Page 82 of See How They Hide

Riley thought. “My mother is forty-five. She was nine when she moved there.”

“That helps.” Dean smiled and it was a nice smile. He made Riley feel comfortable. But Kara was watching her closely, and Riley thought she saw things maybe Riley didn’t want her to see. Silly, she knew, but it was disconcerting enough that Riley averted her gaze.

Dean continued, “I noticed that you’re an artist. Kara showed me your doodles from yesterday when you were waiting at the police station, and you talked about sketching your grandmother. You have an exceptional eye, a lot of natural talent.” He pulled a sketch pad and box of pencils from his briefcase and slid them over to Riley. She stared at them, didn’t touch.

“I was thinking,” Dean said when she didn’t immediately reach for the pencils, “that while we talk, you can draw. Anything you want, but I’d really love to see Havenwood as you remember it. The good and the bad.”

She frowned and bit her bottom lip. She drew for herself, no one else. Not after her sketch of her grandmother in the graveyard.

“Or not,” Kara said. “It’s up to you.”

Dean glanced at Kara and seemed irritated, but then he blanked his face and said, “Absolutely up to you.”

“Did anyone teach you to draw?” Kara asked.

Riley shook her head. “We didn’t have cameras or cell phones or anything like that. So I would draw things I saw. Trees, flowers, people. Sometimes with colored pencils, but usually charcoal and regular pencils. I practiced and got good.”

“Did you like drawing people or things better?”

Riley shrugged. “No real preference.” She stared at the sketch pad, her fingers itching to draw, but she didn’t reach for the pencils.

Dean said, “Would strangers occasionally hike into Havenwood? And if so, anything memorable about those times? Anyone specific stand out?”

“When my grandma was alive, she would invite lost hikers to stay the night, have a meal, then someone would escort them out. There were no roads near us. The only way in by truck is a winding unpaved road that is unusable in the winter. So it didn’t happen often, a few times. After Grandma, Calliope wasn’t kind to people. She told them they were trespassing on private land. She had signs put up warning trespassers, and eventually, we didn’t see hardly anyone.”

“So there is a road into your valley?” Dean asked.

“You wouldn’t know it was there unless you knew about it,” she said. “It was gated and no one was allowed past the gate. I later found out there are cameras, and they could see who was coming and going.”

“And you used that road to go to the craft fairs, or buy essential items?”

She nodded. “We had three trucks. Six people from the council would go to each fair and we’d prepare for months. When my grandmother was alive, she usually went. Some people wanted to start selling our products online, but Calliope and Anton—Anton is one of my fathers—thought it would expose us.”

“Expose you how?” Dean asked.

“To people who would destroy the beauty of Havenwood. The world is corrupt, industry destroys the environment. We believe in living simply and never exposed ourselves to the Outside. My grandmother had rituals to purify our souls. Meditation and isolation, mostly. My mother...she had more.”

“Like what?” Dean asked.

Riley shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

Kara said, “How did Thalia know who to rescue from Havenwood? How did she know they wouldn’t turn her in?”

“Me.”

“I don’t understand,” Kara said.

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth yesterday. I didn’t lie—but I left things out.”

Riley pulled the sketch pad to her. She opened the box of pencils and twisted one in her fingers.

Kara Quinn had a pretty, interesting face. There was depth there, hidden things. Riley started drawing.

“After Thalia and Robert left,” Riley said, “Garrett took over the finances of Havenwood. Garrett replaced my daddy Glen when he died and moved into the house. Robert had trained him, so it made sense. I started listening. I was really good at making myself practically invisible. I learned quickly that my mother and the council knew that Robert had left with Thalia and taken all of our money. We had to work harder to make it up. We needed money, so we couldn’t just sell stuff a few times a year anymore. And while we could grow most of our own food, and we had chickens for meat and eggs, there were expenses. We had generators that needed fuel, repairs, spices and flour for baking, shoes, things like that. Supplies for our handcrafts. So Anton expanded the marijuana farm and we were doing well.

“When Thalia returned nearly a year later, I begged her to take me with her. She said I had a job to do, that I needed to find the people who wanted to leave, and Thalia would get them out, give them new identities—starting with Chris. She couldn’t take me because I was too young. I was the only person she trusted to find the right people to rescue.”

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