Page 56 of Her Dying Secret

Abandoning her ball, Teryn walked around and crowded in between them, squinting at the image. “I had a friend whose actual first name was Princess. In third grade? She used to sign all her art with a tiny princess crown.”

Gretchen said, “What about the other flower?”

“It looks like a sweet pea. It’s the same as April’s tattoo,” Josie said.

Teryn frowned. “Hey, you’re right. That does look like April’s tattoo. Well, sort of. If a kindergartner drew it, maybe.”

A kindergartner had drawn it. Rosie’s artistic skills hadn’t changed much in four years, probably given the fact that she’d been forced into Seth’s nomadic life, but someone had worked with her on reading and writing, at least. Enough for her to make a plea for help.

Teryn added, “So if the rose represents the girl who drew this, does that flower represent April?”

“I think so.” Josie reached over and used her index finger to shift the zoomed-in portion of the photo so that the building and flagpole were visible. “What is this?”

Gretchen opened her mouth to speak but Teryn said, “Duh, it’s the school. You didn’t see that ginormous flagpole out front? Like they couldn’t find any other place to put it? It doesn’t exactly fit the Hillcrest aesthetic, if you haven’t noticed.”

Gretchen looked at the girl and laughed. “All right, kid, put it all together. What’s this drawing trying to tell us?”

Teryn arched a brow and looked from Gretchen to Josie and back. “You’re kidding right? Are cops really this dense? It’s not trying to tell you anything. It’s just this kid, Rosie, and April, and they’re together here at school.”

Gretchen looked over Teryn’s head and locked eyes with Josie. They’d worked together long enough to communicate a whole lot of things in utter silence.

In answer to Gretchen’s unspoken question, Josie said, “That’s right. The drawing from the scene isn’t an eye that sees flowers. Rosie was trying to show someone—probably Mira—where she and April were being held. The drawing is a map. It’s a damn map.”

FORTY

While Gretchen drove them back to Denton, Josie pulled up the photo of the drawing they’d found in April Carlson’s hand at the accident scene and studied it again, this time from a completely different perspective. What did the rings represent? Some kind of hole? A silo, maybe? Rebecca had said that Seth sometimes took work on farms. There were plenty in and around Denton. But if it had been a silo, wouldn’t Rosie have just drawn that?

“I didn’t think that kid was going to let us leave,” Gretchen remarked. “Teryn.”

“She’s curious,” Josie replied. “And damn smart.”

What were the brown lines? Dirt?

“Josie.”

“Yeah.”

What were the small brown circles?

“Maybe if we figure out how things got from Hillcrest to there”—she reached over and tapped Josie’s phone screen—“we might have a better chance of figuring out where ‘there’ is.”

With a sigh, Josie dropped the phone into her lap. It felt like she was going to lose her voice soon but she needed to talk things out with Gretchen. “Assuming Rosie is still in this place. Seth might have moved her by now.”

“Or he’s holding Mira there now. Let’s focus.”

Josie’s phone buzzed. “That’s a text from Noah.”

She read it off to Gretchen, leaving out the “I love you” and heart emojis at the end. “‘No luck finding the florist that delivered flowers to Mira Summers’s house, but I found a botanist to look at those clumps of fibers found on April Carlson’s clothes. He’s a professor at the university. Dr. Hensley Brooks. He’s in California at a conference right now but should be back in town within the next day or two. I sent his assistant some photos. She’ll set up a meeting with him as soon as he gets back.’”

“That’s something, I guess,” Gretchen said.

Josie typed in a thank you followed by some mushy stuff and even mushier emojis. Massaging her shoulder, she said, “Let’s get back to what you were saying. Getting from Hillcrest to the point we’re at now. Seth agrees to let Mira put Rosie into school like a normal child as long as she is also there to keep an eye on things and, evidently, monitor Rosie’s food intake.”

“Right,” Gretchen said. “God knows what else. April finds out what Mira’s doing. Monitoring Rosie’s food intake on Seth’s behalf and tailoring it to his specifications. Taking food away from her at lunchtime in front of the rest of the children. Depriving her of nutrition based on delusions.”

Josie watched the lights of Hillcrest disappear. Soon, they were pulling onto the interstate. “As a teacher, April would have had an obligation to report her concerns about Rosie’s health and well-being under the care of her parents to the Department of Human Services. She was a mandatory reporter. That was why April kept using the word ‘mandatory’ repeatedly in the argument with Mira.”

Gretchen said, “April wasn’t saying lunch was mandatory. She was saying it was mandatory that she report Mira and Seth to DHS.”

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