Page 55 of Her Dying Secret

Teryn looked over her shoulder. “I was really close to April, okay? If you don’t believe me, then look.” She ran over to the fence where her backpack rested and rifled through it until she came up with her phone. Her fingers swiped and scrolled against the screen as she walked back over. “These are of me and April. Disregard the shitty quality. I had a horrible phone back then. My mom would only get me the kind you paid monthly. That way if I pissed her off, she could just cancel it.”

She wedged herself between them so that they could both see the screen. The first photo was a selfie of a younger Teryn cheek to cheek with April. Josie’s stomach turned at April’s luminous smile. Soft brown locks cascaded over her shoulders. Happiness radiated from her. It was such a far cry from the shell of a woman they had found in Mira Summers’s car.

Teryn swiped through a few more, many of them selfies. One of a tabletop, showing only their hands as they worked on some glittery art project. Another was April alone, sitting in a chair made for one of the children, holding her palms up for the camera. Blue glitter covered them, winking at the camera like tiny sequins. Some had gotten onto her nose. Her eyes crossed as she tried to look at them. “She was so much fun,” Teryn said so quietly that Josie could barely hear her. She resisted the urge to hug the girl.

Next was another selfie but angled so the camera was looking down at them. Teryn said, “This was the day she got a selfie stick. Remember those?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, swiping again. A photo of April pinning different drawings to the display wall behind her desk flashed across the screen. In the next picture, she was facing the camera, smiling widely and extending a hand as if to present the drawing just above it. “That’s mine,” Teryn said. She pinched her thumb and forefinger on the screen and then zoomed in. “I wasn’t even in her class then but she still hung it up. See? My initials are on the bottom. T.B.”

Teryn sighed as she zoomed back out. “I remember the day that April argued with Miss Summers because it was the only time I ever saw her mad. Really, truly furious. It was the only time I ever heard her raise her voice in anger.”

As Teryn went to close out the gallery app, Josie held out her hand. “Would you mind if I had another look at those?”

“Sure.” Teryn handed her the phone.

Gretchen said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said to come out the way it did. Detective Quinn is right. We’re just trying to get the details straight here. It could be important. What happened next?”

Teryn slowly rotated her body back to face them. “April screamed at her. Really screamed at her. She said something like, ‘enough is enough’ and ‘I don’t care.’ That something was ‘unacceptable’ and she ‘didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.’ I’m pretty sure she said ‘mandatory’ a couple more times. She kept saying something about her family. ‘My family, too,’ she said. Miss Summers was crying and crying but April told her to get out. Then she pushed the door open so hard it hit the wall and she kind of pushed Miss Summers out.”

Josie looked up from the first photo that Teryn had shown them. “April physically pushed her out of the closet?”

“Yeah, sort of. I mean, not hard but she touched her. On her back. I don’t even think Miss Summers noticed me. She just ran out of the room.”

Josie swiped to the next photo and then the next, her eyes drawn to the background of each one. Something had flashed past when Teryn showed them the photos, but it had been too quick for Josie’s brain to fully register.

“Did April say anything to you?” Gretchen asked.

“She said she was sorry I had to hear that, and I asked her, ‘Is this because she withholds food at lunchtime?’ and she kind of looked at me, like she was surprised I knew, and she said, ‘That won’t be an issue anymore.’ Sure enough, Miss Summers didn’t come back. That was that.”

“You never told your mother about this?” said Gretchen.

“Why would I? April took care of it.”

“A year ago, after April went missing, a detective from the state police was here to talk to your mother and the other faculty members. Did you talk to her?”

“The blonde one? Yeah, I talked to her.”

Josie found one of the photos that showed the wall of drawings behind April’s desk and zoomed in.

Gretchen kept the interview going. “Did you tell her about the incident between April and Mira Summers?”

Teryn returned to the soccer ball and nudged it back and forth between her feet. “No. Why would I? It happened like four years ago and Miss Summers never came back. Then April moved away. Besides, it was about food in the cafeteria. What would some woman withholding food in the cafeteria four years ago have to do with April going missing from Newsham?”

Absolutely nothing. On the surface. Because no one knew they were half-sisters. No one could have predicted that four years later, in a city two hours away, the two of them would be found stabbed in a car together.

Josie found another photo with the wall of drawings in the background and zoomed in once more. When she found what she was looking for, it felt like a bucket of cold water being poured down the back of her neck. “Gretchen,” she said.

Both Gretchen and Teryn looked at her.

Teryn said, “You okay?”

Josie handed the phone to Gretchen zoomed in on a drawing of a flat-roofed red building with a flagpole near its front door and in front of that, two flowers—one a straight stem with pink blobs along its length and the other a rose.

Gretchen stared at it, stone-faced. “There’s that flower again. Rosie Summers drew this.”

“Who’s Rosie Summers?” asked Teryn.

Josie pointed at the screen. “The rose is her signature. Like her initials. It represents her.”

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