“Do you recall an address?”
“Hell, we moved a lot.”
“But Lorna talks about that place. It’s where she always mentions. Maybe it’s because it was where Missy also lived.” Mason visibly bristled at the sound of his sister’s name. “Or because it was where you first lived with your mother.”
“What the hell is this about?” Mason asked, bringing the coffee maker to life.
I inhaled, running my palm over my hair. “When I got upstairs last night, Lorna had...” I debated how to say what she had done.
Was it really a big deal or was I blowing it out of proportion?
Mason’s lips came together as he stared my direction. “If you woke me from a warm bed where I was sleeping beside my wife to give me hints, I think I’ll go back to bed.”
Letting my chair roll back, I stood. “She cut her hair.” When he didn’t respond, I went on, “It’s shorter than I’ve ever seen it.”
“So? Laurel—”
“She also dyed it, dark brown.”
His eyes narrowed. “Lorna dyed her hair?”
“And she said that she doesn’t look like her anymore.”
“Her?” Mason questioned. “Does she mean our mother?”
“I thought that, but then she mentioned the name Anna. Didn’t she work with someone named Anna before you brought her here?”
His green stare widened. “What the fuck?”
“Lorna also told me something and made me promise not to tell you. She said she promised your mother she wouldn’t tell because it never happened.”
Mason set his coffee on his desk and interlocking his fingers, brought them behind his head. “What never happened? You’re fucking making me nervous.”
“Who is Anna?” I asked.
“First, that one-room studio wasn’t the first place we lived with the bitch downstairs on ice. After DCFS took us from our grandmother’s house, they found Nancy. She was living in a house in Englewood.”
“A house? Lorna’s never talked about a house.”
“It wasn’t fucking much to talk about. Nancy was living with an asshole named Gordon Maples. I hated that son of a bitch.” Mason let out a long breath. “He had two daughters. One was named Anna, and as fate would have it, years later, the same Anna ran that run-down hotel where Lorna worked. The four of us lived there for about six months before one night when Nancy gathered us up and took us away.”
“What happened?”
“Fuck, I didn’t care. It was the middle of the night. She told us to be quiet and gather all we could carry. Then she took us to an old couple, friends of our grandparents. They let us stay for a few nights until we moved into that one-room apartment.”
“Just left—in the middle of the night. Wasn’t that weird?”
Mason shook his head. “Man, nothing was weird when it came to Nancy, or everything was. Hell, I didn’t give a fuck why we left. We were away from the sadistic fucker.”
My pulse pumped faster. “What did he do to you?”
“Maples was a fan of abuse in general. Screaming and hitting, usually accentuated with copious amounts of his drugs of choice—alcohol and tobacco. When Nancy wasn’t passed out, she was his target. I was his second. I remember purposely pissing him off to keep him from hurting Lorna and...” He debated about saying her name. “...Missy.”
“And you were how old?” I asked.
“About eleven. Yeah, eleven, because after we moved, that same year...is when she disappeared.”
I began typing.
Gordon Maples.
“Can you give me more?”
“Englewood. South Carpenter Street. I don’t remember the number.”
I entered the information. As I did, Mason came behind me and gripped the back of my chair. “What does this have to do with Lorna’s hair?”
Slowly, I turned my chair until he let go and we were facing one another. “She was talking oddly. I even thought she might have been drinking, but besides a few glasses of wine, she doesn’t drink.”
Mason spun a nearby chair and straddling the back, sat down. “She wasn’t drinking.”
“No, but she had taken sleeping pills. One, I hope.”
“I told you I thought her reaction to seeing Nancy was too...even.”
Collecting my thoughts, I went on, “I thought Lorna was talking about what happened when she was taken recently. I thought she meant the fight she gave Jettison, but then she said something that didn’t feel right. You know, I think it’s all of it, not one piece. Everything has come together in her head. She said more than once that she’s not her, she doesn’t look like her, and she’s not Anna.” I tried to remember. “Anna wanted it, so it was okay.”
“What the fuck?”
“Your mother told Lorna that as long as a man doesn’t put his dick inside her, it’s not rape. She even fucking specified that in her mouth was okay, and never to talk about it.”
“Why would she...?” Mason bolted from his chair. “No. I fucking...watched. I...” He spun in place before making his way to the coffee maker. In one broad sweep of his arm, the three mugs on the counter’s surface flew, shattering on the concrete floor as ceramic splinters spewed in all directions.
In no time, I was up and in front of him.
My brother-in-law was a large man—not heavy, not an ounce of fat. He was made of muscle and even taller than me. Before his transformation, he was intimidating. After, he could be considered terrifying. It worked for him when he made his living on the dark web. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. His face could be considered handsome. It was what was beneath the facade that kept him gainfully employed. It also didn’t hurt in his current role as a Sparrow leader either. A fucking phoenix who rose from the literal ashes, if death couldn’t stop him, nothing could.
“You were eleven years old. It wasn’t your job.”
Rage roared, glowing like a warning siren in his green stare. “What did that motherfucker do?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I gather, he didn’t penetrate.”
“That leaves a lot open to the imagination that I don’t want to think about.” Mason’s cowboy boots crunched shards of broken mugs as he stepped, and his chest inflated and deflated with each breath. “She never told me. I would have killed the bastard.”
“That’s probably why she never said anything. I’m no expert at what she’s going through, but I think what happened with Jettison and seeing your mother’s body brought back the earlier memories.” I shook my head. “Man, I’ve been married to her for nine years, and I never got the feeling she had...someone had...” I took a deep breath, suddenly questioning everything over the past nine years. I looked at Mason. “I mean, is it fucking possible to bury a memory so deep that even you forget it?”
His gaze met mine. “Yeah, it’s possible.” He looked to my keyboard. “Find out if that piece of shit is alive. I’m fucking twenty-five years late, but I’m paying him a visit.”
“Not alone you’re not.”
Lorna