“I’ve upset you. Seems I’ve done enough of that and I’m truly sorry.” He spread his hands out, letting them drop to his lap.

“You said you were here about my mother?” She turned her emotions off. She had to or she’d suffocate.

“About ten years ago I went to therapy. After we lost Missy . . . after Bonnie and I split and you . . .”

“Were dumped back on the state,” she supplied.

He winced but it didn’t make her feel better.

“Yes, after we failed you. Anyway, I spent a lot of years in the bottom of a bottle. I lost one job after the next. I hit rock bottom and then Bonnie came to see me in jail. I finally got some help. Therapy. It was either that or lose everything. Bonnie and I had been talking again. I wanted her back, you see, and she said she wouldn’t consider it until we got counseling. So I went. She went. We both had it. I worked through stuff and faced the grief. Not just over Missy, but how we’d abandoned you like all the others had.”

She had her hands folded in her lap, her nails digging into her palms as she struggled to hold it together and keep a straight face.

“If you’re here for old home week, Mr. Thompson, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I got over Happy Bend a long time ago.”

He simply went on. “Bonnie and I, we started looking for you. To reconnect and see if we could make amends. Your kin, they weren’t much help. But we kept our ears open. Last year, one of Bonnie’s patients was a retired police officer who did private investigation as a hobby. We asked him to see if he could track you down. He eventually found you; we figured out you’d changed your name. But first, well . . . we found your momma.”

“Her grave?” Though she’d known her mother had died of an overdose, no one had known where her grave was. She had no plans to go leave flowers either.

“Raven, your mother isn’t dead. She’s in a mental institution where she’s been for the last eighteen years. Before that she’d been in another institution in Louisiana.”

Icy cold washed over her. “You’re telling me my mother isn’t dead?”

“I’m telling you your mother is alive. She’s . . . well, she’s not in the best shape, but she’s alive. In her lucid times, they told her . . . well, they did to her what they did to you I guess. She thought you were dead. They used the news about Missy—” His mouth wobbled a moment and then forged ahead. “They told her you’d been murdered. For the last nearly twenty years she thought you were dead. She tried to kill herself after that. That’s when they moved her to a different institution in Oklahoma City. She didn’t abandon you, darlin’. She had a psychotic break. Apparently she’s had mental problems most of her life. She’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s resistant to most treatment. She’s a threat to herself more than anyone else.”

“Who is they?” Hold on, hold on, hold on. “Who told her I was dead?”

“Your aunt. She wouldn’t speak to us when we went to see her. We tried many times. We tried to talk to cousins and they wouldn’t say much. One of them asked us for money to tell us and sent us on a wild-goose chase. He didn’t know, not really.”

“You saw her? My mother?”

He nodded. “She knows you’re alive. We told her we were trying to find you. I promised her when we did, I’d tell you about her. Raven, I know we did you wrong. It tears me and Bonnie up to know how wrong we did you.”

“Your daughter was murdered. You had enough to deal with.” Intellectually she understood it. Believed it. But her heart had broken just the same. She’d lost everything. For a time she’d had everything she’d ever wanted. A family at last. Her own room. A sister. Safety and stability.

“She was kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered. It’s taken me years of therapy to be able to say that out loud. But we fell apart and we tossed you back like you were an animal we took to the pound. We took a horrible moment in our lives and we betrayed you. We made a promise to you. We made you believe we were making a home for you and we didn’t. I will regret that for the rest of my days. We loved you, Raven. Bonnie and me. Missy too. You were meant to be our daughter and we failed you as surely as we failed Missy. We want you to know about your momma because we’ll be damned if we fail you again.”

For so long she had wanted them to seek her out. To know that what they’d done to her had devastated her entire life. She’d felt selfish even thinking it. Missy had died. And Raven hadn’t. Things had been bad, yes, but she was sitting there and Missy wasn’t.

Worse, this business with her mother was beyond confusing. Why would they have told her she was dead? She’d been all alone all these years in an institution and no one ever told her?

Everything she’d ever believed about her life crashed down around her ears. She hadn’t been tossed away by her junkie mother. Her mother hadn’t been able to take care of her. Worse, her family knew and didn’t tell her.

“Why would they do that to me? I don’t understand.” And then it fell away. All the energy she’d put into holding back her emotions simply wasn’t there anymore. There was nothing left but her emotions.

She started to cry, putting her head down on the desk. The sounds she made came from someplace so deep inside she didn’t know how to stop. The door slammed open and Brody bellowed at Mike to step back from where he’d moved to comfort her.

“No. Don’t.” She held a hand out.

Brody stared at her, never having seen her fall apart. He moved to the desk, picking her up and sitting, holding her in his lap, rocking her back and forth as she wept.

“Everyone get back to work.”

“Should I call someone?” Maggie asked from the doorway.

“Erin.”

She shook her head no, but Brody just grumbled and held on, rubbing a hand back and forth on her back.

Erin rushed in just a few seconds later. That day was one she staffed the café in the mornings. “What’s going on? Oh! What’s wrong? Who is this guy? What did you do to her?”

Raven lifted her head. “It’s not him.”

Erin came to her knees in front of where Brody had been holding her. She put her arms around Raven and held on tight. “What can I do? Tell me and I’ll make it happen. Do you want me to call Jonah?”

“I need a plane ticket to Oklahoma City.”

“I’ll go with you, Raven. Bonnie and I will be with you, right at your side. If you want us.” Mike spoke from where he’d sat, watching helplessly on the other side of the desk.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell us what’s going on.” Erin handed her a wad of tissues.

“My mother is alive and in a mental institution. She’s not dead. They lied to me.”

“Oh my god.”

He’d left several messages and she hadn’t called back. He’d stopped by her building but she wasn’t there. For the last several days he’d tried. They’d both been busy. She’d been pulling long days at the shop and he’d been working and spending time with Carrie before she’d had to go back to school.

But his general annoyance that they hadn’t connected had shifted to discomfort. Something was wrong.

He dropped Carrie at the airport and headed to Written On The Body to see what was up.

But it wasn’t open yet so he went into the café. Erin wasn’t there. But he knew where she lived, having gone there a time or two with Raven, so he headed there. If all else failed, he’d go to Bainbridge and to Gillian.

But he didn’t have to. Erin told the doorman to send him up and she met him at the door with a concerned look on her face.

“Where is she?”

“Come in. I’m going to have a cup of coffee. Want one?”

The place was quiet.

“Alexander is in preschool for a few hours today. That’s why it’s so quiet. Odd. I guess you’d know that too.”

“Carrie is always running up and down the stairs, on the phone, listening to music or watching television. It’s unnatural when she’s gone.”