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Rae’s heart did a little jump. “Why would you think that?”
“Because as the HR manager, I was tasked with firing him on the day he went missing.” She looked down at her designer pumps. “Hetook it hard, but there was nothing I could do about it. I’m just the messenger.”
“Why was he fired?” Rae felt like she was on the verge of learning something vital.
“Uh, I’m not at liberty to tell you.” Nancy shook her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up with you. I hope you won’t drop me from your services.”
Shit.“No, I’m glad you told me. I was sad to hear about Thomas’s death.”
“Me too. He was a kind person,” Nancy said. “And, in a way, it’s nice to know we had a secret in common. Well, his was a secret before that stupid article.”
“At least the police got them to take it down, and you and my other clients are protected. I promise you that.”
Nancy smiled. “Maybe the article wasn’t the worst thing to happen. It opened up some conversations at work with a few of my coworkers. I can’t be open myself, but now I know I’m definitely not the only one in my office who’s into this sort of thing.”
As soon as Nancy left, Rae texted Dayton to call her and began sanitizing the dungeon space and closing up shop for the day. He called her back as she was starting her car.
“What’s going on?” he said in a lowered voice after she’d answered. “Your text seemed urgent.”
She told him about what Nancy had said, although she didn’t give away her name. “So, did you know he was fired the same day he went missing?”
“Yeah. I did.” He paused, and she heard the sound of girlish laughter in the background. “Supposedly, he was fired for making a serious accounting error.”
“But you don’t think that’s the reason?”
“No, I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think he was being used as a pawn the same way they’re trying to use me, and he got caught.”
Rae heard the high squeal of girls laughing again. “Where are you?”
“Outside of Roxy’s with Carli and her friend. I promised I’d take them for ice cream after school today since I haven’t seen her in a few days—not since I sent her back to my mom’s until I get this shit figured out.”
The deadline for him to destroy the evidence in the rape case he told her about was the next day. “You don’t have much time. What are you going to do?”
Dayton let out a long sigh. “What would you do, Rae, if you were in my position?”
Clint and the fire burned across her mind for a second. “To protect my family? I’d do anything and everything, but this is different. If you do this, you’re taking away possible justice for a rape survivor.”
He was quiet for a moment. “It would change the core of who I am as a person. How do I move forward from something like that?”
She didn’t have an easy answer for him. She knew the things she’d done in her life had fundamentally changed her, not always for the good. But she kept Viv’s words in her head whenever she questioned those gray areas of herself:Are you going to let this turn you into the kind of monsters you escaped from?
“You learn how to live with the new version of yourself.”
CHAPTER 57
RAE
2009
Over the next two weeks, Ben followed through on his promise to help Rae. His friend at DHS was nice in explaining the process of Medicaid in Oklahoma, but the woman couldn’t do anything beyond giving information. Rae didn’t qualify since the state looked at total household income, and Ben and Marilyn earned well over the threshold. As for the apartment deposit Ben said he’d give her, he told her he needed to move some things around first so Marilyn wouldn’t notice.
Rae was as restless as Lily squirming around in her belly. She didn’t like waiting on someone else to make something happen, and it was getting harder for her to do live streams to earn more money. Her body no longer felt like her own, her feet so swollen she worried something was wrong with her. Maybe there was, but she couldn’t afford to check.
She was thankful to have an ally in Ben, but it didn’t stop her from sinking into dark thoughts at night when she couldn’t sleep. Sometimes, she’d get up, feigning that she needed a drink of water only to see if Ben was outside having a secret smoke so she could talk with him. Butmost of the time, the dark thoughts kept her glued to her bed, unable to shake the ghosts of Viv, Beth, and Maria.
The one positive was that she’d passed her practice GED test and was ready for the real deal. The test was over a hundred dollars, which seemed like a lot to her, but she was glad to pay it if it meant opening up opportunities for her.
“Math fucking sucks,” she said to Ben during one of his teleworking days. They had gone over the arithmetic portion again, and she had made several simple mistakes she should’ve caught. “Maybe I’m not ready yet.”
