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It felt as if the air was sucked from the room as Tami’s face paled to a white that matched the carpet.
“What?”
Rayne’s stomach twisted with a cold dread. She could see the truth etched in Tami’s expression. Her reaction to the question should have been confusion, not shock.
“You heard me.” She studied the older woman with an accusing gaze. “Why did you give Nat five thousand dollars?”
With jerky motions, Tami drained her whiskey and set down the glass hard enough to make the ice cubes rattle. Then she reached for her cigarettes, lighting one to suck in a deep lungful of smoke and nicotine.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She at last spoke the words Rayne had been expecting.
“I’m too tired for games, Mother.”
“So am I.” Tami waved a too-slender hand toward the door. “I think you should leave. As I said, I have guests coming.”
Rayne shook her head. “Not until I have the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“How Nat managed to get such a large sum of money from you.” Rayne held up her hand as her mother’s lips parted. “Don’t try to deny it. I spoke to Brooke Orwell, Nat’s best friend. She admitted that Nat was in desperate need of the cash.” Rayne was careful to gloss over the fact that Brooke didn’t know anything about Nat paying off Henri. She wanted her mother to think that she had concrete evidence. “I just don’t understand why you would agree to give it to her.”
“It was a long time ago.” Her mother continued to puff on her cigarette. “I don’t remember.”
Rayne felt her eyes sting. The smoke was more annoying than usual. Probably because she was so on edge.
“You don’t forget giving an eighteen-year-old girl five thousand dollars,” she tartly retorted.
“Enough, Rayne.”
“No, I’m not going to stop asking questions until I’m satisfied that I know what happened.” Rayne held her mother’s gaze, silently warning her that this wasn’t a bluff. “I don’t care if I have to ask everyone you know in Chicago. Starting with the neighbors. Someone has to know what you were willing to pay five thousand dollars to keep hidden.”
Rayne didn’t truly believe the neighbors knew anything, but the older woman would be horrified by the thought of people gossiping behind her back.
There was a tense pause, as Tami considered her options. Rayne watched in silence. The late afternoon sunlight slanted through the window, pooling over the older woman. She didn’t appear quite real, Rayne silently acknowledged. She looked like a mannequin. A pale, perfect mannequin.
“It wasn’t me,” Tami finally said through clenched teeth. “It was Mark.”
“Mark gave Nat the money?”
“No.” Tami made a sound of angry impatience. “It was because of him that I was forced to hand over the cash.”
Something clicked inside Rayne’s mind. Like a puzzle suddenly fitting together. She’d been baffled by what her mother could have done that would have been awful enough for Nat to be able to demand such a large sum of money from her. It took zero effort to imagine Mark committing some despicable sin.
“What did he do?”
Tami wrapped her arms around her narrow waist, a bitter expression twisting her features. “What he always does,” she rasped. “He fell into bed with the first willing woman who crossed his path. Only this one was more a girl than a woman.”
It took a second for Rayne to be able to accept what her mother was saying. She’d known Mark was a sleaze. He lied, he cheated, and he manipulated the vulnerable. But she’d never considered the possibility he was a pedophile.
“He had sex with one of the students?” she breathed in disbelief.
“Yes.” Tami shrugged in a restless gesture. “When we’d visited during your spring break, he’d snuck into a dorm room.” She sent Rayne an accusing glare, as if it was somehow her fault that Mark couldn’t keep his pants zipped. “And your nasty little roommate had the receipts.”
Receipts? Rayne frowned, until she understood what Tami was telling her. “Nat took photos.”
“Very revealing ones.” Tami tossed her hair, the blond locks tumbling around her shoulders. “She sent me an email shortly before we left for Austria with copies of the pictures and a warning that she was going to send them to the police if I didn’t bring her five thousand dollars.”
Rayne grimaced. She loved Nat, but the fact that her friend had used the photos to extract money from her mother rather than sending them to the authorities made her sick to her stomach. Even if Nat was desperate to protect Brooke, it was . . . disappointing.
