He blew out a breath. “Wow. That’s some soap opera shit right there.”

“I know. I’ve been reeling. Everything I thought about my childhood, well, it’s not the same. None of it is what I thought and I don’t know how to process it. So I’ve been avoiding processing it. I feel like if I really face it I’m going to fall the f**k apart. What if I’m crazy too? Schizophrenia runs in families. I’ve got a family full of addicts and f**kups. What if it’s in me right now, just waiting?”

“Have you talked with a doctor about it?” He kept his voice calm, knowing she was scared.

“Not yet. I had to go through a background check to see her. I’m meeting with her doctor first, before they let me meet with her. But I don’t know that it’ll be the right time to ask about that. Or even if I’m ready to know yet.”

A knock sounded the arrival of the food, which was set up quickly. He pointed a finger at the table and she rolled her eyes, but got up and moved over, settling as she sipped the tea and began to eat.

“When I was fourteen I’d been placed, temporarily, in a far-removed family member’s home. It was through family court. They really only wanted me for the money and, well, apparently for other things. That’s where . . . well, the place I got the worst of the bad dreams from.”

“Where you were raped.”

She flinched but nodded. “A teacher at school noticed the big change in my behavior and called my case worker. They removed me the next day and put me in a halfway house.”

He knew enough about the system to know quite often halfway houses were the last resort placements for older kids who had been in the system long term and for kids with criminal and severe behavioral issues.

“And then the Thompsons came along. I was sent there and they gave me my own room. They had a daughter who was nearly two years older than I was. They were so good to me. Bonnie—that’s Mrs. Thompson—was a nurse. She had this way about her. They left me alone when I needed it. Let me lock my door when I went to bed. After eight months there, the longest placement I’d ever had, they asked me if I wanted to live with them permanently. I was going to have a family. My god. You have no idea what that felt like. I had a family. People who wanted me. So they started the process. My biological family were pretty much like yeah whatever, take her off our hands. But it’s a long process. My grades improved. I made friends. I had a cat named Ginger. For the first time in my entire life I was happy every single day.”

She ate for a while as dread tore at his insides.

“You don’t have to say anything else.”

“Yes, yes, I do. So Missy, that was their daughter, she was a cheerleader and had convinced them to let her go to cheerleading camp at a nearby private college. It was a summer program, the students slept in the dorms with their teammates. She had classes and stuff on tumbling and that cheerleadery jazz.

“And one day she didn’t come back from dinner. They ate in the residential dining halls but it wasn’t that far from their dorms or practice field.

“For two weeks they combed the area. They waited for a ransom call. They went on television begging for her safe return. They found her body. It was bad. She’d been tortured.” She had to stop, putting her fork down and mopping her face with her napkin. “What had been done to her, well, no one should have to have endured it. The Thompsons just sort of checked out. One day, a month after they found her, Mrs. Thompson picked me up from school, took me to the hospital’s social worker and said the state had to take me back. They weren’t going to adopt me. They weren’t going to keep me as a foster placement. She gave me all the money in her wallet, hugged me and walked away.”

He had to stand, the rage pulsing through him was nearly too much. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

“These people are scum, Raven. They had no right!”

“No, they didn’t. But they lost a child. I heard over the next year that their marriage had broken up and they’d lost their home and had moved away. I’d heard here and there that Mike had developed a problem with alcohol. That next placement was my last. I’d been saving up money since I got my first job at fifteen. I was going to buy a car with it. Such a normal thing and something else that I’d never have in Happy Bend or anywhere else in Arkansas. A few months later I packed up everything I owned, which filled one suitcase. I left my sketchbooks in my great-grandmother’s garage and she sent them to me a year later. I never looked back. Except for when I came back to her funeral. When my aunt told my mother I was dead, she used the story of Missy’s death. She didn’t just tell my mother I was dead, Jonah, she told her I’d been tortured, raped and murdered. I will not rest until that’s been dealt with.”

“Jesus, baby. I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never told that story to anyone. It’s been like a sore in my belly for so long it’s been what I thought was normal. But Mike Thompson came to me at the shop. He apologized. He and Bonnie have been looking for me for ages. I have closure on that. I needed that. And I have it and it’s been important. He flew out here with me. They live just about an hour away. They invited me to stay with them. But I had to do it without them. But thank God I don’t have to do it without you. That is if you’re still, you know, if you still want to be with me after I told you all that stuff.”

He knelt in front of her chair and hugged her, his face buried in her chest. “I love you so f**king much it should be scary. I wanted to be with you before I knew this. I want to be with you now. I want to make this better for you and I can’t. I want to punch people and sue them and make them sorry they treated you so poorly.”