Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(13)

“Eventually,” he said. “But your anger issues remained. They worsened. Why was that, Zara?”

“Don’t know. Don’t really care. C’mon, Saint Yu, do you really think what happened when I was six is going to fix all my shit?”

“Your mother clearly loves you,” he said. “And she’s very worried about you. So let’s talk about your father.”

Let’s not.

“My mom and dad separated a long time ago,” I said. “Neither one of them has anything to do with me, anyway. I got emancipated, remember?”

“Yes. Your mother regrets that choice, but—and I’m sure you know this—she had to make a change for your sister’s sake. Your father was a terrible influence, and they were afraid of him. Just as you were.”

“I’m not afraid of him!”

“Even when he dragged you off to that faith healer?”

Time slowed down, and for a second I couldn’t comprehend what he’d just said, because I’d never told anyone about that. It wasn’t in my records, how could he know . . .

He spoke to Mom, of course. She told him.

I covered, badly, with a fierce smile. “Faith healers are fakes.”

“Then why did he take you?”

I shrugged. “He was sure enough prayer would stop the headaches. Didn’t want me seeing the docs. Only God, all that. Mom’s the one who insisted on going to the hospitals.” And it had cost her, standing up to my old man. I remembered that too.

“Tell me about the faith healer.”

“What about it?” My throat had gone very dry, and my hands were cold. I wished I had a blanket. The room had seemed warm before, comforting, but now it felt icy. I was surprised my breath didn’t puff white. “Like I said. Fake.”

“All right. Just tell me what it was like. I’m interested.”

“He took me to a church,” I said. “Some little weird place. I think it’s gone now. This fake healer pretended she was pulling evil spirits from my head, he paid her, the end. I had a screaming headache the next morning. I guess it cured him of that obsession.”

Dr. Yu studied me, but he didn’t say anything, and I wished he would. The world felt soft around me. I didn’t want to think about this. Didn’t want to remember it, but I couldn’t stop now.

The woman went by the name of Angela, which was probably made up; she had brassy hair and big blue eyes and her skin was so pale you could see veins underneath. Creepy. She wore white, all white. And her voice . . .

“She said the headaches came from all the sins bottled up inside me,” I said. “She said she’d suffered from them too, and prayed and prayed until one day, God told her to take her sins out. So she grabbed a kitchen knife and slashed herself open and sure enough, she reached in and grabbed a big, black bag full of sins and pulled it out. It broke open and black spiders crawled into her, and she had to vomit them back out. Black goo. Then she passed out.” I swallowed hard, tasting vomit. “When she woke up, she had a healed scar on her side just where Jesus had been stabbed with the spear, and all her headaches and sins were gone.”

“That sounds terrifying,” Yu said. “Especially for a six-year-old hearing it.”

“She showed us the scar,” I said. “And then she said she’d take my sins out, but mine were in my head.” Yu said nothing to that. He leaned forward a little, eyes intent on me, and for no reason at all, I went on. “My dad helped her tie me down on the altar. He put his belt around my head to hold it still. And they prayed for a long time, and I kept screaming and screaming, and finally, somebody heard, just before she cut my head open. The police showed up, but Angela untied me and acted like they’d just been praying over me, and I made it all up. Nobody believed me.” I looked hard at Yu. “She was going to cut into my skull and take out my sins and my dad believed her. He’d have let her. He’d have helped. I was six.”

I heard the anguish in my own voice, and I hated it. This was a long damn time ago. I was over it. Past it. I’d survived everything they’d thrown at me. I couldn’t feel anything about it, not anymore.

Yu said, very quietly, “Then sending you to the religious camp afterward must have felt like a complete betrayal.”

That hit me like a slap. I’d never connected those two things before, the faith healer, the wilderness camp that had finally destroyed my trust; Dad had always been heavily religious, Mom mildly so, and years lay between those two things happening. Years of Mom trying to keep me safe and help me get better.

But he was probably right. That camp had been the last straw. The last time I’d trusted either of them, even though the faith healer hadn’t been Mom’s fault, she hadn’t even known about it. She’d thought the Bible camp would help me.

Not shove me off the cliff.

I looked at Yu directly and said, “You’re really good at this.”

“I’m only good at it if it helps,” he said. “But I think you’re starting to understand something about yourself.”

Yeah. I understood why I craved freedom so much now. Hated being tied down to rules and regs and conventions. It wasn’t about any of those things. It went back to being six, tied hand and foot to an altar, with my father’s belt holding my head still, and being powerless.