He laughed. “A thesaurus?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get you one if you promise to use it.”
“Okay, I will.” Recognition flickered across her face as her smile fell. “You’ll have to read it to me, though. I can’t read.”
“Truthfully?”
She hesitated. “I can a little bit. People taught me, and I picked up some from closed captioning when my mistress watched the television . . . so I guess you can say I watched some television, too.”
He shook his head. “I still don’t understand why it mattered to that Michael guy.”
“Because smart people try to escape,” she replied. “They think they can make it in the outside world. The ones who don’t know anything are easier to control, and they needed to control me.”
He gaped at her, surprised by her sudden seriousness. “Okay.”
Haven laughed, her carefree expression returning. “Is that an, ‘Okay, I get your point, Haven,’ or is it an, ‘Okay, I’m just going to agree with you, because I don’t know what else to say?’”
She’d mocked him. Him. “You did that all fucking wrong. You didn’t even curse.”
“I don’t curse.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Why not?”
“I’ve seen too many people have teeth knocked out from saying bad words.”
“So not cursing kept you all your teeth?”
“No, luck did that. As many blows to the face I took, I should be more disfigured than I am.”
He scoffed. “You aren’t disfigured.”
“My nose is crooked,” she said, matter-of-fact. “There’s a bump.”
He squinted a bit, looking at her nose, but saw nothing wrong with it. “How’d you get this supposedly horrific bump?”
“My mistress kicked me in the face.”
He cringed. “Why did she kick you?”
“Because I scuffed her high heels when she tripped me.”
“Why did she trip you?”
“For fun? I don’t know.”
His brow furrowed. “The bitch tripped you for laughs, got pissed because she scuffed her shoe, and decided to kick you in the nose as punishment?”
She nodded. “Do you want to know the color of the shoes? You’ve asked everything else.”
His eyes widened at her sarcastic tone.
Haven noticed his stunned expression and covered her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “And if you wanna tell me the color of the shoe, by all means, tell me. If you’re sick of my questions, tell me to shut the fuck up.”
“The shoe was red, and I don’t mind your questions,” she said. “I can’t believe I had an outburst like that.”