Page 81 of See How They Hide

Riley dismissed the thought. She needed to focus. Shewantedto stop her mother’s henchmen. Sheneededto stop her mother. She didn’t know how, so maybe this was the only option.

“I’m okay,” Riley said, feeling more confident. “I want to help.” She said it and believed it.

“I want to talk to you about Havenwood before and after your grandmother died,” Dean said, “but first, you told Kara that the community made money through selling marijuana. I’m interested in how that works. Do you know?”

“Sure. We grew it, dried it, sold it. It started with my grandmother, but that was mostly just for Havenwood. My grandma sold only enough to help pay for things we needed. Like property taxes.”

“Your grandmother owned the property.”

“My grandpa Will did, hundreds of acres. The entire valley we called Havenwood. Way before I was born, they almost lost it. He owed a lot of back taxes. That’s why Grandma started taking Havenwood goods to craft fairs, but selling quilts and jams and wood carvings didn’t earn us enough money. So she started selling marijuana and within a couple years they caught up. Then Robert came to Havenwood and he was super smart with numbers. He made sure we never got in trouble again, because the government would love to take our property if we didn’t pay.”

Kara sat down with her coffee. “Robert Benson?” she asked.

Riley nodded.

“Yesterday you said Robert left with your aunt Thalia,” Kara said.

“Yes. But you make it sound like they left together, to be together, and they didn’t. They tried to destroy Havenwood.”

She’d been so lost then. She didn’t miss Thalia as much as she thought she would, but she deeply missed her daddy Robert.

“We know how hard this is for you,” Dean said, “but we need to understand the dynamics of Havenwood so we can locate the compound and stop them from hurting anyone else.”

“Thalia believed that if she took the money, Havenwood would implode and people would leave. Since Robert controlled the money after William left...” Riley frowned.

“William didn’t leave, did he?” Kara said quietly. “You talked around it yesterday, but I think it was clear. Your grandmother found a grave and believes that someone killed William instead of letting him leave the compound.”

“It wasn’t a grave,” Riley said quietly. “It was a graveyard. Everyone we were told left was killed and buried in that field.”

“You also talked about your grandmother’s death. Again, you didn’t say she was killed, but you think she was, don’t you?”

She squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed her temples. “I don’t remember a lot from that time.”

“Were you drugged?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know. I was really sick for a while. Depressed—I missed my grandma so much. I didn’t know until much later that Thalia believed my mother poisoned my grandmother.” Riley still had a hard time wrapping her mind around it. “William is Thalia’s dad. He’s not my biological grandfather, who was killed when my mother was little. But he’s the only grandpa I knew.”

“When did Thalia and Robert leave?” Dean asked.

“We thought he was dead.” She had believed her mother, until Thalia returned and told her what really happened. She wished she could have said goodbye. She had loved her daddy Robert more than any of them.

“Who? Robert?” Kara asked.

“My mother said that Thalia killed him and ran away. We had a funeral for him.” Riley paused, considered what had happened eleven years ago. “Do you know how it feels when things are strange, odd, changing, but it’s so slow and small that you don’t realize it until all of a sudden, everything is different? That’s what happened. Small changes—like my mother took over for my grandmother in running the Havenwood council. She didn’t get rid of anyone on the council, but added more people—those loyal to her. The council limited who could go to the craft fair, until it was just a few people. Suddenly, the freedom and joy we had were gone. Protecting Havenwood against Thalia and outsiders became our only mission. No one new came to Havenwood. My grandmother always invited one or two families to move to Havenwood each year, but my mother put an end to that. No one Outside could be trusted.”

“When you left, how many people were at Havenwood?” Dean asked.

“Ninety-six. At one point, we had over a hundred forty. But ninety-six when Jane and I left.”

“Were most of the people recruited by your grandmother?”

“Yes.”

“Other than you, was anyone born there?”

“Oh, sure. Jane was born there—that’s one reason we were best friends.” Her voice cracked and she drank more water.

“By our best estimates, Havenwood started between thirty and forty years ago, would you say that’s accurate?”

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