#10 – Brown

Naomi watched through the living room bay window as Rachel and Jordan trudged down the front walk to the bus. She'd already driven Sara to her preschool class – Naomi would have ordinarily gone straight to work from that errand, but she had another mission in mind today. She watched until the girls boarded and the bus pulled away from the curb with a loud, squeaky chuff. Now I find out just what the hell is going on with her, Naomi thought as she flipped open her cell phone.

"Hi, Eric, it's Naomi. Please tell the partners I won't be in for the eight o'clock briefing. I've got something to deal with at home. Yes, the relevant documents are on top of my desk in a manila envelope – send them ahead, and tell them I'm sorry." She hung up the phone and climbed the stairs.

Naomi stood for a moment in front of her oldest daughter's closed bedroom door. She realized she was nervous and a little afraid. Afraid of what she'd find, sure. After all, diligent Naomi would have never dreamed of being late to work unless she was sure there was something to find in Rachel's room. She didn't have the vaguest notion of what it would be, only that she'd know it when she found it. There had to be some evidence to explain her daughter's odd and disturbing behavior, and finding evidence was Naomi's job. And she was damn good at her job.

She laughed nervously as she realized she wasn't only afraid of what she would find – she was afraid of being caught snooping. Ridiculous – it was her job as a mother to snoop. But it didn't change the fact that she didn't want to even think of the scene if Rachel caught her going through her things. There was something dark in her oldest daughter; Naomi didn't know she knew that, but she did. It was one of those ideas that live deep in the brain, just under the consciousness. She didn't consciously think that her daughter was capable of things like violence, but she knew it as a fact all the same.

Naomi pushed the door open, halfway surprised that it wasn't locked. She glanced around, noting that it looked very normal. It was mostly tidy, but Rachel had always been a tidy girl. The bed was sloppily made, but it was made. Naomi remembered where she'd hid her own secrets as a teenager – the odd bag of pot or love letters from Dan (who had been something of a rebel in his high school days, a motorcycle rider, and as such had been forbidden to Naomi.) She'd hid them in the lining underneath her mattress, and so it was there she looked first. Like mother, like daughter, she thought grimly as she crawled under the bed, feeling along the lining for anything that didn't belong there.

Nothing. She got up, feeling a little silly, and moved to the desk under the window. She searched it thoroughly, even pulling the drawers out and looking for anything illicit taped to the underside of them. Nothing. She was beginning to feel a sense of relief and was already telling herself that she'd been paranoid. Then she remembered the reason for the search in the first place – finding Rachel's bed empty on a Wednesday night last week…the constant glazed, worn-out look in her daughter's eyes…the quickness with which a sarcastic remark came in answer to even the most innocent of questions.

Naomi's eyes wandered to the bulletin board where Rachel kept pictures, notes to herself, and inspirational quotes. She realized the pictures, once changed out regularly, hadn't been replaced in a long time. There was a note that said "History project due 11/17." Naomi started at that – today was January 14th. Had it really been two months since Rachel had thought an upcoming assignment important enough to place on her reminder board? But the quotes were what turned her blood a little cold.

"War does not determine who is right – only who is left." – Bertrand Russell

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." – Voltaire

"The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy." – Friedrich Nietzsche

And the last one, the one which for no perceptible reason seemed somehow worse than all the rest:

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." – George Santayana

Naomi tried to think of a reason why Rachel would have chosen these quotes to place by her desk, where she spent most of her time in her room. She could not come up with a single one. Is my daughter a sociopath? She wondered to herself…and was disturbed when she could not come back with an instant and resounding no.

More frightened than she'd been when she had entered the room, Naomi kept searching. Nothing in the closet. Nothing under the floorboards. Nothing in the air conditioning vents. She was about to give up when she noticed a pile of fabric between the bed and the wall.

It was just a pair of leotard shorts. Nothing overly suspicious about that…not on the surface, anyway. But Naomi's bright, lawyer's mind was ringing its alarm bells. Why would there be spandex on Rachel's floor, especially since she'd quit gymnastics months before? She looked closer, and what she found confused her.

Stuck in the elastic of the waistband was a small clump of course, brown hair. A boy, was Naomi's first thought, and was not entirely illogical; after all, her daughter's hair was long, blond, and fine. But as she rolled the hair between her fingers, she realized that no boy would have hair this rough. It was animal hair, no doubt about it. She smelled it, and the suspicion was confirmed – it had a natural, wild scent to it, not entirely unlike a dirty dog's.

Not wanting to but unable to help herself, she sniffed the shorts themselves. Same smell, almost overpowering. Okay, so she wore this around animals. Cassie has hundreds of animals – no big deal. But that explanation had one huge hole in it – why the hell was Rachel wearing spandex in Cassie's barn?

The only explanation she could come up with was that Rachel was still practicing gymnastics, only by herself and in secret. Why she would want to hide that fact from her mother was beyond Naomi, but teenagers did strange things. Maybe she thought she wasn't any good and didn't want anyone to know she was still trying, but that didn't fit with Rachel's personality. She'd always said she wasn't any good at the sport, but had been determined to do it anyway. Until she'd up and quit earlier last year, anyway.

Okay, I've gotten all the information I can from this room. Now what do I do with it? Naomi's orderly mind asked itself. Confront Rachel about the brown hairs and the spandex? She weighed the benefits and disadvantages of that option. She probably wouldn't get a straight, satisfactory answer out of Rachel…and in return, she'd have to admit that she'd gone through her daughter's things. It would destroy the fragile trust between the two of them. No way, not an option. Not for something as innocuous as a few strange hairs.

Confrontation wasn't an option, not at this point…and there weren't any others. Well, maybe just one – I'll wait, Naomi thought. There's nothing to find this time…but I'll keep monitoring the situation. And when she slips up and leaves a clue as to what she's really up to, I'll be there to find it.

She closed the door, sighed heavily, both relieved and disappointed that she hadn't found better evidence, and went to work.