An Honest Lie(88)

“Ginger put cheese and some salami in the freezer back there,” she said, jerking her head to the walk-in. It was comical, her talking about Ginger so casually as he sat propped in the freezer like a Christmas ham. Taured kept his eyes on her as he walked backward to the metal doors of the fridge and yanked them open. He reached inside, keeping his foot in the door to keep it from shutting.

He carried Ginger’s dinner party leftovers to the table.

Then, abruptly: “You’ve always thought I was responsible for your mother’s death.”

She said nothing; she couldn’t. He was responsible, and they both knew it.

“Her death was her own fault.”

Still Rainy said nothing. Careful what you do, Rainy. He thinks he knows you.

She watched him, transfixed, the heat from the range billowing around her, dampening her skin. She licked her lips, cracking her neck. He was gearing up to launch his slander campaign against her mother.

“Your mother and I were close...”

Sure, why not? Rainy nodded. They had been once.

“We had a sexual relationship—” he paused here for effect “—and she confided in me often, and when things became difficult for her, when her depression became too much to handle, she...well, the drugs started in Portland, and she didn’t want you to know that, of course.”

“What is your point here, Taured? Haven’t you told me these lies before?” It was getting so hot. But Rainy had tried hot yoga a couple times and found it cleansing. She leaned into that feeling now. Taured was sweating, patches of damp forming on his shirt under his arms.

“They’re not lies, Summer. She was willing to leave you behind if I gave her the same amount of money she arrived with. Where do you think the money came for the tickets she bought for New Mexico? That wasn’t from your grandparents. She tried to steal from me. She went back on our deal.” His teeth were getting a nice wine bath, marooning themselves around his gumline.

He drank his wine. He spoke and he drank. He was so transfixed by the sound of his own voice that he’d stopped pressing her to drink hers. Narcissists were unfailingly distracted by themselves. He wasn’t even pausing to make sure his lies made sense.

“She tried to steal what from you? Me?” She saw the look in his eyes and it almost made her go blind with rage. “I wasn’t yours. I never have been.”

“I saved your life, back then and today. You owe me.”

Rainy sighed. The thing about her rage was that it was silent. She didn’t need to cry, or become hysterical, or accuse him of things he’d done. She’d already done that: held his trial in her own mind. The screaming had been had and done and now she was resolved to end the nightmare for good. Her sigh was a little leak of insanity.

“It doesn’t matter what she did or said. My mother isn’t on trial here, you are.” When she looked back at him, she could tell he was replaying her words more slowly. Thinking on them. She was sure things were getting a little foggy for him in the thoughts department. Looking around, she saw the mess on the floor: the vomit, the blood, the spilled wine.

“What is it, Taured? Have you never thought that you might have to pay for what you’ve done? Let’s talk about what you did to those little girls at the compound...the little boy that was Ginger. Sara...Feena...me...”

Beneath the neatly trimmed beard, his full lips twitched. She liked that crack in his facade. He was not impenetrable, not the god he thought himself to be. It was just the two of them here, his disciples a hundred miles away.

“You don’t sound very grateful,” he said. “I saved your life.”

“Well, you certainly get an A-plus for following my directions well.”

He didn’t like that.

“I would have recognized him without the broken nose.”

Rainy frowned. “Maybe so, but I wanted you to recognize me.”

Rainy touched her tongue to her front teeth and shook her head from side to side. Maybe his thinking was getting slow, or maybe he was studying her, but there was something odd about the look on his face.

“You are the same, Summer. The same fire, the same defiance. You haven’t changed at all. That’s what I admired about you. I could always count on your defiance. My sweet Summertime.”

“You never met a trauma you didn’t like to poke.” She shook her head in disgust.

“Haven’t you heard that the light gets in through the cracks?” He said this like there was a joke hiding behind his words, because they both knew he orchestrated those cracks just so he could provide the religious salve for them. It created a cycle of psychological dependency in his followers.

“I know about the photos you took of my mother, of the other mothers...of their fucking daughters! That was your thing, right? You held their children captive by draining their bank accounts so they couldn’t leave, and then you took dirty photos of them. You blackmailed them. You are on trial tonight, Taured.”

Rainy enjoyed the look on his face. It was the face of a man who didn’t believe anything bad could happen to him, that every threat was made by a lesser person and held no ground. She enjoyed it because she intended to wipe the smug expression from his face once and for all.

“A trial without evidence? A childish notion. I promise you, Rainy—” he tried the name out like he was humoring her “—there is none. All of your claims have always been false.”