Brody was at her side immediately. Two other people were also working in the shop and they’d stood as well, looking back and forth between Raven and the man at the door.

“Mr. Thompson? What . . . Why are you here?” Sick dread filled her as the memories nearly suffocated.

“Raven? Are you all right?” Brody stood between her and Mike.

“He . . . That’s . . . I’m . . . I don’t know.”

Brody examined her face. “Sweetheart, do I need to call the cops? Do I need to beat this guy’s ass? What’s happening? You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

“I know Raven from Happy Bend.”

“Well, I know enough to understand that’s not a good thing,” Brody called back over his shoulder.

“It’s fine.” No. It wasn’t fine. But she didn’t want to get the guy beaten up by three burly tattoo artists. And Maggie held the phone in her hand like she was about to swing it into Mike’s face.

She pulled herself together. It was in the past. She had a future. She wasn’t going to let this harm her.

She managed to walk to the front counter as everyone got back to work, though they all kept an eye on the situation. That made her feel better. Brody was at her back, refusing to leave. That made her feel better too.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make a scene.” Mike licked his lips nervously. He had gray in his hair and in his beard. A bit of belly, though he would have been sixty or so by now, so she figured that was normal.

“Why are you here?”

“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”

“Why are you here?” Raven repeated.

“It’s about your mother.”

She physically recoiled, moving back a step and hitting Brody. He took her shoulder in his hand, reassuring.

“Why don’t you use my office?” He spoke softly.

She nodded. “I need to finish my client.”

Arvin, who’d just cashed out his latest client, paused. “It’s a simple one, right? I can finish it for you if your client is okay with it.”

“Thanks. Mr. Thompson, I can talk to you in Brody’s office. Come on back.”

Her legs worked, which sort of surprised her.

Brody paused at the door, after she’d waved Mike to sit. “You want some company? Who is that?”

“My foster father. One of them.” She’d never told anyone the whole story of just who he was and she wasn’t going to do it then either. “I’ll be okay.” She touched his arm. “Thank you.”

“Bang on the wall if you need me. Or call out. I’m just right here.”

She nodded and turned, closing the door.

She walked to the desk and sat behind it. The familiar furniture, the pictures of Brody’s women, Marti and Rennie, Elise, joined with others of Erin and Adrian. The room smelled like him. His jacket hung on a peg in the corner. This was her turf. It was her turf and it was nearly twenty years after her dealings with the Thompsons.

“I’ve upset you. Seems I’ve done enough of that and I’m truly sorry.” He spread his hands out, letting them drop to his lap.

“You said you were here about my mother?” She turned her emotions off. She had to or she’d suffocate.

“About ten years ago I went to therapy. After we lost Missy . . . after Bonnie and I split and you . . .”

“Were dumped back on the state,” she supplied.

He winced but it didn’t make her feel better.

“Yes, after we failed you. Anyway, I spent a lot of years in the bottom of a bottle. I lost one job after the next. I hit rock bottom and then Bonnie came to see me in jail. I finally got some help. Therapy. It was either that or lose everything. Bonnie and I had been talking again. I wanted her back, you see, and she said she wouldn’t consider it until we got counseling. So I went. She went. We both had it. I worked through stuff and faced the grief. Not just over Missy, but how we’d abandoned you like all the others had.”

She had her hands folded in her lap, her nails digging into her palms as she struggled to hold it together and keep a straight face.

“If you’re here for old home week, Mr. Thompson, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I got over Happy Bend a long time ago.”

He simply went on. “Bonnie and I, we started looking for you. To reconnect and see if we could make amends. Your kin, they weren’t much help. But we kept our ears open. Last year, one of Bonnie’s patients was a retired police officer who did private investigation as a hobby. We asked him to see if he could track you down. He eventually found you; we figured out you’d changed your name. But first, well . . . we found your momma.”

“Her grave?” Though she’d known her mother had died of an overdose, no one had known where her grave was. She had no plans to go leave flowers either.

“Raven, your mother isn’t dead. She’s in a mental institution where she’s been for the last eighteen years. Before that she’d been in another institution in Louisiana.”

Icy cold washed over her. “You’re telling me my mother isn’t dead?”

“I’m telling you your mother is alive. She’s . . . well, she’s not in the best shape, but she’s alive. In her lucid times, they told her . . . well, they did to her what they did to you I guess. She thought you were dead. They used the news about Missy—” His mouth wobbled a moment and then forged ahead. “They told her you’d been murdered. For the last nearly twenty years she thought you were dead. She tried to kill herself after that. That’s when they moved her to a different institution in Oklahoma City. She didn’t abandon you, darlin’. She had a psychotic break. Apparently she’s had mental problems most of her life. She’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s resistant to most treatment. She’s a threat to herself more than anyone else.”