A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1) - Darynda Jones Page 0,93
no-more-secrets thing applied to the present tense as well.”
She frowned at him. “It does.”
“This morning?”
She crossed her arms. “I was getting to that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What happened this morning?” Auri asked, her voice hurried. “Besides finding Jimmy. I’m so glad, Mom.”
“Yeah, well, that was all Levi.”
“Man’s a machine,” Quincy said.
Sun hid the pleased smile from him, then she looked at Elaine. “Mom, can you come in here?”
“Of course.” Elaine put down the knife, picked up the sandwiches, and joined them, but Sun could tell she was a little nervous.
“During the SAR mission, I found a crumbling shed near Estrella Pond. I didn’t think much of it, but it did grab my attention. I went to check it out and . . . I remembered.” She drew her bottom lip in through her teeth. “That’s where I was held.”
The surprised looks on her parents’ faces left little to the imagination.
“I remembered the smell most of all. But also the tiny windows. And the mattress. And the spiders.”
“Spiders?” Auri asked, horrified. “There were spiders?”
“Yes, but I barely remember. You have to think of what I do remember as more like a snapshot than an actual event. I’m still missing so much, but I know I was held in that shed and that’s where we found a body.”
“I heard that,” Elaine said. “At the search site.”
“Do they know who it is?” Auri asked Sun.
“They do. It was Kubrick Ravinder.”
“Brick?” Cyrus said. “That snake?”
“The one and only. He’s been up there a while. I’ll know more in a few days, but he could’ve been up there this whole time. No one’s seen him in over a decade.”
“Oh, good heavens,” Elaine said. “He could’ve been the one who took you.”
“Yes. I just wanted you to be aware.”
Auri bit her bottom lip, indicating something weighing her down. “Can I ask one more thing?”
“Auri, yes. Now and always.”
“Okay, for now, can I ask why you faked a marriage?”
It was a question she’d asked herself occasionally. Was it worth it? Did it work? Did any of it matter in the long run? But then she would look at her beautiful daughter and the answers to those questions were always yes.
“Did you know it was fake?” she asked her. “Before the broadcast?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
All those years, all those questions swimming around in her head, and Auri had no one to talk to about it. No one to turn to. Sun imagined the shooting pain that pierced her heart was similar to what a heart attack would feel like.
“Oh, my god, Auri. I’m the one who’s sorry. I was going to tell you, but the time just never seemed right. And then when you got depressed, it really didn’t seem right.”
“I understand, Mom. I really do. I’m just not sure why you did it in the first place.”
Cyrus agreed. “You have to understand. We were scared to death. We still didn’t know who took your mom. We didn’t know if he would come back, and we didn’t want him knowing you were his.”
“Because in our eyes, you weren’t,” Elaine said. “You were 100 percent ours. End of story.”
A soft hue blossomed over her daughter’s face.
“I feel like you were my reward,” Sun continued. “My prize for making it through the whole ordeal. I have no idea what I went through, but I do know there were chains and a traumatic brain injury. I deserved you, damn it.”
Auri perked up at that, and Sun couldn’t believe that after all this time, the truth was coming out. And all because of a bunch of bullies whom she had every intention of arresting for obstruction of justice. As far as she was concerned, they’d released details from an ongoing investigation.
“And the monument in his honor?” Auri asked.
“Twofold.” Her dad held up two fingers, just in case no one in the room knew what twofold meant. “First, we wanted to make sure he saw it, whoever he was, and believed it was real. We needed him to think that you were the daughter of someone other than him. Anyone other than him. And second, next time you’re there, look closer at the circles.”
“Closer?” she asked as did Sun herself.
The circles? What was up with the circles?
“Okay, but how did you keep it a secret?”
“The memorial or the fake marriage?” her dad asked.
“Well, both, I guess.”
“Family,” Elaine said. “There are several core members of this town who are like family. In fact, the fake marriage and the memorial were actually their ideas. To throw the abductor off our