Page 51 of Her Dying Secret

“Detectives.” Confusion deepened the lines of Hope’s face. “We don’t have a copy of the birth certificate. We don’t have…anything.”

Josie said, “How is that possible?”

“Could someone have deleted it?” Gretchen asked.

“No. It’s not that.” Hope clicked a few more times. “It’s the McKinney–Vento Act. A federal law that applies to students experiencing homelessness. When I say homelessness, I don’t mean they are necessarily on the street, just that they have no permanent address. Specifically, the act is in place to make sure that those students can still enroll in school and receive equal access to education.”

“But you would still need to collect their information, right?” Gretchen pressed.

Hope sighed. “Not right away. Pennsylvania added another law to provide more rights to unhoused students in the same year that Rosie enrolled. It’s called Act 1. Under that law, we have to enroll the student immediately, the very day they seek to be enrolled, regardless of whether they’ve provided any documentation.”

Josie leaned in toward Gretchen, dropping back into a low tone that kept the conversation between them. “Seth would have wanted to avoid giving documentation relating to Rosie and his relationship to her at all costs.”

“Right,” Gretchen breathed. “He thought someone would take her if they found out. April would have known about these laws. She could have used them to help Mira get Rosie enrolled without alarming Seth, and it might not have been a stretch to prove Rosie was experiencing homelessness.”

“True,” Josie agreed.

Hope cleared her throat. “After the student is enrolled, we have to follow up and gather all the required documents from their parents as soon as possible. We have a faculty member who is designated—by law—as the McKinney–Vento liaison. They’re responsible for identifying students experiencing homelessness, getting them enrolled, making sure they have access to all appropriate services to which they’re entitled?—”

“Who was your liaison at the time that Rosie enrolled?” asked Gretchen.

Hope said, “It’s normally our school counselor. That’s who most schools designate, but if I recall correctly, three and half years ago our counselor was in the middle of chemotherapy. Her cancer persisted for a couple of years before she finally went into remission. However, while she was in treatment, the more ill she became, the more of her responsibilities I tried to delegate to other staff members. Including the liaison designation.”

“April became the McKinney–Vento liaison,” Josie said.

Hope searched her laptop screen. “Yes, but she’d been doing it for well over a year by the time Rosie Summers enrolled. April was extremely conscientious. Detail-oriented. Well-organized. This…this is very unlike her.”

“What’s unlike her?” asked Josie.

“It looks like she never followed up on the documentation for Rosie Summers. We never received anything and then Rosie left.”

Josie would bet her paycheck that Rosie hadn’t “left” but that Seth had removed her from school. The question was what had happened to precipitate that.

“How long was Rosie enrolled?” asked Josie.

“Five months.”

Gretchen said, “If there is a birthday listed for Rosie, we might be able to subpoena a copy of her birth certificate from the Division of Vital Records.”

“Yes, there is.” A printer behind Hope’s desk whirred to life. “I’ll print all of this out for you.”

“If you could email us a digital copy of Rosie Summers’s photo,” Josie said, “that would be great. We’d like to get it out to the press as soon as possible.”

The picture was four years old, but it was better than nothing.

“Yes, of course.”

Gretchen scribbled her email address on a notebook page, tore it out, and handed it to Hope.

Josie whispered, “Send that photo to Amber, not to Douchebag.”

“No shit.”

Hope’s fingers trembled as she typed the email address into an outgoing message. “We have so many students. Year after year after year. It’s difficult to remember them all, but I think I might have seen this girl in April’s classroom sometimes in the mornings, before school started. I just can’t be sure. I don’t understand. If Rosie is Seth Lee and Mira Summers’s daughter, how did April become involved?”

It wasn’t their place to disclose the fact that April and Mira had been half-sisters, so Josie said, “We’re still trying to piece everything together. As Detective Palmer mentioned before, we believe that Mira Summers worked here at one time. It was likely during the same time period that Rosie was enrolled. Can you check that for us?”

Hope’s skin was turning greenish again. “No. That can’t be right. I would remember if Mira Summers had worked here. I would definitely have recalled that when I saw her photo on the news. One of our teachers would have remembered!”

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