She bit her lip, thumbs paused. It wasn’t that bad, was it? Things had been weird, then great, then weird again. She decided to say exactly that to Viola.

  Weird in what way? Viola asked.

  They’re asking a lot of prying shit. Braithe is floating around superhappy and Tara keeps looking at me like I’m wearing tampons for earrings.

  She’s just territorial, Viola sent back. Ignore her and don’t answer any of their questions. They’re always like this with Grant’s girlfriends. Don’t let them play you.

  Play her. Grant’s girlfriends.

  In the beginning, when she’d first started going to their happy hours, they’d made suggestive comments about Grant’s exes, but Rainy had never taken the bait, had never pried for information about who came before her. He was hers now. It didn’t seem fair to ask questions about his past when she wouldn’t answer any about her own. She heard her name being called and slipped her phone into her pocket, bracing herself. It was Ursa.

  “Do you want to go next, or...?”

  “I don’t want to go at all,” she said flatly. Ursa nodded once and went back to the group.

  Maybe they’d only invited her to see where she stood with Grant. Was it possible that the entire year she spent going to their little gatherings they’d been fooling her, making her think they were her friends when—

  “Hey, Ursa said you seemed upset.” Braithe stepped around the corner and Rainy froze.

  “I...just don’t feel great.”

  Braithe’s eyes crinkled in concern. “Yeah, we don’t always drink that hard. Well, you can go next if you like, and then head out early.”

  Rainy’s mouth was dry, and she felt the buildup of pressure in her chest. She knew what was coming and she didn’t want to have a panic attack in front of them.

  “I need the bathroom.” She looked around desperately and spotted the sign. She tossed Braithe her best I’m sorry look and darted for the back of the store. From somewhere behind her, she heard Braithe tell the others that Rainy was sick.

  Once locked in the bathroom she called Grant, her panic increasing from drizzle to downpour. This had been a mistake of epic proportions, coming here—especially here—with these women. She called his cell; it rang twice before going to voice mail. What could he be doing at this time of night? Get a grip, Rainy. He’s in a different time zone. She slid her phone into her back pocket and covered her face with her hands.

  If she’d told Grant about her past, then he wouldn’t have pressured her to go on this stupid trip; she should have just been honest with him. She hated herself; she hated her inability to know what was best. Leaning against the wall, she listened to her own breathing as she calmed herself down. She knew they’d come to check on her if she didn’t come out. She washed her hands, avoiding her own gaze in the mirror, formulating the words she needed to get the fuck out of there. The knock came before she’d dried her hands.

  “You okay?”

  It was Mac. Rainy opened the door, and before Mac could react, she grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the bathroom.

  “I need you to get me out of here. I don’t want to do this.”

  At first she thought Mac was going to ask why, but then her face transitioned from worried to confused to determined right in front of Rainy.

  “Okay,” she said. “But they’re waiting for you, and you know how Tara is...”

  Rainy nodded.

  “Splash some water on your face. Make your makeup run more.”

  Rainy wasn’t expecting the burst of laughter that came from her own mouth, but Mac being sneaky was a treat.

  They left the bathroom together, arm in arm. Rainy dipped her head and tried to look even more miserable than she was.

  “It’s your turn!” Ursa spotted them first, her voice filling up the store with its bold, smooth tenor. Mac squeezed her arm, leading her forward.

  “She doesn’t feel well,” she told them. “I’m taking her back to the hotel.”

  “Oh, no, Mac, you were looking forward to this!” Ursa said. “I’ll go back with Rainy.”

  Rainy flinched. She didn’t want to ruin either of their experiences because she was having a ridiculous emotional breakdown. Squaring her shoulders, she loosened herself from Mac’s grip.

  “Go. You should. I’m feeling better. I’ll just sit right here and wait.”

  Mac’s look said that she didn’t believe her.

  “I promise. Go.”

  She had to shove Mac toward the table a few times before she went, glancing back at Rainy like she wasn’t sure. To make her feel better, Rainy sat in one of the armchairs facing the table and smiled at her. She ignored the looks Braithe and Tara were exchanging and focused solely on the table where Luc was laying out Mac’s cards.

  The reading didn’t take more than ten minutes. When Mac stood up, she was beaming. They all turned to Rainy, and she shook her head.

  “Come on!” Ursa urged, grabbing her arm and pulling her to the table. Rainy stopped short, yanking Ursa to a halt.

  “I really don’t want to.”

  Tara’s head swiveled around to catch Rainy’s eye. “Why not? It’s just for fun.”

  Tick tick tick—Rainy felt the seconds prickle by with no solution. If she didn’t have her cards read, she’d look like the same sourpuss who hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. But if she just did it, they’d move on. Pressing her palms to her shorts to clear them of sweat, she walked cautiously over to the table where a dude of indeterminable age—wearing a fishing hat, of all things—sat beneath harsh lighting. There was nothing special or showy about him, which bothered her more than if he’d been in some ridiculous costume. Maybe he didn’t need to play the part because he was real.

  She almost laughed at herself as she gripped the back of the chair and pulled it out so she could sit. Mr. Fishing Hat Dude had a soul patch. He didn’t smile at her when she sat down, tucking her ankles underneath the chair and sitting forward nervously. He laid the cards out without show, keeping his eyes down as he worked. She could feel the others watching from around the shop, and she tried not to think of Tara, who made her feel angry and embarrassed at the same time. What was he going to say to her? Had they brought her here to see how she would react? No, that was ridiculous—stupidly narcissistic. She pulled herself back to the sound of his voice. He read the cards, blinking slowly as he tapped each one, explaining what they were. What was his name again? She didn’t remember.

  “You don’t like to be known. You hide.” He splayed his hands as he spoke, and Rainy wanted to scream for him to stop. Did they know she was dying inside? She refused to turn around to read their expressions, afraid of what she would see.

  “You got the Four of Cups. So, in the tarot the suit of Cups talks about love. You love someone.” She nodded, for lack of anything better to do. Didn’t everyone?

  “And that someone loves you back, but Four of Cups is the moment when your love temporarily pulls away from you. Make sense?”

  “Not really...” Rainy said.

  He turned over another card. “The High Priestess.” He glanced at her. “This card is about killer instinct. Do you get that?”

  “I get it, thanks, dude.” Like, was this guy for real? Maybe it was part of his show. Settling back into her seat, she gave him a dramatic sigh. His lips twitched. Almost made you smile, she thought.

  “You have those instincts, but they’re clouded right now. You can’t see things clearly.” He flipped another card before Rainy could respond.

  “The Emperor,” he said. “Okay...that’s a strange follow for the High Priestess. So the Emperor is about power and authority. So, another power could be seeking to usurp yours.”

  Rainy couldn’t help it: she glanced at Braithe, who was looking back at her. She looked away quickly, her skin warm with embarrassment. This was stupid. Why had she drunk so much, anyway—her head was foggy.

  He flipped another card; Mr. Psychic Energy was really into this now, his eyes getting more intense.

  “So, this card is also about keeping secrets.” He tapped it with his pointer finger. “If someone confides in you, keep that dirt on the down low. On the other hand, this card could also be a warning about bad vibes and someone else keeping secrets.”

  It was funny how something could be a joke one minute and then start to sound creepily familiar the next. Rainy lost her smirk at the end of his last sentence. She was over it.

  “You know...” Rainy’s chair screeched when she stood up. If the women hadn’t been looking before, they were now. “I’m not feeling so great. I think I’m going to head back to the hotel.” She put three twenties on the table in front of him, smiled and headed for the door.

  “Rainy, wait!” She heard Mac call out to her, but she kept walking until she was out of the storefront and on the pavement outside. Mac clambered out after her in her colorful dress, hair damp from the weather.

  She took a deep breath before she turned to talk to Mac.

  “Just not my thing,” she said, folding her lips all the way in and looking over Mac’s shoulder.

  “That’s fine.” Mac put an arm around her shoulders and walked with her, the two of them in sync. “It doesn’t need to be your thing. Let’s go back to the hotel and get in our pajamas.” Rainy felt overwhelmingly grateful as Mac steered her toward the street, where a cab was idling.

  “What about the others?” She glanced over her shoulder to see Tara, Braithe and Ursa still in the shop.

  “I’m texting them. They can take their time. I wanted out of there, too.”

  Rainy nodded. The cab was on a break, so Mac called an Uber, which arrived in less than two minutes. She caught a glimpse of the shop and the three of them standing inside as they drove past. Braithe was sitting in the chair again. Rainy strained her neck to see, but then they were gone as the car made a turn.

  The rest of the group was back in the room just past three, tossed on their beds in loose-limbed, sweaty heaps. Rainy heard someone throwing up sometime during the early hours. She covered her ears with the pillow and drifted back to sleep, her head wobbly like the yolk of an egg.

  She woke up at eight a.m. to a missed-call notification. Swearing, she tried calling the number back, but was met with a weird dial tone. She was about to text Grant when a chime told her that she had a message. Lying on her back, Rainy pressed the phone to her ear, her heart beating furiously at the sound of Grant’s voice. He sounded upbeat, but she could hear the exhaustion there, too. Stephen would tell him to rally, she thought, smiling, and he would. He was funny when he was tired, saying everything that came to his mind. She grabbed on to the sound of his voice, listening as he told her that they’d arrived safely and the day had gone amazingly well. She edged her way upright against the headboard and snaked her arm to the nightstand for the bottle of water. Where was her aspirin? Grant’s message wound down with, “I’ll try to call if I get a few minutes after lunch.” She had no idea what time that meant. She held the phone against her ear long after the message ended, feeling stupidly needy. Love was exhausting. It felt like a sore muscle...or a healing wound.

  15

  Then

  Isolation wasn’t enough of a punishment for Taured: a bed, a blanket, food...those were all comforts of the flesh. To cultivate the change he wanted in a person, he needed them humiliated and afraid.

  Bob and Marshall—trailed by Sara’s mother, Ama—led her into the room with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. The room smelled of urine and bleach and looked as bleak and yellowed as an old toilet seat. In the center of the room was a metal stool bolted to the floor. She sat down because she knew she was supposed to. Bob got on his knees to strap her ankles to the chair, avoiding eye contact even as she tried to catch his eye.

  “Bob. My mama?” she pleaded, but his only response was a grunt as he stood up, work done, prisoner shackled.

  A minute later, they both left, leaving her with Ama. She was a serious woman, a woman of conviction and discipline, as Taured so often praised her. Ama did not smile or meet Summer’s eyes. All the warmth from their previous encounters, like when Summer had eaten breakfast with them in the cafeteria, was gone. Ama stripped her of the blanket, leaving her naked on the stool.

  She wanted to beg for the blanket, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

  “Ama...” she said before the woman could leave. Her back was to the door, but she craned her neck all the way around to see the woman. Ama had stopped, but hadn’t turned around.

  “Has he been in to see my mother?”

  How many seconds ticked by as she waited for Ama’s response?

  “No.”

  And then she heard the door click shut, the lock grate into place. No one could hear her screams of protest.

  * * *

  She drifted in and out of sleep the first twenty-four hours, exhausted and in pain. When they let her out, there would be a celebration to welcome the renewed version of herself back into the group. She held on to that, tried to think of the party, the bacon sandwiches that sat on red-and-white paper, the table piled with pink frosted cakes and cookies, the way everyone in the compound would clap and smile as she walked into the room as she’d once clapped for others.

  She’d known nothing then. She couldn’t believe she’d helped celebrate something so awful. After the feast, the women would take her to the communal bathroom, which would smell like eucalyptus and be filled with hot steam, and they’d let her shower for as long she liked. She’d be clean and have a full belly, and they’d put her in a white dress, brush her hair and then lead her to the chapel, humming in the creepy way they did sometimes, but it would be okay—because it was over.

  She’d assisted at an “after” ceremony when she was thirteen: her mother’s. But all she’d seen of it was the celebration; she had no idea what her mother had gone through, the hours she’d spent behind the doors where she herself now sat imprisoned. Why hadn’t her mother told her? She’d let her daughter believe these things were good, let Taured tell her that they were. Summer screamed as loud as she could, straining against the ties that bound her; she screamed so loudly that her throat felt like it was on fire.

  She guessed that twelve hours had passed before Rhodi came back to release her from the stool and give her a bowl of broth and a bottle of water. She tried to take it easy on the water, knowing she should save some for later. She wanted to know if her mother was receiving the same punishment or something worse; she knew in her gut the latter was true.

  Why had she gone to the bathroom in the airport? Why hadn’t they made more of an effort to hide after they left instead of going to the most obvious place of escape? She lifted the bowl to her mouth while Rhodi undid the ties on her ankles. Her muscles felt bunched up and useless. She considered her chances of darting past Rhodi and out the door, but how far would she actually get before they dragged her back? Taured had walked into the airport with a gun in the pocket of his tan jacket and jabbed it into her mother’s side. That’s all her mother had imparted to her in the back seat before they were separated at the compound. Summer rested the bowl in her lap, letting the warmth seep into her thighs.

  “Rhodi...my mother?”

  “She’s in isolation, same as you.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, her touch rough; she didn’t look at Summer as she finished undoing the straps. Summer’s eyes followed her to the door, where she grabbed a few things off her cart and brought them back into the cell, setting them on the floor.

  “Is she okay?”

  Rhodi clearly wanted to say something. She puckered her lips, leaning against the doorframe, and craned her neck to see if anyone was coming.

  “She’s taking the brunt of what y’all did. You know that, right?”

  Summer stood up, the bowl of broth flipping off her lap. She stepped through the puddle to get to Rhodi, but she wasn’t fast enough. Rhodi was out the door, metal slamming in Summer’s face, blowing her hair back with its force. The steel had not touched her nose, yet it ached from the threat, anyway. Resting her forehead on the cold metal, she rolled her head from side to side. The sounds she made were sharp and high, a choked-off scream. She wept, folded over her own knees, face slimy with tears and saliva and snot. She dripped onto the floor as her wailing scraped over her throat again and again.

  * * *

  Rhodi had left her with another bottle of water, a dress and a blanket. Wrapping herself in the blanket and ignoring everything else, Summer sat facing the door, her back against the wall. Taured’s voice was the only sound in her head now, and she whimpered, remembering the last thing he’d said to her outside of his car before he had the sisters take her mother away: “I’m going to have fun with her punishment, Summertime.”

  She’s going to be okay because she’s strong—stronger than Taured. She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the wall; the air smelled like pee and bleach and soup and it made her want to vomit. She didn’t want one more smell in here with her, so she took deep gulping breaths until the feeling passed. She must have fallen asleep, because when she woke up, the lights were out again. Crawling on her hands and knees to the door, Summer pounded on it until the sides of her hands were tender and her voice was scratchy.

  On the evening of the third day, they came for her: Ama, Sara, Dawn and Rhodi. She started crying as soon as she saw Sara. No one would look at her, including her friend, who glanced nervously at her own mother as they helped Summer dress.

  “Sara?” she said under her breath, but either Sara had been warned not to talk to Summer or she was too afraid to, because her body grew stiff at the sound of her own name. This was not like the last time: there were no greetings of joy, no hugs or words of affirmation; they were brusque in their handling of her. As they ushered her into the hall and toward the cafeteria, she trembled beneath their hands, light-headed and weak.