“We had a sexual relationship—” he paused here for effect “—and she confided in me often, and when things became difficult for her, when her depression became too much to handle, she...well, the drugs started in Portland, and she didn’t want you to know that, of course.”

“What is your point here, Taured? Haven’t you told me these lies before?” It was getting so hot. But Rainy had tried hot yoga a couple times and found it cleansing. She leaned into that feeling now. Taured was sweating, patches of damp forming on his shirt under his arms.

“They’re not lies, Summer. She was willing to leave you behind if I gave her the same amount of money she arrived with. Where do you think the money came for the tickets she bought for New Mexico? That wasn’t from your grandparents. She tried to steal from me. She went back on our deal.” His teeth were getting a nice wine bath, marooning themselves around his gumline.

He drank his wine. He spoke and he drank. He was so transfixed by the sound of his own voice that he’d stopped pressing her to drink hers. Narcissists were unfailingly distracted by themselves. He wasn’t even pausing to make sure his lies made sense.

“She tried to steal what from you? Me?” She saw the look in his eyes and it almost made her go blind with rage. “I wasn’t yours. I never have been.”

“I saved your life, back then and today. You owe me.”

Rainy sighed. The thing about her rage was that it was silent. She didn’t need to cry, or become hysterical, or accuse him of things he’d done. She’d already done that: held his trial in her own mind. The screaming had been had and done and now she was resolved to end the nightmare for good. Her sigh was a little leak of insanity.

“It doesn’t matter what she did or said. My mother isn’t on trial here, you are.” When she looked back at him, she could tell he was replaying her words more slowly. Thinking on them. She was sure things were getting a little foggy for him in the thoughts department. Looking around, she saw the mess on the floor: the vomit, the blood, the spilled wine.

“What is it, Taured? Have you never thought that you might have to pay for what you’ve done? Let’s talk about what you did to those little girls at the compound...the little boy that was Ginger. Sara...Feena...me...”

Beneath the neatly trimmed beard, his full lips twitched. She liked that crack in his facade. He was not impenetrable, not the god he thought himself to be. It was just the two of them here, his disciples a hundred miles away.

“You don’t sound very grateful,” he said. “I saved your life.”