An Honest Lie(60)

Then he knelt on one knee in front of her. Summer froze. There were streaks of gray in his beard and on his temples. She’d never been this close to him—had she?—aside from the night he’d knocked on her door, and she had the same thought then as she did now: behind his eyes, behind the amber of his iris, and the large pupils, was something insatiably hungry, and it wasn’t human.

She held the words she wanted to say behind her gritted teeth.

Please let me go.

“I’m... I—” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

They were speaking around her, to her sometimes, but she couldn’t focus on what they were saying.

“Social services will place her in a foster home until then.” Summer looked up to see the female officer speaking to Taured. He was standing next to her chair now, with his hand on her shoulder. She felt the shift in his body, the tightening of his fingers by just a fraction.

“With all due respect, Officer, this is her home. The child’s mother has just died. To remove her from everything she knows would add to her trauma. Here are the documents.” As if on cue, Taured produced a cream-colored envelope that he handed to the detective. “We have been both forthcoming and compliant in regard to law enforcement and Lorraine’s body, but as you can see, I am the legal guardian of her daughter and you have no right nor reason to remove her from her home.”

They were speaking again, the men. Summer sought the female officer’s eyes and found them drilling into her. She looked to see if the men noticed, but together, they were examining the papers. Gingerly, she met the woman’s eyes, a strange sensation rising behind her ribs. She was younger than Summer’s mother, maybe in her twenties. She was very blonde and very tan, her hair pulled back severely and knotted at the nape of her neck. She was narrowing her eyes, moving them from Summer to the floor and back again. And then, with a little jerk of her head, O’Connor squeezed her own eyes closed. Summer understood. She stood up rather suddenly and, from the corner of her eye, saw all four men pivot their heads to look at her. Then she let her whole body go limp. It didn’t even hurt when she hit the ground.

She heard the sound of their feet, the clamor of voices, and then the female officer sternly say, “Step back, all of you, give her some room. Byron, call an ambulance.”

“No need,” Taured said. “Tom here is a doctor.”

Summer lay limp and still, breathing in tiny gasps.

“I want her taken to a hospital to be checked out,” O’Connor said. A second later, Summer heard her speaking, and then the crackling sound of a radio saying an ambulance was on its way.

“I think you’re overacting.” Taured’s voice sounded strained.

“She’s a fifteen-year-old girl whose mother has just died. She’s collapsed, she could be severely dehydrated or worse. He said she was a runaway, yet here she is. She’s telling us she’s been abused. She needs to be checked out physically.” O’Connor was addressing one of her male colleagues. Summer’s heart was pounding so hard she wondered if they could hear it.

“She’s grieving, she’s exhausted,” Taured argued. “We will take very good care of her. Tom here has been her doctor for the last five years. Gentlemen...?”

Taured did not like when women acted like men, as he called it. He was petitioning to the men in the room: he assumed the men had more power.

There were several lingering seconds, and then Nava spoke. “It would be best if she were taken to a hospital and checked out thoroughly. The ambulance is on the way.” There was a silence so abrupt and thick Summer had trouble keeping still. And then she heard it: the sound of the siren, so beautiful. It would take her out of this place.



20


Now


After she checked into her room, Rainy FaceTimed with Grant.

She was jarred when she saw his unshaven face.

“Do you like it?” he asked, stroking a week’s worth of facial hair. She knew that he shaved every day, but she’d had no idea he could grow a beard that quickly. It made her wonder what else she didn’t know about him.

“It’s different,” she said. In truth, she hated it. It reminded her of Taured.

His eyes were laughing as he fingered his chin. “Don’t worry, it’ll be gone by the time I get home. The guys here wanted me to do it because they didn’t believe I could grow a full beard in a week.” And then he showed her the view outside of his hotel and Rainy oohed and aahed. When he sat back down and they settled into their chat, she lost the will to describe the trip. She kept him busy, talking about things on his end, but finally he asked the dreaded question: “So how did it go, huh? Did you have fun or what, party girl?”

“As much fun as a party girl would have in...the library.”

She was choosing her words carefully. She’d also chosen to sit against a white wall while she FaceTimed him so he wouldn’t know she wasn’t home. She hoped the news hadn’t reached him yet. She didn’t feel like explaining. She couldn’t even explain to herself what she thought she was still doing here.

His laugh was infectious, and she missed him fiercely. “Eight more days,” she said.

“Eight more days,” he repeated in the low drawl that meant intimate things only they understood. They hung up and Rainy wrestled with the guilt of her dishonesty. First, she’d insisted that she didn’t want to go on the trip, and then she’d extended said trip—which reminded her that she hadn’t booked her flight back yet. Now that she was here, somehow the drive to go back to the place where the nightmare had started had felt natural, unavoidable. She’d needed to go, that’s all she knew, and she hadn’t even made it to the compound—just skirted Friendship’s shitty main street. Now she was in a single room at the same hotel she’d shared with the Tiger Mountain girls, curled on top of the covers like a shrimp. What ending was she looking for?