a stone for him. Mom would have liked that." He said.
"Will you and Emma be buried here?" She asked nodding to the empty spaces in the family plot. There was room enough for her here as well. Room enough for a husband if she ever found one.
Dylan laughed.
"Yeah." He said. "When I first came here, to this town, I hated it. Then I met Emma. Mom married Romero and you were born. Now it's the only place I want to live."
He looked at his sister.
"I guess you'll want to be cremated or whatever they do in New York." He said with a touch of prejudice.
"I don't know." Theresa said. Her own death feeling very far away. A thing that could never happen.
~ Theresa went back to New York and finished her degree. She stayed in the city and worked in publishing. She found a nice apartment in a fashionable neighborhood. Her parents old house and the retirement her father never used, had afforded her a lot more financial security than what she'd been used to and she had a good finical adviser that helped the money grow.
When she got married to a nice architect named Johnathan at age thirty five, couple upgraded to a bigger apartment. She was almost forty when she had her first and only baby. A son she named Alexander. Then they next got a bigger place.
Her sister in law Emma had died not long after Alexander was born. Her condition finally proving to be too much for her. Her brother Dylan had died six months later. Seemingly giving up on life without her. Theresa was contented to know that they had been happy together. It comforted her to see them buried close to her parents. She confessed to Johnathan that she wanted them buried here to when the time came.
He'd shook his head and asked why she wanted to be buried in Oregon after living her life in New York. For Theresa, seeing her family slip away, She felt this was the only way they could all be together again. She made him promise and he did promise. Of course he did. She was comforted by the notion and the specter of death didn't seem so frighting.
She was almost seventy when, getting ready for work, she felt sick. Her vision became blurry and there was a pain on her left side.
She had been thinking about Johnathan when it happened. That warm, gentle man and how they had married each other on a silly whim one summer day at City Hall. Honestly, it had been too hot to do anything else. She'd lost him in a car accident when Alexander was only ten, and still old enough to remember his father. Theresa having to live without her sweet husband, and she understood now, how hard it had been on her father to lose the love of his life.
She knew it was happening. Her dying. Knew that Alexander would call her when they missed their lunch date that afternoon. She knew, that her poor son would be so upset when he let himself into her apartment and found her. Knew that Alexander would fly her body back to Oregon and have a small funeral for her at the family plot. It didn't seem to hurt as much knowing this.
~ When she woke up, she was in her old bedroom. The blush pink walls looked new and there was a framed picture on the night stand of her as a toddler being held by her mother. The pretty blond woman with the nice smile and pink dress. There was a pink unicorn beside the picture. The plastic horse that she had vaguely remembered and could never find.
"I found that for you, honey." Came a soft voice.
Theresa turned over in her girlhood bed and saw the pretty blond woman stepping beside her and sitting on the edge of her bed. She was dressed all in blue and was far more natural and normal looking than Theresa had always imagined.
"It was your favorite toy when you were a baby." She said.
"Mom?" Theresa asked in near disbelief.
Norma Romero nodded.
"Your father's downstairs with everyone. Dylan and Emma." She said. "Norman should be up from his nap soon. We've been waiting for you; to wake up for a long time."
"We?" Theresa breathed in astonishment. "But, I… I was thinking about Johnathan."
Her mother nodded.
"Johnathan is downstairs." She said happily. "He helped us set up the table outside. We're going to have a nice dinner."
"Oh." Theresa said and looked out the window.
"It's getting dark." She said.
Her mother smiled.
"Get up and get dressed." She prompted and kissed her forehead.
Theresa hadn't noticed she had been in bed naked. When she emerged from the covers she discovered her body was just as young and supple as it had been when she first met her future husband. A body Johnathan had loved so well.
She got dressed; relived to feel good and well rested for once. Nothing hurt anymore and she didn't have pain in her joints. But she'd always felt this good. Hadn't she? Hadn't it always been like this?
The house looked and smelled new. Walls stripped free of the old wallpaper and ready to be redone. Theresa hadn't been back here since her father died and the old house had never felt this comfortable, this homey. A real home and not a museum.
Outside, her mother was handing off a little boy of about six to her father. Everyone was sitting down at an outdoor table just beside the front porch.
Johnathan looked as handsome as the day Theresa had married him. Everyone looked youthful and happy. The perfect versions of themselves.
"I had a strange dream." She told her dad when he handed over the slightly fussy six year old for Dylan to hold.
"Bad dream, Lulu?" He asked and she wondered if he'd always been this young and handsome. He must have been because it was always like this. Wasn't it? They had always been here, together, as a family. Everyday peaceful and happy.
"Oh." Theresa sighed. She couldn't remember what she'd been dreaming of. It had floated away.
"Norman, do you want to go to your sister, Lulu?" Her mother was saying to the little boy who'd escaped Dylan giggling with excitement.
Her brother Norman was a good little boy. A person that loved to be held and given attention to.
"Your mother loves having a baby in the house." Her father confided in her with a smile. "Makes her so happy."
"I…" Theresa tried to remember Norman. But couldn't. He'd always been like this. This little boy. And she knew he always would.
They had dinner as a family and everything was pleasant and comfortable. All too soon though Dylan and Emma were saying they had to go home and rest.
"We should go home to." Johnathan said taking Theresa's hand. "It's a short walk."
"We'll see you tomorrow." Her mother was hugging her and Theresa knew they would. That tomorrow would be just as pleasant as today had been. That it had always been like this and it always would be. That they had all the time in the world now to be together and be happy.
Yes. Everyone is in Heaven. My last chapter will be who really killed Norma Bates.