CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Four thirty in the morning came early, especially since Vienna had spent most of the night making love with Zale. The Airbnb they’d rented was about twenty minutes from Red Rock because they planned to climb and bike as well as visit the coffee shops. Unfortunately, that put them nearly an hour from the Hoover Dam Lodge and Casino, where they were to check in with their guides, who would shuttle them in vans to the launch area with the others coming on the kayak trip on the Colorado River.
The guide company had all the necessary permits and was responsible for checking their IDs to take them out to the Hoover Dam. Vienna thought it was so cool that on part of the trip, one shore of the river would be in Arizona and one side Nevada and yet they would be traveling on the Colorado River toward Lake Mead.
Vienna waited until they were on the road before she brought up her nightmare. These were her best friends. “I honestly didn’t remember my birth mother, although I should have. It’s weird how I remember everything else so easily, yet it’s almost as if I blocked her out. Her name was Avril, and I didn’t even remember that.”
“It’s possible the memories of losing her were too painful,” Harlow suggested.
“Maybe,” Vienna mused. “I don’t know. But I even suppressed the way she would tell me men aren’t to be trusted and that they are liars. She would whisper that to me every time she held me. It’s like a subconscious suggestion I can’t seem to overcome. I can accept Zale’s work and his being gone for long periods of time, but I have this doubt that he’ll stay with me, that what he says is real. These men are so good at saying or doing whatever they need to in order to get what they want if they’re on a mission.”
“But you aren’t a mission,” Stella pointed out.
Vienna chewed on the side of her lip for a minute and then rubbed at her eyebrow to smooth her frown away. “I wish Mitzi had talked to me about Avril. It would have made it so much easier for me to understand things. I don’t know why she didn’t.” Her eyes met Raine’s. “I know you had to do background checks on all of us. Do you have any information on Avril and Mitzi? Anything at all?”
Raine looked uncomfortable. “Mitzi was friends with Avril. They grew up together. I don’t know a lot, honestly, which is surprising, although I’m working on it. Avril apparently came to Mitzi sick and pregnant and Mitzi took her in. You said you remembered Avril saying the father had signed away his rights, allowing Mitzi to formally adopt you. That wasn’t true. The father hadn’t signed his rights away. Avril lied to Mitzi and then lied to the authorities and said she didn’t know who the father was when she turned you over to Mitzi to be raised after her death.”
Vienna realized at once the mess Mitzi would have found herself in. It wouldn’t have been so easy for a single woman, especially a lesbian, to adopt a child. She would have to try to track down the father and then free her of his parental rights in court if he continued to refuse to give up his rights to her.
“It’s possible your father doesn’t know you even exist,” Zahra ventured.
“Maybe,” Vienna conceded. She went over her birth mother’s voice when she spoke to Mitzi about the man whom she’d loved—the one who’d wanted her to have an abortion. She didn’t sound as if she were lying. She sounded completely brokenhearted. Shattered. “I think Avril did tell him. I believe he was focused on his career and told her to have an abortion. She refused and went to Mitzi. Why she made up the rest about signing away his rights, I don’t know, but I can understand why Mitzi wouldn’t want to open that can of worms when she realized Avril had lied.”
Harlow nodded in agreement. “Mitzi would have been so afraid of losing you. She had the legal right to raise you and that had to be good enough, even though she was never able to formally adopt you.”
“How old was I when Avril died?” Vienna asked Raine.
“Avril died when you were five. The cancer had slowly spread through her body and Mitzi took care of her mostly at home, with the help of friends who were nurses. Mitzi had a circle of friends in her community who were very supportive of her throughout Avril’s illness, and they helped her care for her—and you.”
Vienna rubbed at her eyebrow again. “Those days are so vague to me. I remember so many things with Mitzi and even her friends. Playing board games, cards, learning to knit or crochet. Their cats. I really loved their cats. But I can’t recall Avril. That really bothers me. I should be able to when I remember details so clearly.”
“Trauma is a funny thing,” Shabina said. “I have periods of time completely gone from my memory. Not during the time I was with my captors, but after, when I was back home with my parents. I would be talking to them and suddenly realize I didn’t have a clue what we were talking about.”
Zahra nodded in agreement. “I think it can be normal to close the door, especially when you’re a young child, on a very frightening event or illness you don’t understand.”
Harlow sighed. “I’m sorry to have to point this out to you, Vienna, but you’re a nurse. You know the cancer could have spread to Avril’s brain. Your mother sounds as if she was grieving and sometimes even a little out of her mind. Mitzi might not have recognized the signs. She wouldn’t have known to protect a child from the things Avril would say or do that seemed quite reasonable to her.”
Vienna knew there was every possibility Harlow had hit on the truth. Depending on where the tumors were, Avril could have been suffering all kinds of delusions.
“You know I’ve never once had a problem with self-confidence,” she confided to her friends. “I’ve never cared one way or the other whether I was in a relationship with someone until I met Zale. I fell pretty hard for him. When he left and didn’t contact me, I was far more devastated than I thought possible. I accepted it, because I’m not the kind of woman to chase after a man, and I wasn’t about to repeat the experience even after I met him again in Vegas.”
“But you did repeat the experience after all,” Harlow pointed out.
Vienna nodded. “We talked and he explained what happened, and I believe him. He had planned to contact me after his mission. He had to work out how he was going to keep me safe. Unlike Sam, he will still be working.”
“And that’s okay with you?” Zahra asked.