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Oakley looked just like the lady in that picture.
Oakley just had to find her mommy. She knew how, too.
The internet.
Scraggle-Poppstalked about the internet before.
She hit the button for his computer. He didn’t know she had seen him put the password in one day and memorized it.
Oakley was very, very smart. He’d told her that before. Said she was a genius or something. Like theotherdaughters.
Oakley knew he meant her mommy’s other daughters.
Oakley’s big sisters. She didn’t know their names or anything. But Grandfather talked about them sometimes.
Sometimes she wondered if her big sisters got to be with her mommy instead of her. Maybe her mommy couldn’t take care of themandOakley and Orion?
Kids did cost lots of money.
Maybe her big sisters were looking for Oakley and Orion, too.
He was very proud of her big sisters, Grandfather said, and talked about them all the time and math and psychology.
They were going to be special people, Grandfather said. All their mommy’s daughters were going to be extraordinary, Grandfather said.
He was weird when he talked like that.
When he looked at her sometimes.
But they were not as special as Oakley because Oakley hadhimto raise her in the perfect environment, according to the plan.
Until Oakley was ready for the next part.
Ready for the ’xperiment.
He talked about the ’xperiment all the time.
And Oakley had to beperfect.
Or he would die trying.
He said that all the time, too. She was going to be perfect or he would make her be. No matter what.
6
Murdoch turnedhis Tahoe on the back farm road that he doubted had seen an actual car on it in four or five days. He always hit the back roads when he needed to think. He’d been edgy since he’d seen Zoey. The woman got under his skin in all those good ways and all.
What the beautiful love of his life had told him was playing through his head. She’d said her family probably originated in the Garrity area. That was a lot of territory—and a lot of secrets. There were places in the county where lots of secrets hid, too.
He wanted to find those secrets now.
There were fresh tire tracks in the dust.
He saw them almost immediately.
That was concerning. Nothing was out here except an old defunct church that just stood there, a broken ghost in the countryside. The congregation had moved from this hollow to downtown Garrity more than twenty years ago.
If some punk was out there doing drugs, or doing worse, Murdoch would oust them and move on to the road even further up behind the church. There were houses out that way.
