An Honest Lie(7)

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Did Stephen say something to you about this?” Stephen was Grant’s best friend and also Braithe’s husband. They’d gone to school together, and it was Grant who’d gotten Stephen the job with his company.

He glanced up at her and she could see the guilt in his eyes. She waited to see what he would say, her nerves spiking. Her foot began a vigorous side-to-side shake under the table.

“Stephen did mention that they were going to invite you on their trip. To be honest, I thought you’d want to go. And,” he continued, “my work trip is coming up. I’d feel better if you weren’t alone up here the entire time.”

“I won’t be alone,” she said, glancing at Shep, who was asleep in the corner. It sounded nice actually: a few days of uninterrupted work would allow her to catch up on things.

“Rainy, I’m serious. If you get a random snowstorm while I’m gone, you’re going to be trapped up here without power. The soonest I can get the generator installed is late spring.”

“We can manage,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “If the power goes out, I can build a fire, and we have plenty of supplies, don’t you think?”

Grant made a face, and she knew what he was thinking: city girl. And that had been true of the last decade. But Rainy hadn’t always lived in the city: quite the opposite.

And anyway, what was she supposed to say? I’ve survived worse than a snowstorm? I’m terrified of people, not nature?

“All I’m saying is, if you have the chance to get out of here before bad weather hits, take it.”

“And what about Shep?”

“Are you kidding? He loves going to Mr. Bean’s house.” Mr. Bean was their closest neighbor, and his name was actually Mr. Beade; Grant had come up with the nickname, saying he looked like the TV character. She couldn’t tell him that it was Nevada she was afraid of, not snowstorms, and that she’d rather starve here than go there.

“I’ll think about it,” she lied.

After they ate, Grant cleaned up while she went down to her studio. It was an industrial space with heated concrete flooring and the same floor-to-ceiling windows that the upper levels boasted. There were doors to two adjacent rooms: one that she used for her office, and the other held a full-size bed that she crashed in when she worked late nights. The area was large, and there was also a garage-door entrance, which allowed her to get her larger pieces in and out easily. She was working on a sculpture for a private commission, a beehive using wire as its base. She stepped over the mess she’d made earlier in the day and walked briskly to the little windowed room that held her desk and computer. There wasn’t much privacy in there, and at any moment Grant could walk into her studio and see her through the glass, but he hardly ever came down, saying he wanted to give her space. She sat down at her desk and only then did she allow herself to feel what she’d been holding in. It was as if balloons of anxiety floated in her belly, bloated and ready to burst at any moment. She bent over her desk until her cheek rested on the cool surface and waited for the feelings to pass, breathing deeply as tears ran in a steady stream down her cheeks. She felt frozen, unable to navigate through the maze of emotion that had taken over.

“It’s over,” she said, her voice husky and thick with tears. “You’re gone from that place and that time.”

Rainy hid in her studio that night, plugging her earphones into her ears and turning up her music until it was time for bed. Then, in an exhausted zombie shuffle, she walked the three flights of stairs to their bedroom and fell into a dreamless sleep until morning.

She woke alone with the rain sprinkling the window. Rolling over, she was sad to see Grant had left for work, his side of the bed rumpled. Grant was an architect in the city, and had a love of sculptures in particular. He’d visited her show in New York while he was at a conference and bought a piece called Our Father in which she’d used industrial metal wires to construct a man’s face. The face, Grant claimed, looked just like his dead grandfather’s. He’d paid thirteen thousand dollars for the four-foot sculpture, while confessing to Rainy he’d seen her work in an architectural magazine, and then he’d asked her out on a date.

She’d been flattered, of course, and she’d gone back to his hotel room that night and proven that flattery will get you anywhere with an artist. Over the next year, he’d made several trips back to see her, and eventually their meetups developed feelings.

Deep feelings. She still didn’t quite know why she’d done it. Her entire life was in New York, her friends and business acquaintances; and yet, when he’d offered her the chance at a wet mountain life, she’d taken it.

She’d moved out of her studio apartment in Soho nine months later and made the trek to Washington state with Shep in tow and fear trailing behind her. No matter where she went, no matter who she was with—

One day, Taured would come for her.



3


Then


What she remembered about that first day was sitting in the back seat of their old Monte Carlo, her bare legs sliding along the leather because of how much she was sweating. The air-conditioning had never worked in the Tin Crap, as her mama called it, and it smelled like maple syrup for some reason. The radio was the only thing that provided some comfort of home, playing songs they could sing along with, like the Cranberries and Destiny’s Child. They’d driven from California, sleeping in the car at rest stations and Walmart parking lots, eating peanut butter sandwiches when they got hungry. Summer still felt sick about the way they’d left: in the middle of the night so that the landlord wouldn’t see them. No goodbyes, no nothing. And they could only take what could fit in the Tin Crap—which was practically nothing. She’d had to leave her books behind and the telescope her dad bought her for her birthday. Now, they were headed to Nevada, where her mama had a friend who could help.