Vengeance

“I started getting into your business, so you assumed my guard was down.”

Jonovan gazed into my eyes. “Actually, I forgot about the interview and I only asked those questions because I was interested in knowing more about you.” He hit the end button on his recorder. “Again, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Shit, this was starting to feel like a date!

I spotted Antonio out the corner of my eye. He was probably wondering why I was doing such a long interview, even though we had never gotten to an actual one so far. He knew that if I ran my fingers through my hair two times, he was supposed to break it up. I didn’t do it. Instead, I guzzled down the rest of my mimosa.

“Off the record? Just two people shooting the breeze?”

He grinned. “Definitely. You fascinate me, but I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. You’re a fascinating person.”

Then I blushed. “Guyana actually is the only South American country with English as its official language so, yes, I was already speaking it.”

“Wow, never knew that.”

Richard Sterling had known it, which was why he made up that lie about adopting me there.

“As for an accent, I did have one but I’m not sure when it went away. Daddy provided me with the best teachers that money could buy and one of those was a speech coach. I had a stuttering issue as a child,” I lied so easily, and now it was time to go into the truly big lie. There was another reason why Daddy had fabricated the Guyana adoption in 1978 when I was six. “Do you promise never to talk about what I’m about to say next?”

“I promise.”

I was not a trusting person, but even if Jonovan did betray in the name of press freedom, it could never be proven one way or another.

“My parents were killed during the Jonestown Massacre!”

“Wha . . . what?” He was stunned.

“When Jim Jones rented that land to build a compound in Guyana, my parents were among the few locals who joined his cult. I can’t explain why. I was too young to know what was going on. So when everything happened on November 18, 1972, my father willingly drank the poison, but my mother refused. She tried to save me, but they stuck her in the neck with a syringe.”

“Oh my God!” Jonovan exclaimed. “And you saw all of it?”

“Yes, I did,” I continued lying. “When this man was poisoning my mother to death, she let my hand go and screamed for me to run. So that’s what I did. One man almost caught me, but I slipped out of his grip and ran into the woods.”

“This is unbelievable! I heard that there were a few survivors—even saw a documentary about it on CNN—but this is crazy.”

“It’s past crazy,” I added.

“So what happened next?”

“More than nine hundred people died that day, including nearly three hundred kids. Many were never identified. I fell through the cracks. Since I was a local, no one assumed that I was a by-product of Jonestown. They assumed that my parents had been killed by the PNC regime. The seventies and eighties were hard times in Guyana.”

“But how did you even end up in the orphanage?”

“I kept running and running until I got to a village, and this American doctor found me and took me to the orphanage. I refused to speak, so they made assumptions and I let them. I was too traumatized and in shock to speak the truth. Seeing all those people die. I can still smell the poison to this day and can’t stand the smell of almonds, since it’s so similar.”

Jonovan reached over and took my trembling hand. I had the physical reactions down to a science. I had learned how to connect emotions in acting classes. Even though I was relating a fake story, I was remembering what had really happened to me. I had yet to actually act in a movie, even though I was constantly flooded with scripts. Outside of music-video skits, I had never ventured there. I was waiting on the right opportunity. I no longer feared that someone would recognize me. I was older, looked completely different, and was convinced that the world had long forgotten about Caprice Tatum. Who the fuck was she anyway?

“I am so sorry that you went through that. But . . . do you have any idea how many people you could inspire if you told the truth about your past? An escapee from the Jonestown Massacre in another country becoming the biggest musical star in America, possibly the entire world? Wow!”

“You promised,” I stated angrily. Maybe he couldn’t be trusted after all.

“And I will keep my promise.”

I ran my fingers through my hair twice and Antonio appeared within seconds. “Wicket, you need to get ready to head to the studio.”

Jonovan seemed disappointed.

“Sorry,” I said. “Time’s up.”