An Honest Lie(56)

Rainy finished off the rest of her coffee and tossed the cup in the trash. She urgently needed to be done with this place and to get out of there. Her headache hadn’t subsided with the caffeine and aspirin as she’d hoped.

She checked her phone again. Only a text from the gallery in New York saying they’d sold her Jar of Parts piece to a private collector. The piece had sold for a hundred thousand dollars, an amount that was impressive and worth celebrating, yet the moment fell flat.

When she looked at her phone again, there was a string of texts from the Tiger Mountain group.

Ursa: What? Braithe’s not flying home with us, either. She finally got an appointment with that psychic she’s obsessed with.

The whole psychic thing hit differently today.

Rainy crossed Main Street, leaving Red’s behind her. So Braithe had found a reason to stay, as well. It bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

Mac: Let us know when you get back and stay SAFE.

Tara still hadn’t responded to any part of the thread when Rainy tucked her phone in her back pocket, and neither had Braithe.

She went to the Canary for breakfast, where the same kid was there, setting out sugar caddies on the tables. Derek. Marvin had said he was Taured’s kid. Taured probably had a dozen kids by now; when she lived at the compound, there had been rumors that he’d fathered some of the pregnant women’s babies—she remembered the bratty, crying kid from her very first day, Enoch Aaron—but at fifteen, looking into that hadn’t been a priority.

She decided to sit at a table this time, and Derek came over with a menu as soon as she’d seated herself. He didn’t make eye contact when she asked for a coffee. The one from Red’s hadn’t been enough. Instead, he nodded at his shoes and scurried off. Rainy took out her phone. The group chat had ten new messages. She’d look at them later; right now, she wanted to see if she could find an Uber. It was twenty minutes away. She was the only customer, and while she sat, nursing her coffee, she realized that Taured could walk in the door at any second. What would she do? She didn’t know, but the mere idea of seeing him made every hair on her body stand at attention. Even more disturbing was the possibility that she wanted him to see her. But what was she going to do about it? She sipped her coffee and stared at the door. When Derek came by again, she asked him where he went to school.

“I was homeschooled,” he said, looking embarrassed about it.

“You an only child?”

He looked startled by her question.

“No... I have brothers and sisters. I’m...the oldest.” He said it like it was a bad thing.

“You’re setting a great example for them by being responsible and working.” Rainy smiled, and for the first time he looked her in the eye. While she had him, she ordered eggs and toast and asked for her coffee to be topped off. When he brought the pot back, she asked how long he’d been working there.

He was skittish, trying too hard to be careful and seemingly in perpetual terror of messing up. “Just the last two months, since I graduated. My dad owns this place, so—” His voice dropped off hopelessly.

“He wanted you to learn the business,” she interrupted him, rolling her eyes.

He blushed. “Something like that.” Now that she was looking at him—really looking—she could see a resemblance, and not just to Taured. The wide shoulders, the height, the neck pushed forward. Is it in your head? she asked herself.

“Sometimes dads suck,” she said truthfully. He looked like he wanted to say something, but a voice barked his name from the kitchen and Derek’s head snapped toward it. A trucker walked in and sat at the breakfast bar, putting his hat on the counter beside him.

“Gotta go,” he said. “Be back with your eggs in a few.”

She left her phone next to her coffee mug when she went to the bathroom; there was a Jansport backpack resting in the little alcove where the cash register was, propped against the wall. Before she could think, she grabbed it, carrying it to the bathroom and locking the door. She set it in the sink, unzipping it and peering inside. Notebooks. She took one out and flipped through, finding a series of sketches. The kid was not half bad. His drawings were on the religious side, but she couldn’t hold that against him. His wallet was in the front pocket: Gideon Derek Browley, eighteen years old, his address the compound. Remorse washed through her with such violence she began to tremble.

Sitting abruptly on the closed seat of the toilet, she stared at his driver’s license. Half the shock was in knowing she’d been right. If her math was correct, he’d have been born when Sara was seventeen, two years after Rainy had left. And how many underage mothers had there been in the twenty years since she’d fled from that place? And, of course, none of the children took Taured’s last name, because if he was caught, he’d go to prison for statutory rape. Stuffing the license back into the brown leather wallet, she dug further, uncovering nothing particularly interesting until her fingers closed around an envelope. It was from the art school at Hunter College, City University of New York. He’d been accepted into the graphics program. Poor kid. Taured would never let him leave...unless. Maybe he was planning to take things into his own hands. She put everything back except the notebook and, borrowing one of his charcoal pencils, she wrote him a note while sitting on the toilet lid. When she was done, she slipped the bag back into the alcove and went to eat her eggs.