“The what?” Rainy made her jaw hang open and hoped she looked as stupid as she felt.
“Old women’s prison. Never mind. Must have been your doppelg?nger. You’re too young to be her.”
She raised her eyebrows. She sensed that he wanted to talk, so she shut up and let him.
“Guy came through here in ’94 and bought the women’s prison, moved a bunch of roughnecks in to work for him, then came the women and children. Pretty soon he had a whole operation going on over there.”
“Oh, yeah, like drugs?” She made her eyes big, but she hardly needed to; old Marvin was on a roll.
“Nah, nothing like that. It was all legit. He had an orchard out there that generated some money, but rumor was he was a computer guy—was training all the kids on them computers, figured he could build an army via the web. You know old-timers like me didn’t think much of it back then, but now the guy has all of these damn nerds working for him from all over the country, building websites and selling them for a profit. Made millions at one point...” He spat again. “They come in here wearing those little glasses and leather jackets!” Shaking his head, Marvin eyed her clothes. “Weak-minded, enthralled by their emotions,” he added. “Perfectly culty.”
“Why did he stay here? If he made all that money why not move on?”
Marvin shrugged. “Snakes like the desert.” A laugh wrapped in a throaty cough followed. “Why would he leave? He owns this part of the desert.”
A good enough answer. Rainy was almost done with him.
Taured had been enthusiastic about technology. Mostly, she thought, it was to manipulate them. Now, in light of Marvin’s words, it sort of made sense. He’d been dismissive of the adults spending time in the computer lab; Summer had never seen her mother use a computer while she was at the compound. But the kids were a different story: in addition to the journals he made them send him via email, he went as far as having them take lessons with Gerry Lackey, a former programmer who taught them a computer science class. Taured told them he had met Gerry online, and wasn’t that amazing that you could meet people from all over the world and have them become your family.
“How do you know all this?” Rainy was genuinely curious.
He laughed. “Ain’t got nothing else to do.” He pointed a finger in the air, his head shaking as he spoke. “This place is not even a town proper—a highway rest stop, really.”
He wasn’t wrong. This was the town she’d known as a kid, and back then, it had seemed a lot larger.
“So he owns this place, then—that guy you’re talking about?”
The kid who took her order—she’d already forgotten his name—stuck his head out the door.
“Food’s up,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
“Yeah, he owns it,” Marvin said, starting to walk back inside. “And everything else, too.”
“So how’d he get your restaurant?”
“That’s a story for another day,” he said, looking at her more carefully. Now that they were back inside and the sun wasn’t shining in his eyes, he was studying her again, a strange look on his face. He’s seeing my mother, she realized, and wondered how often the two of them had crossed paths. Her mother was gone so much on the so-called mission trips, but she supposed they’d stopped in town on their way in and out. Mostly, the people in this place were probably hungry for the gossip that came from the compound, gleaning information like the desert scavengers they were.
Rainy took her time walking to her seat, taking in the details of the place. Picking up her knife and fork, she cut into her pancakes. Her mother’s death hadn’t been mentioned anywhere: not in the papers or, years later, on crime blogs where ordinary people could pick over cases in detail. According to the world, there had never been a murder. Lorraine had died of an overdose. Another day, another drug addict: the police moved on after they interviewed people at the compound, who all confirmed that Lorraine had been using drugs. Furthermore, they told police that she was a deeply disturbed woman who often disappeared for months at a time, leaving her teenage daughter behind for them to take care of. Taured had backed up these stories, adding that Lorraine had been trying to hide her drug dependency and had come to him for help. In his statement to police, he’d said, “By the time she asked for help it was already too late, and she died the next day.”
Her grandparents had believed all of it. Given the years-long rift between them and Lorraine, and Rainy’s dad’s own drug problem, it was an easy thing for them to believe. Gilda and Mark hadn’t seen their estranged daughter in years, and they no longer knew anything about her. Rainy had been too traumatized to say more than a few words at a time; though her grandparents were better than Taured—their religious fervor seemed to have mellowed in the years Lorraine was gone, as they had even begun to watch a few TV shows—they were still strangers. And although they’d never said so, she thought they must have regretted how they treated Lorraine, how their behavior drove her from them and into the clutches of someone worse.
“That boy that served you them pancakes, he’s the big shot’s son.” Rainy’s fork stilled on the way to her mouth.
The kid was topping off a Coke at the soda fountain, and all she could see was the back of his head. Someone in the kitchen called, “Order up!” and he turned his head to look. She studied his profile, his hair, the pull of his shoulders, searching for Taured. Realizing she was paying too much attention to the kid, she looked down at her soggy pancakes. She could get a knife, wait until after his shift, say she needed help...
Oh my God, Rainy, oh my God. It might not even be Taured’s kid. She bit her tongue and flinched: she deserved it. What type of person had thoughts like that?
The sins of the parents will be visited on their children.
“You know him, don’t you?”
Rainy stared at Marvin.
Turning back to his coffee, he said, “You’re not the first who’s come through here looking for a glimpse of him. Must’ve had a dozen kids like you, making the pilgrimage.”
“His children?”
He looked at her hard. “Nah, the ones like you who want something else.”
True that. How many kids had lived at the compound and had been brainwashed into adulthood to do his bidding? When Rainy looked at the pimply kid behind the counter, she realized that some of them could still be there—Sara could still be there. Had she ever considered that? No. She had actively tried not to think about that place. But she was here now, and there was no way around the thoughts.
“What do they want from him?”
Marvin turned his mean, old eyes on her, and she could see his rot in the yolky whites. “Same thing you do, I expect.”
Rainy took a sip of coffee, pressing her lips together as she eyed the bentness of him; he looked like a branch ready to snap.
“I doubt that, Marvin.” He’d lived so long and her mother had lived so briefly. The injustice of the good dying young was especially potent in that moment. Smacking her lips together, she set down her mug. “What’s he up to nowadays?” She didn’t see any point in lying to Marvin, who’d already made up his mind about who she was.
“He’s making money. Still lives up at the prison, but it’s just him and his closest now. He runs a couple online gigs, uses the space as a warehouse.” Marvin laughed. “His slave is the internet, not all those folks he had working for him for free.”